{"id":24769,"date":"2018-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/origin-www.tasteofhome.com\/recipes\/homemade-manicotti\/"},"modified":"2024-09-21T13:21:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T18:21:32","slug":"homemade-manicotti","status":"publish","type":"recipe","link":"https:\/\/www.tasteofhome.com\/recipes\/homemade-manicotti\/","title":{"rendered":"Manicotti Shells"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making manicotti shells at home doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to break out the pasta machine. This version of manicotti is made using crespelle, or Italian crepes<\/a>. The process is similar to that of making sweet crepes or pancakes, as it involves cooking the thin, egg-based batter on a hot pan. After adding a ricotta and parsley filling and nestling them into a baking dish with tomato sauce, the crespelle begin to more closely resemble the casserole of store-bought manicotti you may recognize. Once baked, crespelle manicotti shells have a soft, luscious texture that’s much more delicate than the pasta version. They cradle the filling tenderly, almost like a savory blintz.<\/p>\n

Once you get this base recipe down, you can use it in place of store-bought manicotti pasta in any of our favorite manicotti recipes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What are manicotti?<\/h2>\n

In most Italian-American recipes, manicotti are a large type of extruded pasta<\/a>, similar to cannelloni. They have a ridged tube shape like a piece of large penne, and they’re almost always stuffed with a filling of meat, cheese or vegetables and baked in a casserole with a sauce of some kind. The word manicotti<\/em> comes from the Italian word manica<\/em>, which means “sleeve.”<\/p>\n

The dish manicotti, however, is different from the pasta shape manicotti and can be made using sheets of a fresh pasta or, as in this recipe, crespelle, Italian crepes or very thin, eggy pancakes.<\/p>\n

Ingredients for Manicotti Shells<\/h2>\n