The Original "Manicotti" | How Italians Make Cannelloni

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My grandmother came here from Italy as a child and grew up in Little Italy in NYC. Manicotti was always made with crepes and just had cheese. Canelloni was made with tube shaped pasta with meat and cheese.

I grew up in Chicago. My mother's family was from Piedmonte, my father's from Palermo (talk about opposites!). Manicotti was stuffed with ricotta, cannelloni was stuffed with meat. My maternal great-grandmother, who was born in Italy, was a very sophisticated cook. She always made pasta with meat stuffing for ravioli or manicotti from a stew of pork butt, chicken, spinach, broth and vegetables, which was then ground with bread (to soak up the broth). I'm so lucky that I was able to see her wield her mattarella in person and taste her wonderful history.

Being a librarian, I checked out the Oxford English Dictionary for the first known examples of the word "manicotti" being used in English. The first was in 1941, in a newspaper in Nebraska surprisingly. It sounds like an excerpt from a restaurant review: "Their manicotti served now. Crisp ‘pasta’ rolls filled with Mozzarella cheese." Since they used quotes around the word "pasta", maybe this particular dish wasn't exactly pasta. Maybe a crepe, as some people have said in their comments, or maybe some other kind of dough or shell. What I think is interesting is they said it was crispy, suggesting frying or maybe baking without sauce. The next instance was in 1947, in the New York Herald Tribune. "She does the specialties, the ravioli, the gnocchi, the lasagna, the manicotti." There it is grouped with names of other more common Italian-American pasta dishes, so maybe that one is more like the dish as we know it today.

I’m from Brooklyn NY. I grew up eating Manicotti on a regular basis. I still make them the way my grandmother did. She didn’t use a traditional pasta dough it more like a Crepe 1c flour, 1c water 1 egg and a pinch salt. Each shell is cooked in a small frying pan like a crepe.

I was born and raised in Flushing, Queens (New York). My grandparents were from Naples and Sicily. My Napolitano grandmother called the dish manicotti (using crepes) and called the pasta shells cannelloni, which was a different dish altogether. Always homemade crepes (she used the same recipe for crispelles). Never store bought pasta ones. She filled them with ricotta, eggs, pecorino romano, garlic powder, salt, pepper and either basil or mint (which was surprisingly delicious). I make them exactly the same way she did. They are absolutely heavenly - like little ricotta pillows covered in red sauce.

I was born & raised in CT, USA, and in my experience, I've always known that 'manicotti' and 'cannelloni' are two completely different dishes: Manicotti is traditionally made with homemade crepes-(although most people seem to use pasta tubes)-and stuffed w/cheese (mostly ricotta and some mozzarella) and cannelloni is a pasta tube stuffed with a meat mixture.

my sicilian born grandmother made this dish with crepes and called it manicotti. it was served every Christmas for dinner, and at midnight we had homemade pizza, which was a very deep dish, mostly bread soaked in olive oil so the crust was very chewy and savory, with light topping of slivers of garlic and anchovies in tiny bits and a bit of tomato sauce and a sprinkling of either parmesan or romano. another pizza with some bread below and above and stuffed with some sort of greens. and hot and mild italian sausages with fennel in them. good times were had by all.

I am from NY and a baked cannelloni filled with ricotta cheese and covered with tomato sauce, mozzarella and pecorino was called "manicotti". This is the common name in the U.S. and the only cannelloni that most Americans know. Some families made the tubes from crepes and others used tubes made of pasta (sometimes even homemade pasta). Almost all of the families who made this were from Southern Italian extraction. To many of us, the word "cannelloni" referred to meat filled past tubes baked in sauce (sometimes a combination of tomato sauce and bechamel sauce with some pecorino sprinkled over the top). The legend of "manicotti" is that St. William the Hermit, a Northern Italian monk who, among other things, established monasteries in Sicily and raised charity for Sicily's poor, was invited to dinner by a land owner. The wealthy host who, like many of Sicily's wealthy, hated St. William, served him tubes of pasta filled with earth and baked in tomato sauce. While the wealthy guests giggled at St. William when he tasted the dirt, he calmly blessed his plate and the earth became ricotta cheese. (Source is Ada Boni's Regional Italian Cooking-1968, a great cookbook.) Of course the legend is absolutely ridiculous because St. William was alive in the late 1000s to the early 1100s and the tomato would not even be introduced to Europe until over four hundred years later.

My mother came to the US in the early 1960’s at about 21 or 22. Her holiday recipe was often “manicotti”. Manicotti were made with crepes filled with a ricotta mixture similar to what goes into ravioli and also mozzarella. Then they were baked with just a simple tomato sauce. Actually, Benedetta Rossi’s crespelle recipes are closer to my mom’s manicotti recipe. Cannelloni are different. They were the pasta often served dish served at family dinners in Italy.

My family calls it manicotti, but we make it with an egg based crepe-like pasta shell that is filled with a ricotta mixture and then rolled, placed in the pan seam side down. Then the manicotti are covered with sauce and baked. They are delicious! Light, melt in your mouth clouds of decadence! My family is Neopolitan and Sicilian. I'm 3rd generaltion from Brooklyn! Oh! When we stuff the crepes with meat, we call them cannelloni!

when she said "cheese is never too much" i felt that

Cleveland, OH, USA here. We called it manicotti. I think true Italian-born Italians should understand that most of us in the US know many 'Italian' dishes aren't exactly as they are in Italy. It's an Italian-American spin on dishes. Sometimes, our ancestors didn't have access to the same ingredients available when they came here so they adapted. Also, things change to the American tastes. Please don't get upset or offended by us. I've always heard 'Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery'. After all, aren't recipes slightly different by region even in the mother land? lol. LOVE your channel so very much.

My family is from Abruzzo (Ortona) and we make the manicotti using crepes instead of the pasta. The traditional filing is ricotta, spinach, mozzarella and we top it with a ragu. It is so delicious!

I was born and raised in St. Louis - we have "The Hill" here, where Italians settled years ago, mostly from Sicily. Our Italian restaurants here vary somewhat, but we mostly have manicotti (filled with cheese) and cannelloni (filled with meat). Both can have white or red sauce, or a mix.

As far as I've noticed here in the States, Manicotti are stuffed with cheese, while in Italy, Cannelloni are stuffed with meat.

I took cooking classes in 7th & 8th grade, all from scratch back in 1983-1985. My teacher who was a dark haired Dolly Parton gave me the BEST recipe I still have. One of my favorite dishes! It takes a few hours, but worth it!

My family is from Isernia, Italy and we live in Montreal, Canada. We always called it Cannelloni al forno

Here in Canada, generally, cannelloni is a tube pasta that is about the diameter of a quarter. Manicotti is about twice as wide. At least with the dried pasta that is available for sale.

I'm from NYC. My grandparents are from Italy and came early in the 1900s. We rarely had manicotti which is stuffed with ricotta. More often, grandma would make stuffed shells. You do have to remember that there is a difference between Italian food and Italian American food because they had to use what they could find here in America, and over the years it became tradition. Here's something that few Italian Americans have heard of. My grandfather's family put cinnamon and sugar in the ricotta when making lasagna, manicotti, stuffed shells, and even in zeppole, so that's how my grandmother made it. We LOVE it and when I eat those dishes without it, they seem so bland to me! 😊