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Ravioli with spinach and ricotta cheese filling, in tomato cream sauce - meatless, Italian style pasta dish, with everything made completely from scratch! Learn how to make ravioli dough from scratch, how to shape ravioli, what filling to use and what sauce to make. Detailed instructions and step-by-step photos to show you how to make the ravioli with spinach and ricotta cheese filling at home!
I was originally planning to post a light-hearted and easy recipe about how to make a yummy plum drink, but I changed my mind and instead I took an endeavor of making fresh pasta ravioli from scratch. So I made super delicious spinach ravioli with ricotta cheese filling in a creamy tomato sauce. Here is my recipe featured on SeriousEats Weekend Cook and Tell: Fresh Pasta. Very exciting!
Even though the below recipe on how to make ravioli has many steps, making fresh pasta ravioli is actually pretty easy, especially because you have a very detailed tutorial that I created below. I have created and tested the below recipe, to make sure I have the exact proportions for the ravioli dough (pastry), so if you follow my steps precisely, you will create a wonderful ravioli dish that will impress your family and/or guests.
The most important part here is to roll your ravioli dough very thinly - that's the secret to great tasting ravioli! To roll it thinly, the dough should have just the right proportion of water to flour, which I denoted in my ingredients section below. It is important to let ravioli dough sit for an hour, covered in plastic wrap, so that the gluten does its job, and the resulting dough is nice and elastic enough for you to work with.
And, finally, I think it's great to learn how to make your own ravioli, because then you can endlessly experiment with fillings instead of just buying what grocery stores offer you. I am personally never impressed with the selection of pre-made ravioli in stores, so that's primary reason why I learned to make my own.
Below are some step-by-step photos illustrating major steps on how to make ravioli from scratch. The actual recipe is below the photos. Make sure to scroll down all the way for the complete recipe.
Ravioli Dough Ingredients
1 ¼ cups flour
1 egg
¼ cup hot water
¼ teaspoon salt
How to make ravioli dough from scratch
First, make the ravioli dough according to the recipe instructions below and let it sit for 1 hour.
- Mix flour with salt.
- Stir water with egg until well mixed.
- In a bowl, combine flour and egg-water mixture together and mix until well incorporated. Knead the ravioli dough until well-textured and firm. The dough should not be too wet or too sticky. It should only stick to itself, but not to your hands. However, it should not be too dry, either.
- Make the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap. Let the ravioli dough stand for 1 hour at room temperature before using. This allows gluten to work.
How to make spinach and ricotta cheese filling
- Heat olive oil on medium heat, add spinach and cook covered, stirring occasionally, until spinach wilted, about 15 minutes.
- Cook for 5 or 10 more minutes uncovered until all liquid evaporates.
- Chop cooked spinach finely and move to a bowl. Add Parmesan cheese and ricotta cheese, salt to taste and mix well. Add more salt if necessary.
How to make ravioli from scratch
- Divide the ravioli dough (instructions on how to make ravioli dough from scratch are above) into 2 equal halves and roll each half into a very thin sheet with a rolling pin.
- Make sure to have flour on hand and dust the working surface or rolling pan when necessary, because the dough will be sticky. It's important that the ravioli dough be rolled very thinly (paper-thin), otherwise ravioli will be too solid when cooked, because dough expands during cooking. Also it will be really hard to use the ravioli mold if the dough is not thin enough.
- Once you rolled sheets of dough, shape individual raviolis. To shape ravioli, I use a very handy device, Ravioli mould/tray, which works great! I purchased it at William-Sonoma, you can see the picture of it below:
How to shape ravioli using the mold
- Dust the working mold tray with flour
- Lay a thin layer of ravioli dough on the tray
- Press the ravioli dough in the holes of the mold
- Fill the holes of ravioli dough with the spinach ricotta cheese filling, without overfilling
- Cover with another layer of ravioli dough, which should lay flat all the way across the mould
- Using the rolling pins or your fingers, press the upper layer of ravioli dough against the lower layer, close and cut the ravioli
- Overturn the mold tray to let the ravioli fall out
Below photos illustrate these steps:
You can take the scraps of the dough and add them to your covered dough for future rolling.
When you are done shaping ravioli, bring a big pot of water to boil, add ravioli and cook for 5 minutes, then drain. Or, alternatively, freeze ravioli until you're ready to cook them.
How to make tomato cream sauce
- Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Chop tomatoes and garlic and add to the pan. Cook covered for about 10 minutes until tomatoes soften.
- Add white wine and chopped thyme. Bring to boil and cook uncovered for 5 more minutes until half of liquid evaporates. Remove from heat, let it cool for a bit.
