I made this recipe several months ago and completely forgot about sharing it with you. Not because it was unmemorable – quite the opposite – but recipes and photos occasionally get lost in the bunch if I’m not careful. The photos on my computer are a bit out of control (or so says my husband). I’m trying to work up the courage to tell Eric that I’ve filled up yet another hard drive, but that is another story.
This stuffed shell pasta is inspired by Terry Walters, author of Clean Food and Clean Start cookbooks. There’s a recipe for basic stuffed shells in her Clean Food cookbook, so I played around with it by adding more veggies and fresh herbs. The outcome is a tasty tofu “ricotta-like” cheese that can be added to stuffed shells, spread on lasagna, or even turned into eggplant rollatini if you are so inclined. Of course, it doesn’t taste exactly like ricotta cheese (not that I even remember what it tastes like!), but it sure is a tasty dairy-free alternative.
Speaking of eggplant rollatini, here’s a photo when I made it last summer – served on a bed of julienned carrot and zucchini “pasta” with a sprinkle of almond parmesan cheese. A lovely summer meal. Edit: I’ve added the directions for prepping the eggplant in the comments section.
I haven’t been able to find any gluten-free dairy-free jumbo shells yet, but I’m sure they exist. If you know of any brands, please give them a shout-out in the comments! For those of you looking for a soy alternative, maybe give nut-cheese a try instead. I have a cheese recipe in my lasagna recipe that could probably be used for stuffed shells also.
As for the tofu, you can crumble it by hand or you can use a food processor. I’ve made it both ways and I can’t decide which I prefer. Crumbling by hand is a bit messy, but it saves cleaning the processor while using the processor is a bit quicker and results in a creamier texture. It’s really up to you how you make it.
Jumbo Stuffed Shells
Yield
6 servings
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
Adapted from: Clean Food by Terry Walters
Ingredients
For the pasta
- 3.5 cups pasta sauce
- 340 grams jumbo pasta shells (I used 30 shells or 2/3 of the box – but make extra as some break)
For the Tofu Ricotta
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 medium sweet onion, diced
- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 celery stalks, diced
- 1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves, minced
- 1/2 cup packed fresh parsley, minced
- 1 (14oz) package extra-firm or firm tofu, pressed
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 3/4-1 tsp fine grain sea salt, or to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes (optional)
Directions
- Rinse block of tofu and wrap with paper towels followed by 2-3 tea towels. Place it on a cutting board or plate and add several heavy cookbooks on top. Press tofu for about 20-25 minutes to drain out the water. Alternatively, you can use a tofu press.
- Grease a very large casserole dish. I used about 30 shells, but you’ll need to cook more than that as some shells will break during the cooking process. Cook shells in a pot of boiling water until al dente, about 8-11 minutes. Be careful not to overcook. Drain shells and set aside to cool.
- Preheat oven to 400°F. For the tofu ricotta: In a large skillet, sauté the garlic and onion in the oil for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add in the chopped celery, basil, and parsley and sauté for another 5 minutes or so. Feel free to throw in some spinach for extra greens.
- For the tofu, you can either crumble it into the skillet with your hands or you can give it a whirl in the food processor and then stir it into the skillet. If you use the processor, the texture will be very creamy like ricotta cheese and if you crumble it with your hands it will be more chunky/crumbly. It’s up to you how you want to make it. I usually opt to crumble it by hand so I don’t dirty the processor. Stir in the nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, lemon, and cayenne all to taste. Over medium heat, cook for about 8-10 minutes or until most of the water cooks off.
- Spoon about 1 cup of marinara sauce into the casserole dish and spread around. Add about 2 tbsp of tofu ricotta into each stuffed shell and place shells on top of marinara sauce. Cover shells with the remaining 2-2.5 cups marinara sauce and any leftover tofu ricotta. You can add vegan cheese on top, but I don’t bother. Cover dish with tin foil and poke several air holes. Bake at 400°F for about 20 minutes or until heated throughout. Serve with a basic green salad and garlic bread, if desired.
Nutrition Information
(click to expand)
Vida Vegan Con Giveaway Winner!
I’m excited to announce that the winner of the VVC giveaway is Traci! Congrats! Traci wrote,”I am from Portland and will be home visiting during that time! OH WHAT A TREAT that would be!”
Traci I will shoot you an email today to get things rolling. Thanks again to Grace for her generous ticket donation and to everyone for participating. I really appreciate all of your lovely comments by the way.
If you are still thinking about attending the conference (and I think you should!!), there are still tickets for sale.
Just made this tonight- DELICIOUS! I used the Slow Cooker Marinara Sauce from Budget Bytes. It was fantastic. Thanks for the great recipe!
http://www.budgetbytes.com/2011/11/slow-cooker-marinara/
Just made these and they are delicious! This was going to be my first recipe using nutritional yeast but I could not find it in any of my local stores (Safeway and Haggens).So unfortunately I just omitted it, however, it still turned out delicious. The only thing I would change is the amount of noodles I made. I boiled 35 (I added a few extra since it said that some might break) but I think I would’ve been fine with just 20-25. It’s all good though, I have some already-boiled noodles for another pasta. Thank you so much Angela!
I made this and it was absolutely delicious! The tofu “ricotta” was an awesome idea. Thank you for the recipe!
