A New Favorite

A while back Lance and I decided that we wanted to try making home-made ravioli one night for dinner. Sounded like quite the task, but figured we may as well try it. So I went to my favorite website for recipes, allrecipes.com, and found a recipe that I was willing to try.

Click here for the recipe that I used.

The first time I made it, we decided not to make the pesto sauce to put over top. It was so good that I decided to make it again, but this time I tripled the recipe and made the pesto sauce to go on top. And that pesto sauce is GOOD! Definitely not leaving that out again.

Here is a picture of how it looked the first time we tried it, without the pesto sauce.

And here is a picture of our meal tonight, with the pesto sauce.

The dish was really good before, but this pesto sauce was excellent. It took the dish up a notch and really made it stand out.

We were surprised at how good this recipe is. Seriously, it tastes like a dish you would get at a fancy restaurant. If it were easier to make, I'm sure we would be having it much more often. Though it is a bit time consuming, we will definitely be making it on special occasions and every once in a while. It's worth it. And we were amazed how filling they are! I had just a small plate of ravioli and was completely stuffed afterwards. I wanted more, but my stomach said no.

Anyways, if you are looking for a new dish to try out and you are willing to spend a little time, I strongly recommend this. I'm so glad I decided to triple the recipe today because now we'll have enough for leftovers for several days. Below are a few suggestions or things I discovered that may make it easier for you. Enjoy!

Tips/Suggestions:
-Both times I made it, the dough was way too dry and I ended up adding an extra egg or two plus more water. I pretty much just added as much as I needed until the dough was workable.
-It says to only let the noodles boil for 4 minutes. I let mine boil for at least 10 minutes because I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to be doughy. Just boil until you feel like they are cooked.

-The dough is really hard and kind of difficult to work with. The first time I was way nervous because my dough was so hard and I was so sure that it wouldn't work. But it turned out great.
-Make sure you roll your dough out as flat as possible. When it cooks, it expands and you don't want your noodles too thick.
-I used a lid from something to cut the dough instead of pizza cutter or knife. Made it so they were all the same size and it was easier to cut.

-I added sausage and ground beef to our filling to give a little more substance.
-We used marinara sauce the first time and we used meat spaghetti sauce the second time. Lance and I both liked the spaghetti sauce a lot more than the marinara.
-I would make the dough and filling the night before. Then let it sit in the refrigerator overnight. This meal is very time consuming, and it was a lot better split up into two days.
-Use a fork on the edges to create the ripple effect. It also helps to seal the edges together.

-Instead of baking the noodles then adding the sauces, we poured the sauce over the noodles and then baked it. Just a matter of preference I suppose.
-I didn't do the egg wash either time and it turned out fine. Just didn't feel it was necessary, but maybe it does something? I don't know.


Again, here is the recipe: Recipe for home-made Ravioli.

Enjoy! And if you decide to make it, let me know what you think!