Authentic Manicotti Recipe — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:02] to realize you're actually making canalone? I mean, you can inhale these. This is the biggest lie corporate pasta companies have ever told. And that is that manakati was never even supposed to be a pasta.

[00:14] THERE'S A TRAY IN THERE. >> In Italy, manati does not exist as a noodle. It's actually a crispella, a light, delicate Italian crepe. And they originally made it by wrapping these savory crepes around rich riot filling.

[00:30] But once commercial pasta brands launched dried pasta tubes and named them managotti, they completely erased the crepe from history. But today I'm going to show you how to bring the crepe back. This is the real way to make

[00:43] manakotti or if you speak Italian American, managot. Now before we jump into manoti, it is August and I'm serving this with a tomato sauce. So, we're going to be going over how to make fresh summer

[00:56] sauce simply. First rule of thumb, yield. Right, I've got about 4 1/2 lb yield. Right, I've got about 4 1/2 lb here. That should roughly yield me about 4 cups of sauce. That's not a rule. That's just an estimation. It depends on

[01:09] the type of tomatoes and all of that. All I'm going to do, cut the stem off, split it in half. If you want, you could quarter them. That'll just fit more into easier. You can give them a squeeze if you want. We're just going to fill this

[01:23] pot up with tomatoes to [music] start. All those seeds, the skins, we're going mill. These are Roma tomatoes. This is going to be the base of the sauce. And then I have a pint of cherry tomatoes that are going to balance out some of

[01:36] the acidity of these tomatoes with the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes. [music] I'm going to get this onto the stove, get it on high heat. Then we can go in with our cherry tomatoes. Get those [music] rinsed.

[01:48] And as that's coming up to temperature and as those tomatoes start to sort of break down, I'm going to split the cherry tomatoes. Start getting those in. we're going to hit them with some salt. Help them break down a bit. Then I'm

[02:02] bit. Trying to get those tomatoes from the bottom on the top and the top down on the bottom where all that moisture is starting to break down. Over time, it's going to sort of sink into the pot, soften up. And all we're looking to do

[02:15] is cook this down for [music] an hour or two until everything is kind of jammy mill. Now, one thing you might notice here is a bit of a like a vegetital smell. You're not getting sweet field tomato aroma at this stage. There's just

[02:31] kind of like enzymes that are still in the tomatoes that will evaporate and that, that just means you're not done cooking it yet. It has to keep kind of concentrating its flavor. and then you'll get that sweet tomatoy aroma.

[02:46] While our tomatoes cook down, we can get started on our crepe recipe, which is [music] what we have here. Now, it's very simple. First, starts off with 1 cup of milk. Then, I'm going to add 1 cup of allpurpose flour to it. Next,

[02:58] we're going to crack in two eggs along with 3 tablespoon of melted butter that is cooled and then a nice pinch of salt. Then, we're going to take an immersion blender and then just blend it until it's nice and smooth. should be coating

[03:11] the spoon, but it should be like a little bit looser, almost more like the been cooking for around an hour and a half. It's on the verge of beginning to start to smell more sweet rather than vegetital, but the tomatoes are nice and

[03:25] broken down. It's thickened, as you can see around the ridge. It's reduced by food mill. Just catches the seeds and skins and creates like the ideal texture for tomato sauce. I'm going to take one of these kind of slotted spoons. I'm

[03:39] going to get all of the flesh in there. Start to process it. Make sure you clean pulp is. Then we can take the remaining liquid and sort of clean out the food

[03:51] mill. [music] Now we have a nice strained tomato pata essentially from fresh tomatoes. We do need to sort of reduce a little bit more and that's We're going to get the pan back on the heat. I just cleaned it out. Coat the

[04:04] bottom of the pan with olive oil. Toss in our clove or two of sliced garlic, nice and thin, along with a stem of basil. Season with some salt. And we're now going to infuse that olive oil with that garlic and basil flavor. All we're

[04:16] looking for is a little caramelization, a little light browning around the garlic. And then we're just going to add in the tomatoes. to simmer [snorts] this until it thickens [music] up ever so slightly.

