This is the pan you carry to the table yourself, because handing it to somebody else would be giving away the best part. Shells packed with herbed ricotta, marinara bubbling up around the edges, mozzarella browned in spots on top. Nobody asks what else is for dinner.
It looks like more work than it is. The shells boil for eight minutes, the filling is one bowl and a spoon, and the oven does the other forty. The only genuine skill involved is stopping the pasta two minutes early so the shells are still firm enough to fill.
The seasoning goes into the ricotta rather than over the top. A tablespoon of The Godfather stirred through whole-milk ricotta, with an egg to set it, means every shell is seasoned from the inside out instead of carrying a dusting of dried herbs on its shoulders. A teaspoon more goes into the sauce so the two halves taste related.
Spinach and chard are coming in across the Carolinas now that the nights have turned cold, and a cup of either folded into the filling is the best thing you can do to this pan. Build it Saturday, bake it Sunday. It is better on the second day anyway.
Baked Stuffed Shells with The Godfather
Jumbo shells stuffed with herbed ricotta, baked under marinara and mozzarella. One pan, feeds six, and it can be built a day ahead.
Ingredients
For the shells
- 24 jumbo pasta shells (one 12 oz box, plus a few extra for breakage)
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
For the ricotta filling
- 1 lb whole-milk ricotta (about 2 cups)
- 2 cups shredded low-moisture mozzarella, divided
- ¾ cup grated Parmesan, divided
- 1 large egg
- 1 Tbsp The Godfather organic Italian seasoning
- ¼ tsp kosher salt, or to taste
For the sauce
- 1 jar (24 oz) marinara sauce
- ½ cup water
- 1 tsp The Godfather organic Italian seasoning
To finish
- A handful of fresh basil or flat-leaf parsley, torn
- Crushed red pepper flakes, for the table
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 375°F and bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Pull a 9x13 baking dish out now so it is ready when the shells are.
- Cook the shells two minutes shy of the package’s al dente time — usually about 8 minutes. They should bend without tearing and still feel firm in the middle. They finish cooking in the oven, and a shell boiled all the way soft will tear the moment you try to fill it.
- Drain the shells gently, toss them with the olive oil so they do not glue themselves together, and spread them out in a single layer on a sheet pan to cool while you mix the filling. Set aside any that split — that is what the extras are for.
- Make the filling: in a medium bowl, stir together the ricotta, 1 cup of the mozzarella, ½ cup of the Parmesan, the egg, the kosher salt and the full tablespoon of The Godfather. Mix until it is uniform and no streaks of egg are left. Mixing the herbs through the ricotta rather than shaking them over the top is the whole point — they bloom in the fat of the cheese and season the inside of every shell.
- Stir the ½ cup of water and the remaining 1 teaspoon of The Godfather into the jar of marinara. The water looks like it is thinning good sauce for no reason. It is not — under foil it turns the pan into a steam bath, and that is what keeps the exposed pasta edges from baking into leather.
- Spread about 1½ cups of the thinned sauce across the bottom of the baking dish in an even layer. Every shell needs to sit in sauce, not on bare ceramic.
- Fill each shell with about 2 tablespoons of the ricotta mixture and nestle it open-side-up in the sauce, packed snugly in rows. A small spoon works. A zip-top bag with the corner snipped off works faster and is a great deal less fiddly if you are filling two dozen.
- Spoon the rest of the sauce over the shells, paying attention to any pasta edge still showing — if it is not coated, it will dry out. Cover the dish tightly with foil and bake 25 minutes.
- Take off the foil, scatter the remaining 1 cup of mozzarella and ¼ cup of Parmesan over the top, and return the dish to the oven uncovered for 12 to 15 minutes, until the cheese has melted with brown spots and the sauce is bubbling around the edges.
- Let the pan rest 10 minutes before you serve it. This is not a suggestion — the egg in the filling needs that time to set, and a rested shell lifts out whole instead of slumping onto the spoon. Tear the basil over the top and put the red pepper flakes on the table.
Two minutes shy, every time
The single most common way stuffed shells go wrong is boiling the pasta to package doneness. A shell has roughly twenty-five minutes of covered oven time still coming, and it keeps cooking the whole way. Pull them early, while they are pliable but still firm, and you get a shell that holds its shape under a spoonful of ricotta and arrives at the table with a bit of bite. Boil them soft and they tear while you are filling them.
The egg is what makes a shell lift out whole
One egg in a pound of ricotta looks like a rounding error, and it is the difference between clean, sliceable shells and a pan of cheese soup. As the filling heats, the egg sets and holds the ricotta together. Skip it and everything you spooned in runs out into the sauce the moment the pan comes out of the oven. The ten-minute rest at the end is the second half of the same trick.
Thin the marinara, then cover the pan
A half cup of water stirred into the jar seems backwards. It is the fix for the only other thing that goes wrong with this dish. Pasta that pokes out above the sauce dries into something you could resole a boot with. Thinning the sauce and sealing the dish under foil turns the first twenty-five minutes into a steam bath, so every exposed edge hydrates instead. The foil comes off for the last fifteen so the cheese can brown.
Season the ricotta, not the top
The Godfather goes into the cheese, not over it. Dried herbs scattered on a finished bake sit on the surface and taste dusty. Stirred into whole-milk ricotta twenty minutes before it meets the oven, the basil, oregano, rosemary and marjoram soften in the fat and carry all the way through the filling. The extra teaspoon in the sauce means the pasta and the ricotta taste like they came from the same kitchen.
What is good right now
Garlic and yellow onions are out of the fall harvest and will keep all winter, so a jar of good marinara is easy to improve: soften a chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil and stir the sauce into that. Spinach and chard are coming in across the Carolinas now that the nights have turned, and a cup of either, cooked down and squeezed properly dry, folded into the ricotta is the best thing you can do to this pan. Collards are sweetening after the first cool nights and make a good plate alongside. Late mushrooms are at their best — sliced, browned hard and stirred into the sauce. The ricotta, mozzarella and the box of shells come from the store, and that is honest; this is a dish built on good cheese and a pan of herbs.
Build it Saturday, bake it Sunday
Assemble the whole pan through the foil stage, cover it and refrigerate up to 24 hours, then add ten minutes to the covered bake and go straight from cold. It is arguably better on day two — the filling firms up and the herbs have had the night to get into the cheese. Feeding more than six: two 9x13 pans fit on one oven rack, and stuffed shells are the rare bake that does not suffer for being doubled. Leftovers keep four days covered in the refrigerator and reheat best at 350°F with a splash of water and the foil back on. An unbaked pan freezes for three months; thaw it overnight before it goes in.
One seasoning doing the whole job
The Godfather is our USDA Certified Organic Italian seasoning — organic basil, oregano, garlic, rosemary, marjoram, thyme and parsley with a hint of sea salt. Small batch, no MSG, no fillers, no anti-caking agents, kosher, and family-run from the start. The seasoning itself is gluten free; the jumbo shells are wheat pasta, so the finished dish is not. It comes in a 4 oz resealable pouch and a 1.4 oz glass jar, and we would point you at the pouch — more of it, it reseals, and you can break up anything that settles right in the bag. A tablespoon and a teaspoon per pan means one pouch is a lot of Sundays. Free shipping on orders over $25.
More for the same table
The same blend, a faster night: The Godfather One-Pan Chicken Parmesan Pasta gets dinner done in one skillet. Eggplant Parmesan Bites and Godfather Bread Dip are what to put out while the shells are in the oven, and Caprese Salad or a few leaves dressed with The Godfather Italian Salad Dressing is the cold, sharp thing this pan wants beside it.