Tortellini in Brodo: Bologna's Little Filled Pasta

The story of tortellini: a winter dish of little rings floating in broth

Crack eggs onto a mound of flour and work them in a little at a time with your fingertips, and suddenly your kitchen smells like the back room of a pasta shop. On thin yellow dough you place just a little filling of meat, cheese and nutmeg, close it into a triangle and wrap it around your finger. By the time dozens are lined up, it feels less like lunch and more like a dish you want to wait for quietly at the table.

Tortellini (turtlén in Bolognese dialect) are a filled egg pasta closely tied to Emilia-Romagna in Italy, especially Bologna and Modena. There are many stories about the origin of the shape, but the best known compares it to the navel of Venus. The tale may be a bit grand, but once you actually shape a little ring with your fingertips, you understand that it is this closed, curled form, not a flat ravioli, that becomes the memory of the dish.

On December 7, 1974, the Confraternita del Tortellino and the Accademia italiana della cucina registered an official recipe for the tortellini filling with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce. It calls for a thin dough of flour and eggs and a filling of pork loin, prosciutto, mortadella di Bologna, Parmigiano-Reggiano, egg and nutmeg. Reproducing the old local method exactly is hard outside Italy, but what must be protected is clear: a thin egg dough, savory meat, nutmeg, and broth.

What's interesting is that tortellini are spoken of not as generic "Italian pasta" but as a dish that belongs to Bologna, Modena and Castelfranco Emilia. La Cucina Italiana notes that in Bologna they're folded around the little finger, in Modena around the tip of the index finger. You don't need to go that far at home, but skip wrapping them around your finger and you just have small ravioli. Because they're small rings, they float in the broth, and when you scoop one up with a spoon, the pasta, meat and soup reach your mouth at the same temperature.

On local tables, tortellini are often treated as a holiday dish and appear at Christmas and year-end meals. That doesn't make them a dish smothered in a lavish sauce. You prepare a good broth and eat them in the bowl while they're still steaming. They look plain, but the effort is hidden. In a home kitchen, too, rather than a showy presentation, the dish comes closest to its character if you keep the finished tortellini from drying out, don't let the broth boil hard, and cook them only once everyone is seated.

In this article we make tortellini served in broth, adjusting the thickness and quantity to what's manageable at home. The official 0.6 mm thickness is hard to achieve with only a rolling pin, so here we aim for about 1.5 mm, which tears less easily. In exchange we stick to three rules: don't overfill, don't let the broth boil too hard while cooking, and cook the meat to a safe temperature first.

If risotto (in Japanese) is a dish where rice absorbs broth, tortellini are a dish where a small, meaty aroma unfolds in broth. Wrapping a wheat dough also makes them a cousin of Russian pelmeni (in Japanese), but the elegance of tortellini lies not in a big portion of meat but in a small bite containing cheese and nutmeg, eaten in clear soup.

The first time, it's easier not to cram all the work into one day. Make the broth the day before and refrigerate it, and on the day, focus on the dough, the filling, the folding and the cooking. If instead you make the filling the day before, cool the cooked pork and cured meats well and refrigerate them in a clean container. Check the firmness just before folding: if it's dry, add 1 tsp meat juices or broth; if it's loose, add 2 tsp cheese. Knowing how to adjust the moisture saves you from panicking mid-fold that "they're all going to tear."

Ingredients (serves 4, about 48 pieces)

The first surprise is how little filling there seems to be. But tortellini aren't meant to be stuffed tight. Fold them small, and it's enough that the meat, cheese, nutmeg and egg dough all arrive at once when you take one in with the broth. The more filling you add, the more easily they tear, and the broth turns cloudy too.

Ingredients and tools worth thinking about before you shop

There's no need to order pork, eggs, flour or cheese online when your local supermarket has them. What's worth seeking out is a rolling pin to roll the dough evenly, an instant-read thermometer so you don't second-guess the pork, and a small grinder for using nutmeg fragrantly in small amounts. With tortellini, small differences in thickness, temperature and aroma show in the result more than the ingredients do.

The rolling pin doesn't need to be long. Around 30 cm is easy to handle even in a small kitchen, and you can also use it for thin pasta, dumpling wrappers and wrapped doughs like salteñas.

Pork loin is hard to judge by appearance alone. Because the filling is cooked first and then chopped, a thermometer cuts down the time spent wondering whether "it still looks a bit pink inside."

You can use ground nutmeg, but because the filling is so small, freshly grated nutmeg really comes through. A small grinder also serves for black pepper and dishes that use small amounts of whole spices.

Method: fold small with a thin dough

Rest the dough, cook and cool the meat, chop it finely, roll and cut, fold. There are many steps, but no need to hurry. Drying out is the only enemy, so keep any dough you're not using and the folded tortellini covered with a well-wrung damp towel as you go.

What to protect and what you can change in a home kitchen

If you think tortellini "can't be made unless everything is authentic," you'll never start. What to protect is the thin egg dough, folding them small, the savoriness of meat and aged cheese, nutmeg, and eating them in broth. What you can change is the type of flour, how the meat is cut, where the mortadella comes from, and how you make the broth.

If you're unsure on your first shopping trip, prioritize mortadella over 00 flour, and the broth over mortadella. Cake flour and bread flour handle perfectly well, but if the filling's aroma is light, it blurs in the broth. Conversely, even with mortadella in hand, cooking in an overly strong store-bought consommé pushes the saltiness forward and buries the nutmeg and prosciutto. Rather than buying expensive ingredients, keep the salt low and leave room to add cheese in the bowl; that's less likely to fail at home.

