Vegan Manicotti. Manicotti means “little sleeves” and these sleeves are stuffed with homemade vegan ricotta mixture, bathed in sauce and baked.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and tell me what your favorite pasta is, if you say angel hair - I swear to god.

Vegan Manicotti. OH!

VEGAN MANICOTTI

prep time: 25 minutes
cook time: 120 minutes

It’s kinda like Italian enchiladas!

This recipe requires you to make a sauce, cook some pasta, make a cheese mixture, stuff the pasta with said mixture, cook with sauce and garnish with fresh herbs…and then eat.

First you’re going to make your sauce…starting with your meat substitute.

What you’ll need:

meat substitute
salt
pepper
fennel seeds
red pepper flakes
olive oil

Toss some olive oil into a large pot. Bring the heat up to medium high and add your meat stuff. Stir it up. Add salt, pepper, a little more than a tablespoon of fennel seeds and some red pepper flakes.

Once your meat sub is appropriately cooked and browned, remove it from the pot and set aside. This will get reintroduced into the mix later but for now we will start building the sauce in the fat rendered off in the pot. This recipe makes a pretty large amount of sauce that you can freeze for later or drink with a straw.

What you’ll need:

onions (four)
garlic (at least a whole bulb)
tomato paste
vegetable broth
red wine (for deglaze, NA sub with cooking vinegar)
canned tomatoes (three cans or 84 oz)
sugar
basil
bay leaves
salt
pepper
red pepper flakes

Dice up your onions. All of them. Get your garlic peeled. In the large pot you cooked your meaty stuff in, add a big ol’ slug of olive oil. If there was too much greasy stuff left in the pan, just remove like half of it — that’s the good stuff.

Add all of your onions in and give them a quick stir. Let them sweat for a minute on a medium-low flame and then mince a whole bunch of garlic in there. As much as you want.

Those little spots in there are from the rendered fat leftover. Gorgeous.

Once your kitchen smells nice, add a tablespoon-and-a-half of tomato paste and stir that all up. Add a pinch of salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.

Toss a splash of red wine in there to deglaze your pot and scrape the bottom of the pot as thoroughly as you can! Now throw half a cup of vegetable broth in there and bring the heat up. Reduce the broth by half and continue to stir semi-frequently.

Next you’re going to add your tomatoes. You can add them one can at a time and break up the tomatoes and then add the next can and repeat…or you can add all three cans like I did and break them up like that. Whichever you prefer but the first one is easier.

Using a wooden spoon, stir up your sauce and break the tomatoes as you go.

And you should have something like this.

Add a 1/3 cup of sugar to your sauce. Please do not tag your grandma here. Give that a stir and raise your temp to a gentle boil. Once the sauce starts kicking, throw a bunch of basil in there along with some bay leaves. Grab one of your tomato tins and fill it with water. Add that to your sauce.

Give that a stir to combine your green stuff with the red stuff. Throw a lid on your pot and drop it down to a simmer. Let the sauce do its thing for an hour. At least.

While your sauce is brewing, you’re going to cook your manicotti and make your cheese filling for the manicotti.

What you’ll need (for the pasta):

dried manicotti
water
salt

Boil some water in a wide pan so the pasta doesn’t stick to one another. Cook them to al dente.

Here’s a picture. Save a little bit of this pasta water too.

Once your pasta is cooked, carefully remove them and set on a wired baking sheet to rest and cool down some, for soon these will be pumped full of vegan cheese mixture. That being said,

What you’ll need:

vegan ricotta (two containers)
vegan mozz
vegan parm
just egg
lemon
salt
pepper
nutmeg
basil

In a bowl, add two containers of vegan ricotta. Then add 4oz of mozz into the mix.

Grate a whole bunch of vegan parm into the mixture and begin to fold the mixture unto itself. It’s going to be a little stiff. Squeeze half a lemon into the mixture and throw a splash of pasta water in there. Add a glug of just egg and continue to fold it. Fold the cheese!

Grate some nutmeg into the mix, add salt and pepper to taste. Julienne a whole bunch of basil and throw some of it into the mix. Not all of it, some of it.

Now that you have a cheese mixture. Set it aside for now. At room temp.

Assuming an hour (or more) has passed, take the lid off of your sauce. It may be kinda liquidy still and that’s perfectly fine. Give the sauce a stir and bring the heat back up to a gentle boil. Fish out the bay leaves and any obnoxious sprigs of bail. You can absolutely leave some of them in there.

Add all of your meat substitute from earlier and give the sauce another healthy stir. Let it cook out and reduce some if it’s still super runny. It will thicken it up, trust the process.

Now you have all the components to make a vegan manicotti. Here’s where you will bring it all together. Preheat your oven to 350°.

Add your cheese mixture into a piping bag…or a ziplock bag and then cut the corner off so you may pipe it up.

Carefully pipe the mixture into each of your cooled down manicotti little sleeve things.

Now get out a casserole dish and a ladle. Ladle a little bit of sauce into the bottom of your casserole dish. This will prevent your pasta from sticking as it cooks.

Carefully add your manicotti to the dish and line them up all nicely and such.

It’s okay to be nervous, I’m nervous too.

Ladle up a bunch of sauce and lay it down the middle of your manicotti as if they were enchiladas. You can be a generous here, the sauce will cook out.

Add more than this. Also I added an extra manicotti on the right hand side there as you can see.

Assuming your oven is up to temp, pop the casserole dish in the oven uncovered for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take it out carefully and add another ladle of sauce. Right on top of the first layer. Don’t be shy.

Toss it back in the oven for 15 more minutes.

Pop it out.

Grate a whole bunch of parm on there and toss a fistful of julienned basil from earlier.

Let it rest for a little bit before you jump in, I know it’s tough.

Now you have a beautiful manicotti. You can use the leftover sauce for other stuff, freeze it or give it to a friend.

Or just eat it all yourself, that’s fine too.