Stuffed Pasta Shells with Bolognese and Ricotta

 I wanted to make a dish with the comforting combo of meat + pasta. I tried one-skillet Greek meatballs with lemon butter orzo, and surprisingly, I was the only one to like them!

Eventually I remembered that I had bookmarked an issue of Molly Wizenberg’s newsletter (specifically, Marcella 4evr) with a recipe for stuffed pasta shells, and this was just what I needed! It’s based on Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese sauce and Craig Claiborne’s ricotta stuffing, assembled by Sam Sifton and adapted by Molly Wizenberg. Now it’s on this blog – teamwork!

The recipe is a bit involved in that I had to make a double-batch of lactose-free ricotta, then use it to make the stuffing, while also making the Bolognese meat sauce. However, you can assemble this dish in advance and just pop it in the oven before dinner, so that’s definitely a plus! I will be making this again. (I’ve also included a picture of the jumbo shells I found – they are labelled “jumbo” but somehow are much smaller than what I remembered as jumbo? Anyway, this size was fine.)


For the Bolognese meat sauce
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 Tbsp. lactose-free butter
½ cup onion, chopped
½ cup celery, chopped
½ cup carrot, chopped
¾ lb. ground beef chuck (see prefatory note)
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 cup lactose-free whole milk
whole nutmeg (or grated)
1 cup dry white wine
1 ½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juices
1 ¼ to 1 ½ lb. pasta
freshly grated parmesan cheese, for serving

Put the oil, butter, and chopped onion in the pot; turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.

Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well, and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color.

Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating — about 1/8 teaspoon — of nutmeg and stir.

Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes; stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well.

When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface.

Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, continue the cooking, adding ½ cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.


For the ricotta stuffing
2 cups (1 lb.) lactose-free ricotta cheese (see link above)
½ cup finely diced lactose-free mozzarella cheese
1 pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
¼ cup finely chopped prosciutto (I omitted it)
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 Tbsp. finely chopped parsley
¼ cup finely grated lactose-free parmesan
1 generous pinch of salt

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and use to stuff pasta.


For the stuffed pasta
1 (12-oz) box of jumbo pasta shells
lactose-free parmesan or grana padano

Preheat the oven to 350 °F.

Boil the jumbo shells according to the package instructions, but cook them a minute or so less than the recommended time. Drain them into a colander and run cold water over until the shells are cool enough to handle.

Scoop cheese stuffing into a piping bag fitted with plain piping tip that’s wide enough for the diced mozzarella to squeeze through. Pipe the cheese stuffing into the shells. As you stuff the shells, arrange them in a single layer in a 9x13-inch baking dish. Top with the Bolognese sauce, dolloping it over and between shells. (It is normal for Hazan’s Bolognese to have a dry-ish texture; it’s not a recipe that winds up “juicy” or pourable.) Sprinkle with parmesan or grana padano if you want to, though I usually do that after baking. (You could also top with some lactose-free shredded mozzarella, if you want.) Cover the dish tightly with foil.

Bake until the whole thing is heated through and the cheese stuffing is gooey – about 45 minutes to 1 hour. If you put cheese on top before baking, you might want to broil it a bit for color after you take off the foil. If you didn’t put cheese on top before baking, put it on now.

Serve hot or warm.