Manicotti My Way Recipe
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*all images for illustration purposes only, they do not show the finished recipe unless stated. |
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Today we are going to be making manicotti which is stuffed pasta tubes covered in a cheese sauce. There is a lot of confusion about the difference between manicotti and canneloni as the terms are often used interchangeably for dishes like this, but as far as I can tell manicotti uses the pasta shells we are going to be using below which are stuffed, whereas canneloni uses crepe wraps which are wrapped around the filling instead.
Ingredients:
- - Manicotti pasta shells (about 4)
- - 1 medium onion (chopped)
- - 2 garlic cloves (minced)
- - 1/4 cup of olive oil
- - 3 cups of cooked ham (chopped)
- - 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
- - 6 tablespoons of butter
- - 6 tablespoons of all purpose flour
- - 3 cups of milk
- - 2 cups of swiss cheese (shredded)
What you need to do:
Grab a large skillet, put some olive oil into it and warm it up over a medium heat, then add in the chopped onion and the minced garlic and cook that for about 5 minutes just to release the juices from it, brown it a bit and make it more tender. Add the ham into the mix and cook for a minute or so just to get the juices into it, then take it off the heat and allow it to cool for 15 minutes before you add half a cup of Parmesan cheese to it and mix it all up together well.
Take the manicotti pasta shells you bought and cook them using the instructions on the box they came in (the cooking time will vary based on the product so it is important to use what they say), then drain them and allow them to cool a bit.
Now we move onto the cheesey sauce, so place all the butter into a large saucepan and set it on a medium heat to melt. Continue melting it until it start to foam and then slowly add the flour, stirring all the time. Keep stirring continuously and allow that mixture to cook for about 3 minutes until that starts to foam too, then slowly pour in the milk. Keep stirring it and it will start to thicken, when you see that happening stir in all the swiss cheese, keeping cooking for a minute or so and then take it off the heat and pour a quarter of the mixture into the skillet with the meat in and mix that all together.
Fill each of the shells with the ham mixture, making sure they have a good even amount each. Then grab a large baking dish and pour some of the cheese sauce into it to cover the base, then put all the shells side by side into that sauce, pour the rest of the cheese sauce over the top, then sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan cheese onto the top of that.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cook for about 45 minutes. For best results I would cover the dish in tin foil for 30 minutes of that to stop the pasta shells drying out, then remove it for the last 15 minutes so it isn’t too soggy.
Voila!