Crispy Fried Cheese Ravioli with Marinara

October 5, 2021

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Last updated on October 23rd, 2021 at 02:36 pm

Fry it in oil and it will taste good. Add in a flavorful breadcrumb coating and it will taste even better. Accompany it with a sauce and you’ve got a perfect appetizer. Savor this crispy, crunchy fried cheese ravioli by ticking all three boxes.

Let me recover from the food coma I am in from eating these before I continue. Just look at the picture below for a moment and I’ll get back to you.

Okay, I think I can soldier on now.

Make this recipe for pillowy, golden-brown, cheesy perfection in a bite. It is a delicious appetizer, can be a great crowd-pleaser, and can be made in large batches for all your guests.

Dredging and Frying

Dredging can mean pulling up fish, dirt, or silt from waterways. But we will not be doing that today. Maybe some other time.

For our cooking purposes, it refers to coating with flour. And from there we will coat in egg and dunk it in a breadcrumb mixture. This helps create a solid breading that really sticks to whatever you are cooking – the ravioli in our case.

My fried shrimp burrito and gorgonzola pear salad with breaded chicken recipes also use a similar dredging process for frying the main protein.

Ravioli, flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs set up for dredging

To do this, you’ll have to set up a dredging station. And by that, I just mean setting out some shallow bowls to help take the ravioli from one step to the next until they are coated.

I typically have one plate that they start on, a shallow bowl for flour, a bowl for whisked eggs, a bowl for the breadcrumb mixture, and a plate for the coated ravioli.

Breaded cheese ravioli frying in hot oil

Then you can easily dunk the pasta from one bowl into another without a whole lot of mess.

I recommend working in sort of mini-batches by coating 4 to 5 pieces at a time in each bowl. I like to let them sit in the egg bowl for a few seconds so that it soaks a little bit more than just a short dip. If not left in longer, the flour will sometimes create a barrier and the egg will just slide off instead of coating the pasta.

Once it is fully coated, get to frying them up. But be careful of oil splatters!

Fried Cheese Ravioli Appetizer

This recipe is sped up using refrigerated ravioli and jarred marinara sauce. You could always make your own from scratch and bump this recipe to the next level. If you want to make homemade marinara, I recommend this pizza sauce recipe from Serious Eats.

But I will typically use Rao’s jarred marinara that I keep in stock in my pantry, typically from Costco. And then find whatever ravioli seems good from the refrigerated pasta section.

Fried ravioli plated with marinara sauce for dipping

Note that if you want to venture out from the norm, you can experiment with different types of ravioli.

I’ll admit that when I made this batch of fried cheese ravioli, I also snuck in some spinach and cheese ravioli to see how they fared.

And they were quite delicious as well. So feel free to see what flavors of ravioli you prefer.

Fried Cheese Ravioli with Marinara

Recipe by Marc PetersonCourse: AppetizersDifficulty: Intermediate

Servings

servings

Prep time

minutes

Cooking time

minutes

Total time

hour

minutes

Try these fried cheese ravioli for pillowy, golden-brown, cheesy perfection in a bite, and savor this crispy, crunchy pasta dipped in marinara

Ingredients

1 cup flour
2 large eggs
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon dried basil
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon dried thyme
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese, divided
2 tablespoons fresh minced parsley, divided
24 ounces refrigerated cheese ravioli
Vegetable oil for frying
1 cup marinara sauce

Directions

Create a dredging station: put the flour in the first shallow bowl, whisk the eggs together in a second shallow bowl, then in a third bowl stir together the breadcrumbs, basil, oregano, thyme, 1/4 cup parmesan, and 1 tablespoon parsley
In batches of 3 to 5 pieces, complete steps 3 through 5 until all ravioli has been breaded
Dip the ravioli into the flour and then dust it off so that it is just barely coated with no large pockets of flour stuck to the pasta
Next, dip the flour-coated ravioli into the egg mixture and make sure that all of the pasta has been coated, let the excess egg drip off when removing the pasta for the next step
Now place the egg-coated ravioli into the bowl with the breadcrumb mixture and fully coat each piece with breadcrumbs
Once all ravioli is coated, pour vegetable oil in a large deep skillet or shallow pot so that it reaches 1 and 1/2″ up the side and heat it on medium-high
When the oil is hot, add the coated ravioli in batches to the oil and fry for about 5 minutes until golden brown, flipping the ravioli halfway through
Remove golden-brown ravioli from the oil and place it on a paper-towel covered plate
When all ravioli are cooked, spread them out on a platter, sprinkle with remaining parmesan and parsley, and add the marinara sauce to a bowl in the center for dipping