06 Jan How to make Vegan Ravioli

We made vegan ravioli and the pictures are so cute I’m posting about them. This is a fun thing to do with the kids if you have a bunch of time to make dinner on a weekend. You can freeze them if you do up a double batch, too. Or it’s something to make when you are having company over for dinner and want to impress them!

This is my way.

First, make vegan ricotta. I don’t use a specific recipe, but it’s basically this:

Lemon Juice
Tofu
Garlic
Oregano
Basil
Thyme
Nutritional Yeast
Salt

1. Squeeze some water out of a block of tofu
2. Stick it in the food processor with the above ingredients and tweak until it tastes right.

If you really want a recipe, here you go.

Okay. Then the pasta.

Ideally, I guess you’d use semolina flour, but I just had regular old King Arthur whatever flour around and it was fine. Three cups of flour and a heavy dash of salt in my new KitchenAid mixer, and then drizzled in one cup of hot water.

That’s it.

I’m not kidding.

Take the dough ball and slice it in four pieces and let it rest for fifteen minutes. (I don’t know why you do this. I am not a serious pasta maker person, though my great-grandparents were.)

Roll one of the pieces out on a floured surface.

Use a cup to cut circles.

Place a spoonful of the ricotta in the middle of the circle.

Dab water around the perimeter of the circle. This part is important so your edges glue together! I learned this the hard way.

Place another circle on top and press down the edges with a fork. I flipped them over and did it on the other side too.

Boil in salted water for about 3 minutes. Do small batches and remove the ravioli when they float to the surface.

You can fry them, too.

Serve with marinara sauce. (Or “gravy” as we call it on my mom’s side of the family.) This recipe fed our family of five, plus lunches for two people the next day.

I haven’t had a ravioli in 7 years and they were once one of my favorite foods. I vividly remember my mom making them for a date at my house when I was a teenager and I was like “Mom. This is not fancy.” And she convinced me that it was. And now I can see that it is in fact quite a lot of work to make, hence: Fancy.

I’m sure you can get more complex flavors with more ingredients in the dough and stuff, and I’ve obviously had some distance from frozen cheese ravioli you can buy in the grocery store, but I was really happy with how these came out. I thought pasta making would be harder.

Most importantly:

MY KIDS ACTUALLY ATE THEM!!!

Win.

Are you doing Veganuary or Meatless Mondays? Try this recipe out. It’s really not hard to start learning new things and cycle them in. You don’t have to be all-or-nothing. If you could eat all vegan except for cheese, be vegan except for cheese. You know what I’m saying? Reduceitarianism is a thing and it really makes a difference.

Should I start sharing more recipes?

P.S. Oh, and before you think my kids are angels and I’m a domestic goddess: My kids enjoyed doing this, but only for about five minutes. It’s fun to be sure, but all said and done it’s like an hour in the kitchen, plus cleanup (which Cory did, begrudgingly). Save it for a day you feel ambitious and have a partner who will share the work of dinner with you and handle wiping flour off of everything.

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