Making your own ravioli is rewarding but very time-consuming! If you’ve gone to the effort of batch-making piles of fresh ravioli, then how do you go about storing it properly?
Can You Freeze Ravioli?
Yes, you can freeze fresh ravioli for up to 6 months and cooked ravioli, in sauce, for up to 3 months. Fresh ravioli will need to be frozen on a baking sheet before being bagged up and stored in the freezer.
Do Does Ravioli freeze well? Yes
Can you refreeze Ravioli? No
How to Freeze Ravioli
Depending upon whether the ravioli youāre freezing is fresh or cooked, there are two main methods you can use. Here, weāll talk about them both separately:
How to Freeze Fresh Ravioli
This is the perfect way to store freshly prepared, uncooked ravioli in the freezer. If you have a choice, this is the form you’ll want to freeze ravioli in:
- Place on a Baking Sheet: Line a large baking sheet, and lay out as many ravioli as possible in a single layer, without the ravioli touching one another otherwise, theyāre liable to freeze together.
- Flash Freeze: Flash freeze the ravioli on the baking sheet for around 2 hours or until theyāre frozen solid.
- Bag Up: Place the ravioli into a heavy-duty freezer bag as efficiently as possible, ideally with as little excess air as possible. As you seal the bag up, push any air out.
- Freeze: Pop the bagged-up ravioli in the centre of the freezer to keep them as far as possible from the frost front that forms at the edge of the freezer.
Need a Recipe?
If you’re looking for a freezer-friendly ravioli recipe then check out homemade spinach and ricotta ravioli recipe out
How to Freeze Cooked Ravioli
If you have already cooked the ravioli, then this is the method you’ll want to use. You’ll need to freeze it in a sauce to retain some texture:
- Portion Into Containers: Place the cooked ravioli and the sauce that you serve it in into rigid plastic containers. Tap the containers on the counter to settle the pasta and remove any air pockets.
- Allow to Cool: Allow the ravioli to cool before you place the lid onto the containers. This will prevent any bacteria from forming in the warm, humid environment that you might accidentally create.
- Seal: Seal the containers up once the ravioli is cool, and then make sure that the seal has taken completely all the way around the container.
- Freeze: Freeze the ravioli in the container in the centre of the freezer, where it will be as far as possible from the frost front. This will hold freezer burn off for a short amount of time.
3 Tips for Freezing Ravioli
Now you know how to freeze it, we’ve got our 3 top tips which we strongly recommend following when freezing ravioli to have the best results:
Always Freeze Cooked Ravioli In Sauce
Cooked ravioli have a lot more water content than raw ravioli. This means that if you were to flash freeze it and then bag it up, it would get freezer burned very quickly. Avoid this by always choosing to freeze cooked ravioli in sauce.
Don’t Flash Freeze for Too Long
If you leave raw ravioli to flash freeze for too long then the ravioli can get ice crystals forming across the surface of it, leading to freezer-burned ravioli.
Consider the Filling
The filling of the ravioli should be considered when freezing, as water-heavy items will expand when frozen, leading to a lot of damage to the pasta around the filling.
How Long Can You Freeze Ravioli?
You can freeze raw ravioli for up to 6 months.
After youāve flash-frozen it on a baking sheet and transferred it to a bag, it will freeze for that long when thereās as little air in the bag as possible.
Cooked ravioli in sauce will keep for around 3 months before freezer burn starts to set in. Due to the water content of the sauce, freezer burn is quite likely to set in after those 3 months, which would damage the texture of the ravioli.
Fresh ravioli will only last for 2 days in the fridge before it begins to dry out. This will ruin the texture of the final dish, unfortunately.
How Do You Defrost Ravioli?
You can defrost ravioli very easily, whether itās raw or cooked.
Raw ravioli can be thrown into a pot of boiling water, and will simply need cooking as though from fresh, though for another minute or so.
Cooked ravioli can be reheated in the microwave by removing the lid from the container and microwaving it on high for increments of 30 seconds until the dish is steaming hot throughout – including inside the ravioli!
Can You Refreeze Ravioli?
This generally depends upon what the filling of the ravioli is.
You cannot refreeze meat, poultry, or fish since they can get contaminated while thawed and out of the freezer. Therefore, if the filling of your ravioli contains any of those things, you cannot refreeze them!
Does Ravioli Freeze Well?
Yes, ravioli does freeze well.
This is generally because itās quite dense and has low water content, meaning that thereās very little freezer burn that could potentially take place.
It is worth considering the fillings, however. Ravioli will only freeze as well as the weakest ingredient in the filling. If the filling contains a lot of ricotta, for example, then you may find the filling becomes a little grainy once thawed.
Related FAQs
If youāve still got questions about freezing ravioli or ravioli in general, then these may help:
This is a tough question to answer because it comes down to the filling contents. Vegetable fillings with a low cheese content will freeze well as will most saucy meat fillings.
Yes, in fact cooked ravioli freezes better in a sauce than without it as the sauce acts as a layer of protection from freezer burn.
