Homemade ravioli is fantastic stuff, as we discussed this morning. But making it is also pretty darn messy and labor-intensive. Prohibitively so. Is it worth buying a ravioli maker to make life easier on ourselves?
Making ravioli is simple enough in theory. You lay a sheet of pasta on your work surface, add scoops of filling, and seal them in with another sheet of pasta. Cut the raviolis out with a chef knife or pizza slicer and you're done.
The problem with this method is that you often end up with odd-sized raviolis that are more pasta than filling. It can be hard to get a good seal between the layers when you're just pinching with your fingers, and it's frustrating when the raviolis break open during cooking.
Ravioli makers give us some insurance and add a level of quality-control to the whole process. The little wells mean that each ravioli gets just about the same amount of filling. The maker also helps you get more raviolis from your sheets of pasta, wasting less dough and giving us a better pasta-to-filling ratio. When you roll over the top with a rolling pin, the pockets are simultaneously sealed and cut apart. You get perfectly sized ravioli every time.
These pasta makers aren't too expensive, typically running between $25 and $35. You can also buy single-ravioli stamps for less than $10. Most models do need to be hand-washed and dried. But on the plus side, their slim shape makes them easy to store between uses.
If you find yourself making a lot of ravioli to freeze or eat during the week, one of these ravioli makers would be a good purchase for streamlining your process. Here are a few popular models you might consider:
• Ravioli Mold with Roller, $26 from Williams-Sonoma
• Ravioli Maker, $34.95 from Sur la Table
• Ravioli Maker and Press, $15.50 from Amazon.com
Do you own a ravioli maker? Do you like it? And how often do you use it?
Related: The Top Ten Most Useful Kitchen Gadgets
(Image: Williams-Sonoma)
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If you have the time and space, why not? But it seems unnecessary to me and I also love store-bought raviolis.
A cookie cutter work great.Its also much easier than a knife or pizza cutter.
We've got the very maker/press listed in the third link. Definitely worth it if you're making a lot. We use it every time we make ravioli, which admittedly isn't that often.
Or just use won-ton wrappers to save the hassle in making the pasta and concentrate on the filling
I have one for my (mangle) pasta machine. For me this, and the one pictured in the article, have the ratio of filling to pasta completely wrong. I like a large (2"x2", say, or larger) parcel with just a teaspoon of filling.
I saw one of those in the thrift store. Very beautiful and obviously imported. At first I thought "wow... how could I pass this up?" and then my second thought was "eerrrmmm but I don't need a reason to eat pasta."
I do love stuffed pasta but I hate the calories :(
i bought a ravioli stamp from crate and barrel on their super awesome black friday online sale last year for only $2.50! would have never thought to put the effort into hand-making ravioli until i got that nifty little guy:
http://www.crateandbarrel.com/kitchen-and-food/prep-utensils/ravioli-stamp/s129715
I got one at a thrift store for $2 or something. Unfortunately, I still haven't used it. I love ravioli, but like melle said, I don't really need to be eating pasta all the time. Dumb calories.
I made ravioli for the first time this weekend, without a mold or maker. They of course came out with slightly different shapes but I didn't bother to trim off any extra dough. I just used a small disher to get approximately the same amount of filling and a little egg wash to seal them. I think only one or two of them opened up when I cooked them. I did throw them in the freezer for a while before I cooked them, mostly because they were finished way before dinner time. All in all, I would say I'll stick to my varied hand-shaped ravioli. I don't need another item in the kitchen that only has one use, I already have plenty of those!
I think this would be lovely to make uniform ravioli and would help the whole process be a little faster and neater. But I don't make ravioli quite often enough to justify another thing in my house. For the few times per year that I make it, (and I really don't need to be tempted to make it more!), I can suffer through doing it by hand and endure the slightly less perfect results. If someone happened to give me one, though, I'm sure I'd put it to work.
I find it much easier to make ravioli without a mold. Using a ruler helps with uniformity. The ravioli mold does look lovely hanging on my kitchen wall!
I hear ya melle! Everything on The Kitchen this week looks so yummy but I already feel like I eat too much pasta due to the high calories. The ravioli maker looks real nifty though and if I saw one at a thrift store I might pick one up... but I don't think I'd use it much so I probably wouldn't pay full price for one.
I have one (it was a whole 15 bucks I think) and love it. Making them freehand just seems so cumbersome to me and having perfect shapes and wells for not overfilling works for me. I make a big batch and freeze the rest so I can make a few meals out of it.
I've made ravioli once and used a biscuit cutter that worked just fine. The area I had trouble with was rolling out the dough...couldn't get it thin enough. I've been considering getting a pasta machine, but the cost plus the labor involved in making and rolling the pasta has me sticking with frozen ravioli and dried pastas for now!
I have one these (might be the same one in the picture) and I actually found it to be more difficult than I expected it to be. It seems simple, but, I don't know, I had a hard time getting it right. I think I might need to try it again...
All I can say is under no circumstances should you buy the kitchaide mixer attachment ravioli maker. It came with the pasta set of attachments and I received it as a gift. I ruined so much beautiful pasta and filling trying to get that piece of garbage to work. I have rarely wanted to smash a piece of equipment to bits with a hammer- that piece of junk made the short list though.
I have one and also a perogie maker. I'm having to make everything from scratch because I need to be gluten free for medical reasons. This means that for the rest of my days we will be making our own. They both work wonderfully and are worth it over and over to me. We almost cherish them. :)
I like to use wonton wrappers for really light, delicate ravioli. Also wontons, of course, but when I learned to make wontons my first thought was, "Man, these would be great stuffed with cheese and truffle oil."
Sure it makes it easier. So do those sushi molds for sushi. But you lose all your cool points. Seriously. ALL your points.
i think it's funny that anyone cares that the shapes would be different. that's what handmade pasta looks like--handmade. i've always liked doing it by hand, though someone bought me a crimper at one point [like a pizza cutter, but cuts and crimps as you roll it], but honestly i think a good old fork is just fine. and if you're rolling the pasta out thin enough, you're getting the lowest pasta-to-filling ratio of any pasta dishes.