Cannelloni with minced meat and ricotta. Recipe: Cannelloni with meat filling - with ricotta, spinach and béchamel sauce

Cannelloni is one of the most popular Italian dishes. This is pasta in the form of tubes, filled with spinach, soft cheese or meat, doused with sauce and baked in the oven under a layer of Parmesan. To many, this dish tastes like Italian lasagne, only now it looks much more interesting and unusual. In our article we will tell you how to cook cannelloni with ricotta and spinach step by step. Recipes with photos of ready-made dishes will be presented below.

Even a novice housewife can bake a cannelloni according to a recipe with spinach and ricotta. The main thing is to follow the sequence of actions during cooking and take into account all the tips from experienced chefs. The most important recommendations are presented below:

1. It is recommended to boil and cool the pasta tubes before stuffing. To do this, the cannelloni is dipped in a large amount of boiling salted water, and after 2 minutes, the pasta is transferred to a bowl of cold water.
2. Depending on the flavor, the ratio of cheese to spinach can vary. You can put more ricotta and less greens in the filling, or vice versa.
3. The dish will turn out juicy thanks to the béchamel sauce. And so that a milky film does not form on the surface of the cooked sauce, it is recommended to put a piece of soft butter (20 g) in it at the very end of cooking.

Classic cannelloni recipe

The famous dish of Italian cuisine has long become a favorite all over the world. The filling of spinach and traditional whey cheese for pasta in the form of tubes is both tasty and healthy. In addition, the large amount of sauce makes the dish very juicy and satisfying. In general, the process of making ricotta spinach cannelloni consists of the following steps:

1. Preparing the filling for stuffing the tubes.
2. Boil the cannelloni according to the instructions on the package.
3. Assembling the dish.
4. Baking.

Let's consider each stage in more detail.

How to make a juicy cannelloni filling?

Both fresh and frozen spinach are suitable for this dish. Cannelloni with ricotta will turn out to be equally tasty in the first and second case. Prepare the filling for a frozen spinach dish as follows:

1. Crush the garlic (2 cloves) with the flat side of a knife and fry in a pan with olive oil for 1 minute, then remove it to the side.
2. Without defrosting spinach (200 g), put it in fragrant butter. Cook with constant stirring for 7 minutes.
3. When the liquid has completely evaporated, salt and pepper the spinach. After that, transfer it to a bowl and cool.
4. Combine cooled spinach with ricotta (200 g). Stir the filling.

Sauce for the dish

Bechamel is an ideal sauce not only for lasagna, but also for cannelloni - with spinach, ricotta or minced meat. Almost every housewife knows how to cook it:

1. Put a frying pan on low heat, put butter (30 g) in it and melt it.
2. Add a tablespoon of sifted flour. Stir until the mass is homogeneous, without lumps.
3. Pour 200 ml of milk and 150 ml of cream in a thin stream. Stir the contents of the pan constantly.
4. Over medium heat, bring the sauce to a thick consistency, remembering to stir it constantly.
5. At the end of cooking add salt, black pepper and grated nutmeg.

Assembling and baking cannelloni with béchamel sauce

For stuffing pasta tubes (8 pcs.) With filling, boil them for two minutes. After the sauce is ready, you can start forming the dish:

1. Pour sauce over the bottom of the baking dish.
2. Remove the boiled cannelloni from cold water and fill with the filling.
3. Place the cannelloni stuffed with spinach and ricotta in a baking dish on top of the sauce. It is advisable to lay out the tubes in one layer, then they are better saturated with the sauce and will be tastier.
4. Pour the remaining sauce over the pasta and grind with grated Parmesan (30 g).
5. According to this recipe, cannelloni with ricotta and spinach should be baked in an oven preheated to 180 ° for about half an hour. A few minutes before the end of cooking, turn on the grill to brown the cheese.
6. It is recommended to cool the dish slightly before serving.

Stuffed cannelloni with tomato sauce

The next dish is prepared with the addition of tomatoes. Its taste is slightly different than that of traditional cannelloni with ricotta and spinach, but no less interesting from this. The dish is prepared in the following sequence:

1. Pour a little olive oil into a frying pan and sauté the onion on it until transparent, and then garlic for 1 minute.
2. Add diced tomatoes (6 pcs.) Or put tomatoes in their own juice from a jar (800 ml).
3. If necessary, add some water to the tomatoes and simmer until tender with onions. At the end of cooking, add oregano, a little sugar, salt and pepper.
4. Chop spinach (400 g) and darken in a pan with water. After that, drain the excess liquid, cool the herbs and combine with ricotta (250 g). Add spices, squeezed garlic (2 cloves) and grated nutmeg to taste.
5. Fill the pastry syringe with the filling.
6. Stuff the boiled cannelloni with spinach and ricotta.
7. Place the straws in a baking dish directly on top of the tomato sauce. Top them with cream (120 ml) and sprinkle with grated Parmesan.
8. Cook the dish in the oven for 45 minutes at 180 °.