Then transfer to blender and puree the tomato mixture. Transfer the puree back to the pan, reheat to medium heat and add heavy cream. Stir until well incorporated.
Cut each grape tomato in half and add all of them to the pan with the tomato cream sauce. Salt to taste and and more chopped thyme if needed. Cook for 5 more minutes.
To serve, add cooked ravioli to the sauce at the last minute. Allow both ravioli and the sauce achieve same temperature. When serving on plates, garnish with thyme.
More ravioli recipes
[catlist name=Ravioli numberposts=-1 excludeposts=this]
Spinach Ravioli with Ricotta Cheese Filling, in Tomato Cream Sauce
Ingredients
How to make ravioli dough from scratch:
- 1 ¼ cups flour
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup hot water
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Spinach and ricotta cheese ravioli filling:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 10 oz spinach
- ½ cup Parmesan cheese shredded
- ¾ cup ricotta cheese
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Tomato cream sauce:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tomatoes
- 2 garlic cloves
- 5 sprigs fresh thyme
- ¼ cup white wine
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 2 cups grape tomatoes yellow and red
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
Make ravioli dough from scratch:
- Mix flour with salt.
- Stir water with egg until well mixed.
- In a bowl, combine flour and egg-water mixture together and mix until well incorporated. Knead the dough until well-textured and firm. The dough should not be too wet or too sticky. It should only stick to itself, but not to your hands. However, it should not be too dry, either. Make the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough stand for 1 hour at room temperature before using. This allows gluten to work.
How to make ravioli cheese filling:
- Heat olive oil on medium heat, add spinach and cook covered, stirring occasionally, until spinach wilted, about 15 minutes.
- Cook for 5 or 10 more minutes uncovered until all liquid evaporates.
- Chop cooked spinach finely and move to a bowl. Add Parmesan cheese and ricotta cheese, salt to taste and mix well. Add more salt if necessary.
How to assemble ravioli using ravioli mold:
- After the ravioli dough has been resting at room temperature for 1 hour, divide the ravioli dough (instructions on how to make ravioli dough from scratch are above) into 2 equal halves and roll each half into a very thin sheet with a rolling pin. Make sure to have flour on hand and dust the working surface or rolling pan when necessary, because the dough will be sticky. It’s important that the ravioli dough be rolled very thinly (paper-thin), otherwise ravioli will be too solid when cooked, because dough expands during cooking. Also it will be really hard to use the ravioli mold if the dough is not thin enough.
- Once you rolled sheets of dough, shape individual raviolis. To shape ravioli, I use a very handy device, ravioli mould/tray, which works great! Step-by-step photos are above the recipe box.
- Here is how to use Ravioli mould:1) dust the working tray with flour2) lay a thin layer of pastry on the tray3) press in the holes4) fill the holes with the filling, without overfilling5) cover with another layer of ravioli dough, which should lay flat all the way across the mould6) using the rolling pins or your fingers, press, close and cut the ravioli7) overturn the tray to let the ravioli come out
- When you are done shaping ravioli, bring a big pot of water to boil, add ravioli and cook for 5 minutes, then drain. Or, alternatively, freeze ravioli until you’re ready to cook them.
How to make tomato cream sauce:
- Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Chop 2 tomatoes and garlic and add to the pan. Cook covered for about 10 minutes until tomatoes soften.
- Add white wine and chopped thyme. Bring to boil and cook uncovered for 5 more minutes until half of liquid evaporates. Remove from heat, let it cool for a bit.
- Then transfer to blender and puree the tomato mixture. Transfer the puree back to the pan, reheat to medium heat and add heavy cream. Stir until well incorporated.
- Cut each grape tomato in half and add all of them to the pan with the tomato cream sauce. Salt to taste and and more chopped thyme if needed. Cook for 5 more minutes.
- To serve, add cooked ravioli to the sauce at the last minute. Allow both ravioli and the sauce achieve same temperature. When serving on plates, garnish with thyme.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition Disclaimer:
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed. It should not be used as a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
Oh this looks to good, going to the store now to get the ingredients, does the sauce with the cream in it freeze well?
I usually do not recommend freezing the sauce as it will negatively affect the texture.
If you choose to freeze it, thaw the dish before reheating. Then, reheat on medium heat on the stovetop, stirring regularly. You might have to add a small amount of chicken broth, or half-and-half or heavy cream to thin out the sauce and make it creamier.
