Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Blow Your Dinner Guests Away With Homemade Tortellini

By

how to make tortellini
Image used with permission by copyright holder
A man who knows how to cook is a glorious thing. Fellas, if you want to make yourself more attractive to potential romantic partners, you would do well to build a modest repertoire of delicious dishes — a culinary oeuvre that shows you know how to feed yourself and others. Whether you have a little cooking experience or none at all, you might dive into the world of cooking by learning how to make tortellini from scratch. Why the hell not?

For those who don’t know what tortellini is, it’s a type of ring-shaped stuffed pasta. It’s kind of like ravioli in that sense, but with a bit more height to it. The important thing is it’s delicious and fancy. You’ll find the phrase “Why don’t you come over? I’ll make some homemade tortellini” to be a powerful aphrodisiac. This particular recipe for pork and crab tortellini comes to us from Kyo Koo, Executive Chef of Bluehour. Bluehour is an upscale New American restaurant in Portland, OR, and Chef Kyo is well-versed in culinary traditions from around the world. You’re in good hands.

Tortellini Time Lapse from Bluehour Restaurant

Pork and Crab Tortellini

Tortellini dough:

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

  1. Combine egg and water in one mixing bowl. Whisk together lightly with fork.
  2. Sieve together flour and salt in separate bowl. In two batches, add egg and water mixture to flour until combined. Knead by hand for 5 minutes until well combined and dough is smooth. Rest for 1 hour.
  3. Roll dough in two batches through pasta machine starting from “6” setting going gradually down to the “1” setting. Note: You can also use a rolling pin, though you’ll need to get the dough really flat. Pasta machines are easy to come by and affordable. This one is available on Amazon for $30.
  4. Cut the dough into roughly 3” x 3” squares

Related: The Manual’s Guide to Cooking

Pork and crab tortellini filling:

Ingredients:

  • 6 oz ground pork shoulder
  • 4 oz Dungeness crab meat, picked and dried
  • 1 whole egg
  • 2 tablespoons finely minced scallions
  • 1 tablespoon finely minced chives
  • 1 tablespoon finely grated ginger
  • 1 tablespoon finely minced shallots
  • 1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
  • 2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce
  • 2 teaspoons potato starch

Directions:

  1. To make filling, combine pork shoulder, crab meat, and egg, mix together gently.
  2. Add remaining ingredients and make sure filling is mixed evenly.
  3. Place a small amount of filling onto each dough square (it might take a few practice rounds to get the right amount).
  4. Gently fold the tortellini dough and filling, then fold the two sides back onto each other.
  5. Boil in salted water for 3-5 minutes, or to desired doneness.
Recommended Videos

Now that you know how to make tortellini, you have incredible power at your fingertips. Of course, you don’t have to put pork and crab filling into your tortellini — you can put just about whatever you want in there. We urge you to have fun and experiment as you embrace the magic of homemade tortellini.

Related

Visit Bluehour’s website to see their menu and learn more about Chef Kyo Koo.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
TJ Carter
TJ Carter
Former Digital Trends Contributor
TJ Carter wears many hats, both figuratively and literally. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 2011 with a degree…
How to Turn Your Backyard Into a Bocce Bar
bocce ball backyard couple

Although we’re still fully in the throes of pandemic-required social distancing, it’s likely that, with a lot of caution and discretion, we’ll be able to start welcoming a friend or two back to our homes for a couple of drinks, a snack, and a much-needed catch-up in the near future. And if you instead opt to continue quarantining with your families, significant others, and/or roommates, then maybe it’s worth thinking about finding ways to maximize the beautiful spring and summer weather, even if you’re restricted to your own backyard.

Bocce ball, a long-time favorite among retirees, has experienced a recent resurgence, with bars in major metropolises like NYC, Chicago, and Los Angeles setting up bocce courts in their backyards and courtyards for patrons to enjoy. Good thing, you can build your own bocce set-up at home as long as you have a reasonably flat lawn and a bit of determination. With a finished court and only a few carefully chosen snacks and refreshing cocktails, you’ll have the makings of a full-fledged backyard bocce party, even if the guest list just includes the folks living under your roof.
What Is Bocce Ball?
First brought to the United States during the Italian immigration rush at the turn of the 20th century, bocce ball can be played with as few as two players. The game takes place on a bocce court, or a bordered area filled in with sand or soil.

Read more
How to Make Your Own Homemade Peanut Butter
homemade peanut butter

Peanut butter is a healthy, delicious staple in the best of times, but now that people are focusing more on shelf-stable items that are also good for you (or bad for you, we’re not here to judge, and we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t stocked up on cheeseballs and Totino’s Pizza Rolls), the classic sandwich spread has taken on a whole new level of importance. If you are looking to try your hand at maybe making your own with all those new cooking skills you’ve been mastering (move aside, Fieri, there’s a new mayor of Flavortown), the thing you might not know is you only need a few ingredients and a blender and boom, you’ve got yourself a batch of creamy peanut butter (or chunky -- again, not judging).

In order to help in your quest to become the next great quarantine chef, we reached out to a pro to get her recipe for how to make peanut butter at home. This recipe comes to us from chef Sara Bradley of the Freight House in Paducah, Kentucky. Bradley uses an in-house peanut butter (recipe for that here) as a basis for a decadent and delicious pie topping. While you can do that as well, you can also make the peanut butter and use it for, well, whatever else you would use peanut butter for. (We’re fans of a classic peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, but hell, go crazy – it’s quarantine, there are no more rules).
Freight House Peanut Butter
Ingredients:

Read more
3 Fancy Casserole Recipes to Up Your Cooking Game
Nelly’s Pastitsio

As cooking from home has become a necessity, we’re constantly looking for ways to make our time in the kitchen more fun and delicious. And although we love spending hours cooking up something super gourmet, it’s not always how we can — or want — to occupy our time. Enter the casserole, a one-dish wonder that you likely ate when you were young, served by moms, grandmas, and aunts everywhere. While your mind may wander to throwbacks like tuna noodle casserole (which we love, btw), really anything that comes together in a baking dish can be considered a casserole. So we chatted with some of our favorite chefs and cookbook authors to snag a few fancy casserole recipes that will definitely up your cooking game when you’re looking for a little inspiration.
Nelly’s Pastitsio

“Pastitsio is a very popular baked pasta dish that is said to have origins in Venice, Italy,” Anna Francese Gass, author of Heirloom Kitchen, says. “After tasting it, I immediately thought that this dish tastes as if lasagna Bolognese and fettuccini Alfredo had a delicious love child.” In her cookbook Heirloom Kitchen, Gass features recipes from 40 immigrant women who brought their cooking to the United States. Nelly’s Pastitsio is a perfect dish if you’re looking for the ultimate comfort meal.

Read more