Cannelloni stuffed with spinach and ricotta with creamy sauce

When preparing this dish, you can use not only béchamel, but also other sauces, for example, based on cream. In this case, cannelloni with ricotta and spinach will be cooked in the following sequence:

1. Fry the garlic crushed with a knife in olive oil for a minute, then remove it from the pan.
2. Place fresh or frozen spinach (350 g) in hot oil and cook for a few minutes. Add salt and spices at the end. Remove from heat.
3. Boil Cannelloni (400 g) until half cooked.
4. Combine the cooled spinach with ricotta (350 g). Fill with the resulting mass of pasta and put them in a fireproof dish.
5. Pour cream of any fat content (500 ml) into a saucepan, bring to a boil and add processed cheese (50 g) to them. While stirring, wait until it is completely dissolved. The sauce will thicken immediately. You can add salt and Italian herbs to taste.
6. Pour hot sauce over the tubules. Send the dish to the oven (200 °) for 25 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese 5 minutes before the end of cooking.

Stuffed with ricotta and spinach cannelloni from Jamie Oliver

We offer the following recipe for an Italian dish from a famous chef:

1. Frozen spinach (400 g) is laid out in a frying pan with heated oil and cooked over low heat until cooked under the lid for 15 minutes. Salt and ground nutmeg (1/4 tsp) are added to taste.
2. A little oil is poured into a separate pan. Garlic (2 cloves), 800 g of canned tomatoes, dried basil (1 tbsp) are laid out. The sauce is brought to readiness for about 30 minutes.
3. The cooled spinach is mixed with grated Parmesan (100 g), 250 g of ricotta and a beaten egg with a fork. The filling is transferred to a pastry bag or plastic bag with a cut off spout.
4. About 14 pieces of cannelloni are filled with the resulting mass from a pastry bag and laid out in a mold in one row. Tomato sauce is laid on top of the tubes and 200 ml of water is poured. Then sprinkle with grated or sliced \u200b\u200bmozzarella (200 g).
5. After 40 minutes of roasting in the oven at 180 °, the cannelloni will be ready.

Hello everyone! Today, for Saturday dinner, our family had a delicious Italian cannelloni dish with béchamel sauce! I had Barilla brands, they do not need to be pre-cooked, which is very convenient in order to fill them.
So, let's begin.
Stage 1 of this dish is bechamel sauce.

Put 60 grams of butter in a well-heated deep frying pan

While stirring to melt the butter, reduce the heat to the minimum so that the butter does not start burning.

Add flour 2 tbsp. spoons without a slide. And mix quickly so that there are no lumps. It's more convenient for me with a whisk.

We continue to grind flour with butter

Add a teaspoon of ground nutmeg to the sauce and salt to taste. Stir, all the sauce is ready, set it aside.

Stage 2 is the filling for the cannelloni.
Take 1 onion and 1 garlic clove. I chopped in a blender, you can chop finely with a knife.

Chopped onion and garlic are ready.

Place the onion in a preheated skillet with vegetable or olive oil. fry at low heat until transparent.

I had minced chicken as a meat filling.

Put the minced meat in the pan, add a little water and simmer under the lid.

Add salt, ground pepper and seasoning, I added oregano!

While the minced meat is stewing. Take 3 cubes of frozen spinach briquette, defrost it a little under hot water and cut it into pieces.

We send the spinach to the chicken and onions in the pan, mix, close the lid.

Add ricotta cheese 250g to our meat sauce with spinach.

Stir the ricotta to create a creamy meat sauce with spinach.

Parmesan cheese 100g grate on a fine grater

Add half of the grated cheese to the creamy meat sauce and mix. We turn off the stove.

Using a submersible blender, you need to grind this delicious mass.

The cannelloni filling is ready!

Stage 3 is to start our cannelloni.
I did it very quickly with a simple teaspoon, with the back of the spoon I pushed the filling into the middle.

I got 14pcs and we ate a little more filling like this)) but in principle the filling is enough for 16-17pcs.
Pour 2 tbsp into the bottom of the mold. tablespoons of olive oil and a couple of tablespoons of béchamel sauce. And put the stuffed cannelloni on top, in an even layer in 1 row.

Top the cannelloni with the pre-prepared béchamel sauce and sprinkle with the left grated Parmesan cheese.

