The Secrets of Toasted Ravioli Revealed!

St. Louis is known for three things: baseball, beer and toasted ravioli. Oh there might be a few other items worth mentioning, but that’s the top three. Go ahead, ask anyone.

Toasted ravioli is the signature dish of this town and we can fill blogs with debates on who has the best toasted rav around. But I have the answer right here:

You do.

Yep, you, sitting on the other side of the screen, can make the best toasted ravioli right now, in your kitchen. It's simple. No need to book a babysitter and head to The Hill. Just visit your grocery store for a few simple supplies and the whole family can be gobbling up toasted rav at your kitchen table.

My teen and I whipped up a dish of toasted ravioli in just a few minutes. We mainly winged it on the recipe, but we drew our inspiration from this recipe from Rachael Ray posted on the Food Network.

Our ravioli’s were light and tasty, much better than the frozen in a box, oven cooked ravioli, and just about as good as anything you’ll get at on The Hill.

We used:

• Louisa’s frozen ravioli,regular sized beef and mini sized cheese
  
• Zia’s Pasta Sauce
• Bread crumbs, a.k.a. smashed croutons
• Parmesan cheese
• Dash of basil
• Eggs
• Milk
• Oil for frying

That’s it!

I thawed out the ravioli in a bowl of hot water while I prepped the bread crumbs.

I also got a pan of oil heating up on the stove–I threw out my Fry Daddy long ago. The experts say to get it up to 350, so do that if you have a thermometer. Or just eyeball like we did. You want a good inch or so of oil, so use a deep pan.

I actually forgot about the bread crumbs when I was at the store, so I used a handful of leftover croutons, some toast with garlic (which was way to hard to make into crumbs) and finally a couple whole grain crackers smashed up for good measure. Hopefully you’ll just remember to buy bread crumbs, but I wanted to point out that the exact nature of your crumbs is NOT important.

Next I mixed in a big spoonful of grated Parmesan and a dash of basil into the crumbs and stirred it up with a fork. This was mostly Rachael Ray’s idea, but she used parsley. Who has parsley? It worked.

We beat two eggs with a splash of milk in a big bowl. By this time the ravioli was thawed and the oil was getting hot.

Now you dunk the ravioli into the egg bath and coat it well and good in the crumb mixture.

Carefully place a few in the pan of hot oil and fry until golden brown. This only took a minute or two, but I have no idea how hot the oil was. And I was in a hurry.

Let the hot ravioli dry on a paper towel, or on a cookie rack over a paper towel.

Check out some step by step photos here. And feel free to read more of my stuff at StlMotherhood.com or follow me on Twitter and Facebook or just Subscribe to get me in your reader.