Video:How to Make Basic Tortellini

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Transcript:How to Make Basic Tortellini

Hi. I'm Erica Wides from Chefsmartypants.com, here for About.com. Today I want to show you how to make hand made cheese filled tortellini.

Preparation for Basic Tortellini With Cheese

In this bowl I have two cups of all purpose flour. Now, I also have a little bit of salt here. This is about a teaspoon of fine seas salt and then for every cup of flour when you make pasta you use one egg. And the egg goes right into the middle, you take a fork and you beat that egg up and you keep the egg kind of in the center, like in the well.

And, at the same time I'm also going to add a little bit of Olive oil, just about a tablespoon. That's just to give the dough some kind of suppleness. I think I'm going to add a little bit of water before I start to knead. I'm going to drizzle in just a little bit. About three tablespoons of water and then keep mixing. What we're going to do is get our hands right in there. As you are doing this you want to try and incorporate all of the flour into the dough.

Kneading the Dough for Basic Tortellini

So, now what I've done is I've transferred the dough to the table and I've put some flour, and we start to knead. And the kneading process uses the heels of your hand. Folding, turning, folding, turning. And what we're doing is we're developing the gluten structure in our flour. So, we're going to let the dough rest now for about 20 minutes and we'll make the filling while the dough rests.

Filling the Basic Tortellini

This is about a cup of Ricotta. And I'm going to crack one egg into it. The egg helps to bind the filling together and hold it inside the pasta. Then, I'll add a little bit of salt, about a teaspoon of fine seas salt. A couple of really good grinds of black pepper need to go in there. And, what I'm going to do with the garlic clove is just mash it and just give it a good, and then mince it up a little bit. This is aged Permesano Reeggiano Cheese. And, I'm going to grate about two tablespoons of it in there. And then I'm just going to mix this whole thing up. So, just make sure the egg gets really incorporated. Work all the cheese into there, just like that.

So, now our dough has rested and it's time to roll it out and fill it. Now, if you have a pasta rolling machine you can use that.You can also just roll it out really fast on the table, maybe like your great grandmother did, back in Italy. So, what I've done is I've cut the dough down back into a smaller piece. Ou want to cut a piece that's about the size of a check and about a quarter inch thick. Make sure you have some flour on your table and I'm just going to start to roll this into some long sheets. And then I'm going to fold this into thirds. This kind of helps to knead the dough and it helps to give a better structure.

And now, we'll let these rest again for about 15 minutes. I'm just gling to roll these out pretty thing. I want to get them to about an eighth of an inch. And now before I cut and fill it, I am going to let it rest again.

Cutting the Tortellini

So, I'm going to take cutter. This is a fluted cutter it has a ruffely edge. But a regular round biscuit cutter is fine. You could even use a tuna can. Anything that is round that'll cut through the dough. And, I'm going to cut out some circles from my dough.

So, I'm just going right down the row. I take these circles of dough and I'm going to brush the edges of these with a little bit of water. You could also use beaten egg. Something that'll act as glue to hold these together when we close them up.

I'm going to put a little bit of our filling right there. Inside. So, now what I'll do is I'll close this up. And, I want to make sure that it's really sealed up. If you don't take the time to really seal these edges up now, these will explode when you cook them. And, That would be bad. But what we're going to do is take the corners and we're going to bring them together, just folding those in half. Remember to really pinch those edges. And then take your two corners and just bring them together.

So, we're ready to cook our tortellini. So, in here I have boiling salted water. It's important that when you cook pasta that you put enough salt in the water. And I'm just dropping them in there and very gently letting them cook. They'll only take a couple minutes to cook and you'll know that they're done because they'll float. It's been about two minutes, we're taking them out, just give them a little air dry time there. So, here's our finished cheese tortellini. You could sauce them with any kind of sauce. I like to serve them in broth or just drizzle them in Olive Oil and a little bit of cheese.

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