We put in an oven well preheated to 180C for 30 minutes

After 30 minutes, aroma throughout the apartment, our dish is ready!
We take out the cannelloni form from the oven and let it rest on the table right in the form for another 5-10 minutes.

A very delicate dish to taste! Serving with fresh vegetables!

Enjoy everyone! Cook with pleasure :)

Time for preparing: PT01H20M 1 h. 20 min.

Finely chop the onion.
Pour a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into a preheated frying pan, pour onions and leave over medium heat until discolored.

Peel the garlic, put it on the board and press with the flat side of the knife. You don't need to cut the garlic. We do this so that the garlic gives all its juices and smells to our dish.

Add crushed garlic to the clear onion, mix. Fry for a couple of minutes.

Add nutmeg, salt and pepper to this.

Cut the butter at random and add to the pan. Now, sweet-spicy smells begin to hover in the kitchen, and butter and onions are bubbling in the pan. The process will take 3-4 minutes.

Add spinach thawed and slightly squeezed from water to our mass. I defrosted it in the microwave, then threw it on a sieve. I already had chopped spinach.
If you take fresh spinach, then you will need it 2 (at least) times more, it must be blanched and also added to the onion mass.

Stir, simmer for a couple of minutes. We take out the garlic and throw it away

Mix the ricotta with spinach.

We try again and add salt and pepper to taste.

We put the filling in a plastic bag (or a pastry sleeve, or a pastry syringe - the nozzle will be a narrow long tube). We cut off the corner of the package, fill in our cannelloni.
Cannelloni does not need to be cooked in advance. It will take time and, in my opinion, completely inconvenient.

We put the stuffed tubes in a heat-resistant dish tightly to each other.

Cooking the sauce. Instead of long digestion-evaporation, we simply grind our tomatoes in a blender, generously seasoning them with plenty of Provencal herbs, salt and pepper. If you don't have a set of Provencal herbs, you can use origano, marjoram and basil separately.

Add cream and scroll a couple more times. We taste it. The sauce should be slightly salty, but do not oversalt, be guided by your tomatoes.

Pour the sauce over the cannelloni, level and sprinkle with grated cheese on top. If this is a Gouda, like mine, then it will give the dish a wonderful creamy taste and, of course, an appetizing crust on top.
We send to the oven, preheated to 180 ° for 25-30 minutes (it depends on what is written on the packaging with your cannelloni)

We take it out at the appointed time, lick our lips ...

We gather the whole family at the table, cut off a portion of cannelloni for each and accept well-deserved compliments from enthusiastic households and guests.

We had a typical Italian Sunday lunch today. After all, toannelloni- a traditional dish that can most often be found on the table of the inhabitants of the Apennine Peninsula on weekends.
According to legend, the first Cannelloni appeared in 1907 in a seaside town Sorrento.Invented by their restaurant chef " La Favorita " Salvatore Coletta. His glorious work was continued by Nicola Federico, a native of Naples. They say that on Sundays in his restaurant, up to 100 kg of filled pasta was prepared and eaten!

Day 2.
FILLING.
In a frying pan in olive oil, brown finely chopped onions for a couple of minutes. Then put our spinach in the pan, stir, cook for another 2 minutes and remove from heat.
Add ricotta, yolk, grated Parmesan, as well as salt, pepper and nutmeg (all to your taste). Mix well. The filling is ready.

WHAT WE DO NEXT:
Over the night, the sauce thickened and became like semolina. Therefore, it needs to be worked with a blender to return the creamy consistency.
We fill the cannelloni with the filling (I buy those intended immediately for baking; if it says on your packaging that you need to boil them first, go for it)).
On the bottom of the 4-sided shape (I have 20x30), in which we will bake, put a few spoons of sauce (about 0.5 cm of "depth"). Above is a row of tubes filled with filling. Top is again a generous layer of sauce. Then - another row of cannelloni. And again cover them with a thick layer of "bechamel" and sprinkle with half of the remaining parmesan.
We put in an oven preheated to 190-200C for 35 minutes on a regular mode.
Then we take it out, sprinkle with Parmesan again, return it to the oven and turn on the "grill" function. In 5 minutes we will have a ruddy crispy crust of amazing beauty and appetizing!

All that remains is to arrange the cannelloni on the plates, pour the good red wine into the glasses and shout "A tavola!" - "To the table!"
BUON APPETITO my friends)) Because it's delicious!

Step 1: prepare the spinach and garlic.

So, if you want to pamper your family with a delicious breakfast, lunch or dinner, then let's get started! First, lay out all the necessary ingredients on the countertop, peel the garlic cloves from the husk, crush them with the flat side of a knife, or cut them lengthwise into two halves and move on.

