Pasta shells stuffed with minced meat - 5 cooking recipes

To prepare shells stuffed with minced meat at home, it’s best to start by choosing pasta. If you are going to cook for the first time, you should play it safe and take a higher quality one, although it will be more expensive. Such that you can safely bake them in the oven raw, without fear that they won’t cook. As a rule, these are pasta from Italian companies with big names that everyone knows.

In Italy there are several types of shells suitable for stuffing. They are called conchiglie, conchiglioni, conciglioni. They are very similar in shape to shells, and differ from each other only in size. They have one hole. There are also lumaconi, more like snails, hollow, like a curved tube with two holes. In Russia, both are called shells and are used in a variety of recipes.

By the way, stuffing shells with minced meat is the easiest way - it has a sticky structure, easily fills the inside of the pasta, and does not fall out during cooking. For comparison: working with vegetable filling is a little more difficult.

In some cases, it is recommended to cook the pasta al dente until half cooked. Let the water drain, keeping it in a colander for a while. And then fill with filling. When filling a baking dish with them, keep in mind that the products will increase in volume, sometimes several times.

Classic cooking option: in the oven, in Bechamel sauce or with grated cheese. In the first case, a more juicy dish is obtained. In the second - drier, but more neat, with a beautiful crust. Sometimes the shells can stick together so much that you have to cut them like a casserole. Which, in general, does not harm the dish.