This was so fantastic my wife made me boil her an extra portion of ravioli so she could wipe up the sauce. I scaled this recipe to 3 cups of pasta flour and got 90 ravioli with my Marcato ravioli mold that fits sheets from my hand-crank pasta machine. So your mold must be way bigger than mine. Handmade Ravioli is a fair bit of work, so this way I eat one batch fresh and have two frozen dinners. The freeze-thaw doesn’t hurt the taste at all. Wonderful recipe.
Alan, I love-love your comment - very detailed and helpful! Thank you for taking the time to share it - I really appreciate it!! I know a lot of people might like the recipe but don't have the time to comment, but when I see glowing reviews like yours - they really make my day!
hi there wow I absolutely love.. This pasta but its been soo expensive to buy alrdy made im so greatful for ur recipe Explanation in depth thank u again. I really appreciate it.
Vixen, I am so glad you found this recipe helpful! And, thank you for taking the time to share such a nice comment! 🙂
Hi! Is there a certain type of white wine that works best for this recipe? Like a dry or sweet wine? Thanks in advance 🙂
Dry white wine works the best!
This looks delicious. What can I replace white wine with? Should I just opt it out or just add water?
Hi Sarah - you can use chicken broth or vegetable broth instead. Enjoy!
Can this be made gluten free somehow?
I've never made this with gluten free flour, unfortunately.
Thanks so much for posting this recipe Julia !! It was soooooooooooo helpful and easy to follow for our first time making ravioli. The filling was amazing and the dough was easy to make. We decided to add a DASH of garlic powder to the filling to jazz it up a little and ended up totally freestyling the sauce by adding ricotta cheese to it! Wow! Overall it was a real sumptuous bed time snack. Your recipe is so good that even though we had to take my boyfriend Jason’s dog to the hospital in the middle of the boiling process (he had to lose both his front paws) once we brought him home we gave him the rest of the ravioli as a treat and combined with the morphine he was so happy I don’t think he noticed his missing paws! Poor Marty. But great recipe that’s safe for humans and pets.
AMAZING FILLING! This is my favorite ravioli yet! Thank you!
These ravioli were easy and delicious, even without the wine in the sauce! I used more fresh ricotta than the recipe calls for, baby spinach & added a dash of nutmeg. I rolled a portion of the dough out in a rectangle and dropped spoonfuls of filling a couple of inches apart. I then folded the dough over the filling and pressed around it to remove the air. I used a pastry cutter to cut the ravioli, then a fork to make sure they were sealed. When using the last scraps of dough I needed to add a little water with my finger to seal them. They all stayed together and there was no leakage when cooking. I ended up with about 18 ravioli. This recipe is well written and easy to understand. Fresh pasta is so much better than dried. Thank you for posting this recipe, Julia!
I’ve just made your ravioli and was really pleased with the results. I was making this for 2 people and have put some in the freezer for another day. Can I cook them straight from the freezer? I’m guessing I should allow a couple of minutes longer to cook. I don’t have a ravioli mould but used a round pastry cutter (Brits will know what these are, not sure if they are called the same in US), and made mini pastie shapes. They worked brilliantly.
Thank you
My general rule is that ravioli is cooked when it floats fully. Cooked fresh OR frozen.
So from frozen I’d recommend letting it cook until it fully floats.
Take this with a grain, every recipe is different, but this has held true across many kinds of ravioli.
Scott, those are great tips, thank you!
THANK YOU, ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS
I tried raviolis using your recipe, they turned out super delicious. Thank you!
I made a few changes:
Substituted egg with apple sauce for vegetarian version
I didn't have the ravioli mould or a pasta maker, so I rolled out small amounts of dough to make one ravioli at a time. It was time consuming but worth it.
I replaced thyme with basil and also skipped the wine in the sauce.
I am so glad you tried my ravioli recipes and enjoyed them! Thank you so much for stopping by and taking the time to share your feedback - I really appreciate it!
Very similar to our Italian family ravioli recipe with the exception of Italian breadcrumbs with the spinach and ricotta/Romano mix. This helps make the mix easier to work with. We will roll small balls of filling or use a melon baller. You can make a bunch of filling balls and place them in a bowl in the refrigerator when making a large batch. If you use frozen chopped spinach in the box, squeeze all the water out before adding to the pan to cook.
Bryan, thank you so much for sharing your Italian family ravioli recipe and cooking tips. Very helpful!
Loved this combination! This ravioli also go well with marinara sauce.
So glad you tried it and enjoyed it! 🙂 Thank you for the comment!
This sauce also works well with your sauce for ravioli - the mushroom sauce you used with goat cheese ravioli.
Yes, those sauces work well with all kinds of ravioli.