When you can't find mortadella, replacing it with ordinary ham alone makes the aroma light. Mixing 70 g lean ham with 5 g finely chopped unsalted butter brings the mouthfeel a little closer. The spiced aroma is a different thing, though. The first time, accept it as a "home version" and prioritize not overdoing the nutmeg.

You can make the broth without preparing the local version of beef and capon, or a rich chicken stock, every time. In a home kitchen, simply simmering 4 chicken wing tips, 1/2 onion, 1/3 carrot, 1500 ml water and 1/2 tsp salt over low heat for 45 minutes gives a gentle, perfectly good base. On days you use store-bought bouillon, make it weaker than the package says and add water if it reduces.

Causes of failure and how to recover

The most common failure is overfilling. Next come drying dough and boiling too hard while cooking. All of these happen just before the finish, so knowing how to fix them lets you cook calmly.

It's better not to force torn tortellini into the pot. Escaping filling clouds the broth and makes even the intact pieces taste floury. Instead, braise the torn ones in a small skillet with a little butter and 2 tbsp water over low heat and eat them separately as a taster, so nothing goes to waste.

Deciding how close to the original to go

The hard part of this dish isn't the recipe itself but deciding how close to the original to go. Listing the ingredients of the official recipe is easy, but outside Italy your shopping stalls somewhere among mortadella, aged cheese, broth and 00 flour. Sorting out what can be substituted from what turns it into a different dish makes shopping easier. What matters most is not mortadella itself but the layered aroma of pork, prosciutto, a fatty cured meat, aged cheese and nutmeg. Replace all of that with light ham and you're closer to a Western-style wonton.

How they're eaten locally and what to serve with them

The tortellini spoken of around Bologna and Modena are often served in brodo, in broth. You'll also see tortellini in cream or tomato sauce, but eating these little rings in clear soup first makes it easiest to understand the point of the meat filling and egg dough.

Tortellini in cream sauce are common on menus and in home recipes outside Italy. La Cucina Italiana also describes a context, in the dairy-rich home cooking of Emilia, of using cream skimmed from the surface of milk. But smothering them in white, heavy industrial cream hides the aroma of the filling and broth. We recommend in brodo first not only because it's traditional, but because it makes it easy to check on your first try whether the filling was right.

For a menu, keep the starter light. A tangy bread-and-vegetable dish like panzanella (in Japanese) or a simple leafy salad keeps the gentleness of the broth. Serving them on the same day as risotto (in Japanese) doubles up on carbohydrates, so make tortellini the centerpiece and keep any meat dish small.

The order of eating matters too. Leave them too long after cooking and the egg dough absorbs broth and swells, blurring the ring shape. Put them in the pot only once everyone is at the table, and eat as soon as the broth is poured. This is different from a stew that can wait in the pot.

Storage and making ahead

Tortellini are best cooked the day you make them. But because folding takes so much effort, it's worth freezing half. The key is to firm them up on a tray before bagging. Stack them while soft and the carefully sealed shapes get crushed.

If using folded tortellini the same day, arrange them on a lightly floured tray, cover with a damp towel, and keep them in the refrigerator for up to 2 hours. Left longer, the dough turns damp and sticks to the bottom, so if it's more than half a day ahead, freeze them.

To freeze, arrange them in a single layer on a tray and freeze for 1 to 2 hours. Once firm, transfer to a storage bag, press out the air and use within about 2 weeks. Cook them straight from frozen in the broth, 1 to 2 minutes longer than usual. Thawing before cooking makes the dough absorb moisture and tear easily.

We don't recommend storing cooked tortellini. If you do have leftovers, refrigerate them separately from the broth and warm over low heat the next day. Boiling makes them open, so stop before it starts to simmer. The texture suffers, so for guests it's better to have them folded and waiting than cooked ahead.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make them without a pasta machine?

Yes. With only a rolling pin, don't aim for the official recipe's 0.6 mm; aim for about 1.5 mm. Even slightly thick, if you keep the filling to 3 g to 4 g and cook them in broth for 4 to 5 minutes, they come together well enough as a home version.

I don't have mortadella.

You can substitute bologna sausage, lean ham or thinly sliced cooked sausage. The aroma changes, but combining pork, prosciutto, aged cheese and nutmeg keeps the direction. Using ordinary ham for everything makes the flavor monotonous, so keep the pork loin and prosciutto.

Can I make them without prosciutto?

Yes, but the saltiness and aged aroma will be weaker. Instead of 60 g prosciutto, render 30 g bacon over low heat, chop it and combine it with 30 g cooked ham. In that case, leave the salt out of the filling and use only 1 tsp of the bacon fat.

Can I cook them in water instead of broth?

Water is fine if you only care about avoiding tears, but the flavor will be weaker. Tortellini are a dish where the filling's aroma passes into the soup while they cook, so even a light broth is better. Even weak store-bought bouillon comes together far better than water.

Can I eat them with a cream sauce?

Yes. But this article focuses on in brodo, the form most often spoken of around Bologna. For a cream sauce, toss the cooked tortellini with a little cream and cheese warmed in a separate pan, without simmering. Making them in broth the first time lets you understand the flavor of the filling.

How should I adjust them for children?

Halve the nutmeg and leave out the black pepper. If the prosciutto is very salty, reduce it to 50 g and make the broth lighter too. For small children, let the bowl cool a little before serving so they don't burn themselves on hot broth.

How are they different from ravioli or tortelloni?

Ravioli is often used as a general term for flat filled pasta and varies widely in shape and size. Tortelloni have a shape similar to tortellini but are larger, often with meatless fillings like ricotta and greens. Tortellini are small, have a meat filling and are strongly associated with being served in broth.

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