I want to make this soon for my boyfriend who is the worst eater i have ever met. He literally eats pizza breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Me, being a green-smoothie gulping health nut, i want to sneak healthy foods into his diet any way i can and i’m just wondering how much this tastes like the real thing for those of you that have tried this recipe. If i tell him that this recipe is vegan i’m sure he will be on his way to McDonalds faster than i can say “tofu ricotta”. Thanks!
These came out wonderful! I did NOT use celery though and instead added an entire bag of baby spinach. I also put a teaspoon on sugar in the ricotta mixture as I’ve seen this in other recipes. If you can’t find shells or you wanted to do gluten free you could turn these into lasagna rolls..
Angela,
I made these shells last night and they were so delicious! I also love your cookbook and have used it by far more than any other cookbook I own. Your recipes are very flavorful and your pictures are gorgeous and appetizing. I don’t care for cookbooks without pictures. I hope your future books will continue to contain plenty of photos. Thank you for sharing your wonderful talents and tastebuds on your blog! Thanks to you I now cook at home a lot more.
Not sure how you feel about brand name shout outs but Manini makes great gluten free lasagna sheets. My GF GF (gluten free girlfriend) cuts them to make ravioli so I bet you could manage a shell. I think I’ll try it!
Can I freeze the left overs?
Oh my, these are delicious and I am so glad I found the recipe and this website. My one year old son has a dairy and soy allergy (I used the basil cashew cheese) so I am having to change the way I cook in a big way. We are not vegans, but have been slowly moving along on our journey to real, non processed food. It is very challenging, cooking this way with 3 little ones underfoot, but I believe this is the best thing I can do for my family. I wish I would have known all this information when I was younger, but am glad I know it now! Thanks for your website…it’s an amazing resource. And you can bet your cookbook is on my Christmas list!
So..I’ve sort of been on a roll these past few days. This is the fourth recipe I’ve made off your site in the past 24 hours. I guess I can say that I am addicted. Every one of your recipes has been truly amazing! I went vegan around 7 months ago and I feel like you have made the journey so much more fulfilling! Thank you thank you!
By the way I just made these for dinner tonight. Incredible. I can’t believe these are vegan. Even my carnivore fiancee thought they were delicious!
Looks so delicious — but unfortunately my oven is broken at the moment.
Is there another method I could use for the last step?
THANKS for your advice.
ps. do you have any no-oven hot-dinner recipes?
These are amazing! I made these on Friday- day 6 in a row of making dinners from this website since I discovered it’s existence 9 days ago and already have dinners for this week lined up from it also. I used the food processor on the tofu-i had no idea tofu could even get that creamy. I added the spinach that was suggested, about 2 cups and I was short on basil (used the last of my plant but didn’t quite make it), so I added some fresh oregano in. Having never worked with jumbo shells before, I thought this was going to be a bit finicky with stuffing each shell, but it was so simple! Everyone was pleased-the flavors were perfect, the filling was creamy, and you would never even know it was stuffed with tofu. I did measure out 2 tbsp and I only got 24 shells out of it, not 30 but it was just for the 3 of us so we still had leftovers! Huge hit all around. I didn’t see a place to give stars to rate this, but if I did then it would hands down have 5 stars.
Hi!
I’ve made stuffed shells before and I put cauliflower inside.
I cook up the cauliflower till a little softer then tender crisp. I then mash them (you can use potato masher of food processor), add in the flavourings ( fresh herbs, ect)…stuff the shells and cook.
Yummy!
Just made this today as part of my 30 Day Oh She Glows Challenge! I liked it quite a bit, although wish I added something to the tomato sauce before hand, perhaps more garlic? (Although I am a fiend for spices haha!) My carnivore boyfriend liked it too. It makes a great, all around pasta dish and I love the idea of crumbling tofu inside, sometimes it’s nice to get a break from nut-based cheese sauces etc. But I also love the idea of the cashew cheese… will try that next time :)
This was amazing! Now in all fairness I added roasted butternut squash that I had stored from the fall to the tofu mixture and I also used sprouted grain pasta shells. Other than that I made it exactly as the recipe said and my family gobbled it up. I even posted a picture on Facebook because I’m trying to convince my family and friends that vegan food is amazing and consists of more than what they consider rabbit food. Thank you!!!
Hi Angela! I was thinking about attempting this dish for dinner tonight, and it seems that I have all the ingredients but nutritional yeast, and the grocery didn’t have it. Should I continue with the recipe with out the yeast or is that a large part of what makes it work?
I’ve gotten so many great vegan recipes from this blog, but this is one of the absolute best. My husband has deemed this his favorite vegan dish of all time! So worth making :-)
Just made these using processor. So good. I wonder if my husband will know it is tofu!
I made these for my family tonight and everyone loved them! I didn’t tell them the “cheese” was made with tofu until everyone had tasted them. My picky 8 year old son proceeded to devour 2 more shells! Everyone gave it a thumbs up! I should note that I omitted the parsley and added more basil. Also, I only put in 2 T of nutritional yeast since my husband is not a fan and he didn’t notice at all. I’m always looking for vegan recipes my omnivore family will eat. They all voted that this is a “keeper” recipe! Thanks so much!
This was so yummy!!! I changed a couple things (I don’t like celery or onions) and used kale blended with my tofu and it tasted just like something you would get at an Italian restaurant. Definitely trying more recipes this week!!!
Hi Ashlyn, I’m glad you enjoyed the recipe! I hope you like whatever you try next just as well. :)