How to Make Ravioli

A while ago I posted a recipe for Five-Cheese Ravioli. I recently made these ravioli again and feel like I have somewhat got the hang of forming the ravioli. Here's a photo tutorial!

First of all, when rolling the pasta dough (I use a pasta maker, but you can also do it by hand), don't roll it too thin. My machine has 7 settings, I start at 1 and go up to 4, sometimes 5. While rolling, keep dusting the dough with more flour.

After reaching the desired thickness, lay the sheet of pasta dough on a well-floured surface. Gently place the ravioli mold on top to see if the pasta sheet is the right size. The pasta needs to hang over the sides of the mold slightly. My machine was a little thinner in width than my ravioli mold, so I used a rolling pin to add a little more width to the pasta sheet. Once ready, lay the pasta dough on top of the ravioli mold. The mold has crimped edges, so align the dough with the mold and then gently press the dough onto the crimped edges to keep it in place. Add a small spoonful of filling to each mold, like this:

Then lay a second sheet of pasta over top. My mold came with a mini rolling pin to roll over the mold to help the crimped edges cut the pasta. You can see it starts to separate into separate raviolis:

Carefully trim the edges of the pasta and remove each ravioli from the mold. Put on a floured surface and cover with a towel until ready to use.

Here are the raviolis after boiled for a few minutes, drained, and topped with homemade tomato sauce:

An alternative method for shaping the ravioli if you don't have a mold, is to use a small biscuit cutter. Roll out a sheet of pasta, add dollops of filling carefully spaced on the dough. Lay another sheet of pasta dough on top. Use a biscuit cutter to cut out the ravioli: