Every family has their food traditions, and I’m not talking about the standard ones like turkey on Thanksgiving or hot dogs on the Fourth of July. I’m talking about the esoteric dishes—the chili your family has to eat on Halloween before trick or treating, or the special chocolate cake you make every year for a wedding anniversary. Sometimes these traditions are handed down to us from our parents, and other times we create them ourselves.
For Holley Francis of Holley in the Kitchen, one of those dishes is manicotti, or “Jumbo Pasta” as she calls it. The classic Italian American recipe was apparently her grandmother’s favorite dish, and she had it every year on her birthday. “Manicotti has been in my family as long as I can remember,” Francis says, emphasizing that this dish is very special to her, too. With cheesy, stuffed shells and a hearty marinara sauce, this is just the kind of comforting meal worth returning to every year.
The Smartest Shortcut for Nana’s Manicotti
Manicotti is both a pasta shape and a dish. The actual pasta—which a traditional recipe uses—has a long, tubular shape reminiscent of cannoli. This shape can be difficult to stuff with the ricotta and spinach mixture. But in Holley’s recipe, she ditches the fussy shape and opts for large shells, which are much easier to work with.
How To Make Nana’s Manicotti
You can find the full recipe on Holley in the Kitchen, but here’s the general idea:
Cook your jumbo pasta 2-3 minutes less than the package instructions, rinse, then set aside. Sauté some chopped onion and garlic, add ground beef and cook until browned, then stir in the marinara sauce until it’s hot and bubbly, and set it aside. Mix together some ricotta, spinach, egg, and mozzarella, then stuff the mixture into the pasta shells. Spread half of the meat sauce into a baking dish, then add the stuffed shells, followed by the remaining sauce and additional cheese. Bake for about 40 minutes and serve.