[04:29] Now remember, there's also a smell. I'm looking for a sweet aroma coming from the sauce that is distinctly different than the vegetital one when it started that off to the side and we can get started on our crepes. Got an 8 in

[04:42] nonstick. That's the perfect size for these crepes. Get that on medium heat. And I'm just going to ever so gently coat the bottom with butter. Very little amount. I'm even going to wipe it with a paper towel. The right amount is 3

[04:57] tablespoons, but there's no 3 tablespoon measuring cup. So, I'm going to use a/4 of a cup measuring spoon and just fill it up basically 75% of the way there. Once the pan's around like 325, [music] 350, we can start making crepes.

[05:11] Straight into the pan. Swirl it to coat the bottom. First one's always a little imperfect. Then, we're going to let that cook until the top of the crepe is set. Once it's set, then we're just going to flip it onto the other side. Cook it for

[05:23] about 15 seconds. And then we're going to get it out of the pan and repeat that process. And this should give us about 10 to 12 crepes. [music] And we specifically do not want color. We want them pale. We want them nice and soft

[05:36] and tender. And the secret really is this sort of swirling technique to get [music] it into a nice round shape. You need to spin it and twirl it with a certain speed. Otherwise, it'll set too fast.

[05:55] cool. We got our sauce simmering, looking nice. Next we just need to make our riot filling. Now I find when making any sort of ravioli filling for Italian food, you get a thing in one of these tins, right? Like it just is the perfect

[06:08] texture. They've drained out moisture. It's thick. I can control moisture now draining it out. So we're going to get this into a bowl. See how perfect it is? fresh, sweet, creamy. To that, one egg, parmesano reaniano, about two big

[06:23] handfuls, the zest of one lemon, olive oil, some black pepper. You could add nutmeg, but I prefer the lemon zest. It kind of takes it from a warm spice thing to a fresher thing. Then I've got a fresh bowl of mozzarella that's been

[06:37] cured and dried, and I'm just going to shred that up. Some for the riot, and some for baking it at the end. A little bit of that mozzarella. And we're just going to get that mixed up, incorporated.

[06:51] yourself a piping bag container to help me fill it. Start adding it. So, got my riot filling and my crepes. I like them filled pretty thick, right?

[07:07] So, the way that I'm going to sort of measure that is by the hole I cut from the piping bag. So, I'm going to do something like that. And what I like to do is pick one side up like this and almost create like a wall, right? I'm

[07:20] going to line up in the center. I'm going to use that to kind of create some tension to build a nice thick [snorts] pipe of the riot. Then we're just going to fold it over and like a burrito. Push back and then roll forward. If you want,

[07:34] [music] you can sort of fold in the sides. And there is a manag. So you can just go ahead and like so quickly with a piping bag [music] bang all of these out piping bag [music] bang all of these out in no time.

[07:53] amount. Going to pop these in the fridge while we preheat the oven to 450°. Now here. Look at that fresh sauce. Balanced. Perfect. Tastes like summer. sauce in here. [music] Then we can start to place our managote.

[08:10] Then I like to take a little bit of the sauce and just streak it across. Pigano, the mozzarella, get nice and charred, give it a little bit of texture, and like to serve it, if you're maybe serving less people, get a little sizzle

[08:25] platter. Same vibe. Place them on top. A little bit of olive oil. [music] These are ready to go into the oven. After about 5 or 6 minutes, we're just going to give it a rotate. We're just going to continue to cook it until that cheese

[08:38] starts to brown, starts to sule a little bit. Then after about 10 minutes of the broiler. Once you start to see that mozzarella starting to speckle brown, that's my cue. There's one way. That's two. Let these cool and then we can dig

[08:54] in. We're just going to slide these onto the plate. Little cheese, a little olive the plate. Little cheese, a little olive oil. [music] which is like a riot dumpling, than it does a pasta. It's light. It's

[09:09] delicate. [music] Still satisfying. I mean, you can inhale these. And the crepes hold up surprisingly well to the sauce and the baking. I wouldn't say there's like an al dente texture, but there is a soft, sturdy texture holding

[09:21] Link's going to be down in the description. That's all that I have today. Enjoy your last shreds of summer. I'll see you next time. Until then, take I'll see you next time. Until then, take care of yourself and go feed yourself.