Step 2: simmer the spinach.

Put a frying pan on medium heat and pour a little vegetable oil into it. After a few minutes, dip the garlic into it, fry the vegetable for one or two minutes, so that it has time to dissolve its aroma, and remove.

Now we send frozen spinach into hot fragrant fat and simmer it, stirring constantly with a wooden kitchen spatula, for about 5-7 minutes or until the moisture has completely evaporated. Then season the herbs to taste with salt and black pepper. Thoroughly loosen everything until smooth and remove from the stove. Move the pan closer to the ajar window and cool its contents to room temperature.

Step 3: prepare the filling.

In the meantime, we put a saucepan with purified water on medium heat, let it boil. When the spinach has cooled, put it in a deep bowl. We also add all the Ricotta cheese there, mix these products with a tablespoon until smooth, taste them, if necessary, add more spices and then chat up again. Tighten the bowl with the ready-made filling with plastic cling film, put in the refrigerator until use and return to the water that had time to boil.

Step 4: prepare the pasta.

Add salt to the bubbling liquid to taste and carefully lower the Cannelloni paste. After re-boiling, cook the flour products for 2-3 minutes, stirring gently with a wooden kitchen spoon, so that they do not stick together and do not stick to the bottom of the hot dish. Then, using a slotted spoon, transfer the semi-finished pasta to a bowl of ice water and leave it there for 3-4 minutesto cool down. After that, dry the long tubes slightly, spread them on a kitchen towel, previously spread on the countertop, and proceed to the next step.

Step 5: prepare the béchamel sauce.

Now we put a small non-stick saucepan or stewpan on medium heat and melt a little butter in it, thirty grams is enough. When the fat has melted, but not very hot, pour a tablespoon of sifted wheat flour into it.

Thoroughly loosen them to a homogeneous consistency without lumps and make sure that the mixture does not overheat, it should be warm, if it is very hot, it is better to remove it from the stove for a couple of seconds, let it cool slightly and put it back again.

Then pour all pasteurized whole milk into the butter-flour sausage in a thin stream.

Next, we send the cream to the saucepan, while during this process, carefully shake the ingredients with a whisk or spatula so that the preparation for the sauce does not get lost in lumps.

After that, reduce the heat to the smallest level and cook everything until thickened, stirring constantly, otherwise it will burn! As soon as the sauce thickens and acquires the structure of sour cream of 10-15% fat, season it with nutmeg, salt, loosen it again until smooth and remove from the stove. We put a piece of butter on the surface of the snow-white mass so that a film does not form, and cover the saucepan with a lid.

Step 6: stuff the pasta.

Then we turn on and heat up the oven up to 180 degrees Celsius... Then we take the filling out of the refrigerator and, using a teaspoon, fill all the Cannelloni tubes with the aromatic cheese-spinach mixture.

Step 7: prepare the pasta for baking.

Then we send half of the "Béchamel" to the bottom of a non-stick or heat-resistant baking dish, put the stuffed pasta on top of it and fill them with the rest of the sauce.

Using a fine or medium grater, crush the half-finished dish with hard cheese and, if desired, sprinkle with an additional portion of spices.

Step 8: bake the ricotta and spinach cannelloni.

We put the cannelloni with ricotta and spinach in an oven preheated to the required temperature on the middle rack and bake for 25-30 minutes, for which the pasta will reach full readiness and will be covered with a golden brown crust.

After that, we pull the kitchen potholders on our hands, rearrange the resulting yummy on the cutting board, previously placed on the countertop, and let it cool slightly. Then, with the help of two wide kitchen spatulas, lay out the pasta in portions on plates and taste ahead!

Step 9: Serve the ricotta and spinach cannelloni.

Cannelloni with ricotta and spinach are served hot as a main course. This dish does not need any additions, except that you can serve it along with another portion of cream, sour cream or a fresh vegetable salad. Enjoy a delicious and easy to prepare Italian culinary masterpiece!
Bon Appetit!

If desired, you can add a little hard cheese to the filling;

It is better to fill the paste with the filling using a special confectionery syringe with a wide nozzle or a regular bag with a corner cut off at the welded joint;

An alternative to Parmesan or Grano Padano cheeses is any other hard and well-melting cheese, and to black pepper - allspice, it is less spicy, but more aromatic;

You can use fresh spinach, but in this case you need to double the weight. Also, such leaves require more thorough preparation, first you need to remove large stems from them, pour boiling water over the greens, cool in a bowl of ice water, put in a colander, dry well and then simmer in oil in a pan.