Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli Sauce

Name: Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli Sauce
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 2 small heads of garlic; Salt as needed; 2 tablespoons avocado or olive oil; 2 tablespoons unsalted butter; 1 1/2 cup (350 ml) heavy cream; 1/3 cup (80 ml) chicken stock; 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese; 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg; Salt and pepper to taste; 1 lb ( 500 g) spinach ricotta ravioli; 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped

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This spinach and ricotta ravioli sauce is loaded with roasted garlic, heavy cream, chicken stock and parmesan. It is elegant, yet very easy to make.

Here is a beautiful, heartwarming recipe that is sure to spruce up any pasta dish. Today we’re looking at a lovely spinach and ricotta ravioli sauce.

We’ll be taking some delicious roasted garlic, browned butter,chicken stock, and cream to make this sauce. We strongly recommend using roasted garlic and browned butter, but if you’ve only got the fresh version of each, that’s OK too. The roasting process really brings out sweet, nutty flavors in the garlic, however, and this beautifully complements the filling in your ravioli.

Roasted Garlic

Roasted garlic is one of those things that seems tricky to make at first, but is actually very straightforward. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll be adding roasted garlic to everything you can!

Roasting makes the garlic sweet and sticky, lending it a gorgeously nutty flavor. The sharp garlic tang, by comparison, becomes more subtle, making it perfect for sauces and stews. The trick with roasting garlic is low and slow. Low temperature for a long time gives the naturally occurring sugars in your garlic time to caramelize.

For this recipe, you’re better off using fresh garlic diced, minced, or very thinly sliced, than flash-frying fresh garlic. If you go for too much heat too fast, you’ll burn the garlic and make it bitter.

Making Garlic Cream Sauce

Once you’ve roasted your garlic, it’s time to set about your creamy sauce.

Browned Butter

Browning butter helps add an extra dimension of flavor to the sauce. Like roasting garlic, it’s an easy extra step to take that makes your food taste and feel just a little more luxurious. To brown your butter, all you need to do is gently fry your butter until it goes from a yellowy natural butter color to a browner clarified color. The butter will release a strong, nutty aroma to let you know it’s perfectly browned.

Once you’ve done that, your butter should have a nice, nutty flavor with just a hint of smoky goodness. Roasted garlic and browned butter together are the key components of this sauce’s flavor profile and we couldn’t love it more.

Do I Have to Brown the Butter?

Browning the butter isn’t compulsory, but we do strongly recommend that you give it a go. More than anything else, browning the butter is a low-effort extra step that really adds to your sauce. The butter will be frying in your pan anyway, so you might as well take the little extra step required to brown it.

If you really need to cut the cooking time down, however, simply melting the butter will suffice.

Ravioli Cream Sauce FAQs

So you’re ready to make your ravioli sauce, but you want to know a little more before you get started. Here’s some frequently asked questions about this recipe.

What Ravioli to Use with Garlic Sauce?

The cool thing about ravioli, like any filled pasta, is that the filling adds depth of flavor to any meal. Often, the ravioli filling is the star of the show. The good news is this garlic cream sauce complements just about any ravioli filling you can think of. The classic ravioli filling of cheese, or cheese and spinach, is a great place to start. You might also want to try mushroom, chicken, seafood, or a pumpkin-filled ravioli. The sweetness of pumpkin ravioli matches very nicely with this sauce’s flavor profile.

Can I Use Tortellini Instead of Ravioli?

Yes! Fortunately for avid fans of pasta geometry - the ancient and noble art of matching pasta to sauce - any small, filled pasta works well with this creamy sauce. You might like tortellini, with its additional grooves and sauce traps, more than ravioli with this recipe.

Can I Use Ordinary Pasta?

A non-filled pasta like spaghetti or penne is great for this recipe, too. Be conscious that you’ll need to cook about half the quantity you normally would, otherwise you’ll have far more pasta than sauce.

If you’re using an unfilled pasta, we recommend one with plenty of edges, grooves, and ridges for your sauce to stick to. Fusilli, casarecce, or farfalle are all great choices. Gnocchi, with its starchy consistency, is also a great option.

Serving Ravioli

Ravioli is a very filling dish. The quantities in this recipe will comfortably serve three people, and possibly even four depending on their appetite. Because we’re using a lot of heavy ingredients - cream, butter, and pasta - this will fill people up very nicely. If you’re using ravioli made the old-school way, with egg, it will be even more filling! Egg pasta is how they make it in Italy. It has a yellow hue, a denser texture, and more protein than typical store-bought pasta which is often made with little more than flour and water.

We strongly recommend the classic Italian garnishes. Some roughly chopped parsley on top, maybe a generous twist of black pepper, and some parmesan cheese will beautifully garnish this dinner.

Love Ravioli? Try these!!!

Easy Ravioli Sauce

Mushroom Ravioli Sauce

Homemade Chicken Ravioli

Mushroom Ravioli from scratch

Lobster Ravioli

Creamy Lobster Ravioli Sauce

If you make this recipe be sure to leave a comment or give this recipe a rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐! I will be happy to hear from you!

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