Mince Filled Canneloni I Made It

Mince Filled Canneloni

pointsevenout 12 years ago
Recipe by UniChef: Mince Filled Canneloni
Approached this dish with trepidation. Don't know if it is supposed to be a joke recipe or not. What attracted my eye is not par-boiling the canneloni, which makes stuffing them a way easier task.
I used Rigatoni With Bolognese Sauce for the bolognese sauce.
Asked the author of the canneloni recipe a couple of questions about the dish, which were never answered.
Being a brand new post, I thought I would get a reply.
Recipe doesn't spec out how much bolognese sauce to use. I wound up using the full amount of sauce from the bolognese recipe.
All the rest of any stuffed pasta recipes I have made in the past have always par-boiled the pasta and then baked for at least a half an hour. This recipe wants 25 minutes to go from dried canneloni tubes to fully baked. I can't see that.
In my opinion, as humble as it may be, there is not enough liquid between this dish and the bolognese dish (which was simmered for 4 hours to remove the water) to fully bake the canneloni. Although there is certainly enough oil, between the bolognese sauce and cheese, oil does not adsorb to cook pasta (see pic).
I wanted the canneloni tubes to be fully cooked and not some hard pasta on the bottom of an oily meat sauce, so I added three cups of a store bought marinara sauce to the bolognese sauce after I had stuffed the canneloni tubes and poured that over the stuffed tubes.
Used a 9x13 casserole dish.
The 1 1/2 pound ground beef in this dish, added to the already heavily laden beef in the bolognese sauce seems to be unwarranted. I think just using the bolognese sauce would give the dish plenty of beef.
I managed to put 14 instead of 12 canneloni tubes (my stores packaging) in the dish. Couldn't see having 2 extra dry tubes floating around until I found a use for them.
A pound and a half cheese topping. WOW! Not sure the dish really needs that much cheese. But I went ahead and used it anyhow. A combination of extra sharp cheddar, Mozzarella, Provolone, and smoked Gouda.
The casserole dish was full to the brim. Used a baking sheet for a drip pan.
Broke up some wooden barbeque skewers to act as tent posts and covered the dish with foil so the cheese wouldn't burn. Baked for an hour, uncovered, and baked 10 minutes more.
If anyone wishes to make this recipe exactly as printed, please let me know how it turns out.
Lastly, I don't care for raw onion. So I sauteed the onion before cooking the ground beef in the same pan.
The flavor was OK. And the pasta tubes did not have the raw waxy taste of undercooked pasta but were still a little on the heavy side.
I have made lasagne before using dry lasagne shingles, so I know pasta can be baked from dry to done successfully but there is always a liquid component to get the job done. This recipe, I fear, does not have enough unless it is added in some fashion as I have done.
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pleclare 12 years ago said:

Looks yummy!

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