Most People Are Making Stuffed Shells Wrong! Try These Old Italian Tricks

📖 My cookbook: 100 Italian-American recipes and every trick from the channel → https://enzomarchetti.com The dish comes out of the oven looking perfect, and then the first spoon goes in and a pale pink puddle runs into the hole. The shells slump, the filling slides out, and by the second plate the bottom of the dish is a shallow pink lake. It was never your fault. The recipe on the back of the box leaves out the one step that matters most. I am Enzo Marchetti. Thirty years at the stoves of Italian restaurants in New York and New Jersey, and more stuffed shells than I could ever count, packed forty to a foil tray for christenings, graduations and Sunday parties. Those trays crossed town on the back seat of a car and still came out standing up straight. In this video I count down ten tricks, and every one starts with exactly what to do. You will learn: Which ricotta to buy, and why part skim bakes up chalky How to boil jumbo shells so they never split down the side The one move with the shells that keeps water out of the filling Why the filling gets tasted before the egg goes in, never after The mozzarella that belongs inside the shell, and the one that turns into a puddle The plastic bag that does a pastry chef's job Why the sauce goes under the shells first The habit with the sauce that turns every edge into a hard, chewy rim Foil or no foil, and for how long Why the dish rests before anyone touches it And at number one, the old Italian trick that happens the night before. It is the whole reason the sauce turns pink, and Italian cooks have one word for it. Plus the argument at every Sunday table: spinach in the filling, or no spinach? One box of shells, one tub of ricotta, one baking dish. Everything here is home cooking. Tell me where you are cooking from tonight, and settle it for me: spinach, or no spinach? #stuffedshells #italiancooking #italianamerican #ricotta #italianfood