Crab and Ricotta Cannelloni

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No no no. Do not make this dish. It is bland, and ruins the crab meat. I thought that the sauce is plain without much flavor at all. People say this is good, but after they make SERIOUS adjustments. I made this without any adjustments and it had no flavor whatsoever. I can't believe people ate this for Christmas Eve!

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I would like to say that this is the best pasta dish ever! I am an avid crab lover and this recipe is to die for. I agree do not use canned or imatation crab I use snow or dungeness. I buy 5 or 6 lbs and clean it all, put into a container and make dishes from it for the whole week! In this recipe the only thing I do differently is I shred fresh mozzerella and add some to the crab ricotta mixture and sprinkle some on top with the parm and panko breadcrumbs. In my opinion It doesn't need anything else. I do add alittle more kosher salt and nutmeg to my bachemel. ohter than that nothing else. This dish is outstanding. Thanks Giada. Everything I have ever made of yours has been outstanding. Keep em comin'! Kathy

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it's interesting that people actually gave this a terrible rating. although i did make some pretty major adjustments. just went crabbing the other day and used a pound of fresh dungeness. i used a 1/2 cup of both ricotta and whipped cream cheese, since cream cheese seems to go pretty well with crab. instead of basil i used 2 1/2 tsp of old bay seasoning. stuffed about 10 manicotti shells and didn't use as much bechamel sauce. 4 tbs of butter and flour and about 3 cups of 2% milk. cranked it to 375 with some buttery panko on top and it made for a really yummy, but rich, dinner. i could only eat like 1 and half shells.
i like to read through a recipe to see if i like any of the ingredients there and if the measurements are to my taste. that's why i only gave it 4 stars because i loved the idea, but it was a fairly off from the original.

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This was our Christmas Eve dinner. Divine! I served it with roasted asparagus tips as another reviewer suggested. I made no alterations to the recipe, used fresh basil leaves and two good-sized fresh Dungeness crabs from which I scraped the crabmeat. I used a scale to make sure I had the required pound. I don't understand the other negative reviews - this most certainly had that wonderful crab taste, and the sauce complimented it perfectly. This will be our Christmas eve dinner from now on, assuming I can get fresh crab each year!

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these were great and even better when warmed up the next day. I used chicken instead of crab because that was all i had on hand plus i read some reviews about the crab making a huge difference on how it came out and was a little hesitant to use it. As far as the sauce for the recipe goes, i used the bechamel recipe giada used for her chicken tetrazzini which adds a cup of heavy cream and a cup of chicken broth to the 4 cups of milk. I would definitely recommend it, it tastes really good.

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To comment on the other "bland" reviews...this IS certainly a dish that you need to taste-test along the way! I doubled almost all of the spices and added red pepper flakes to the stuffing. BUT...all recipes are this way! They are a guidebook to creating your perfect dinner...and this certainly was! Anyone can follow a recipe...cooking involves personal choices along the way! Taste-test this at every stage and it's going to be the meal people beg for!

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I made this just as directed and it came out great. I didn't add and of my own spices just a little more salt and white pepper. One of the keys is cooking the rue the correct amount of time for the bechamel. If you don't cook the flour and butter long enough it tastes like flour and butter when your done. BLAH!. Cooking and stirring the rue gives the flour a buttery taste not he other way around. Stir the bechamel until its the right thickness, it takes about 8 minutes of stiring. Its supposed to be mild so it doesn't over power the crab. Don't use canned or imitation crab. My family loved it and I will make this again.

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this is a tough one to rate. first of all i tried to save a few bucks and used half shrimp and half crab. I put them in the food processort to make a better texture. the crab mix had no flavor. so i added a bunch of seasonings. one recipe that i had that was similar, called for sherry. so i added some sherry, old bay seasoning, salt and pepper. the sauce was a bear to make, real difficult to stir. you need some serious elbow grease for that.. same thing on this one. no flavor. so i added a bit of garlic more salt and some sherry to this for good measure. i put them in crepes instead of noodles. 4 cups of sauce on the crepes was a ton of sauce. it sort of drowned the crepes. i think a lot less might have been better. all n all it ended up tasting good. it was a big job, and it wasnt cheap. so i guess i would say 3-4 stars on this recipe. and it must have a gazillion calories to it to boot.

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i just made these and read the reviews beforehand. i think the key is the bechamel sauce. i followed a recipe from Mario Batalli, and his recipe for bechamel calls for 2 teaspoons of salt, where this asks for much less. The sauce came out perfectly seasoned. I also added some frozen peas to mine, and the results were very tasty. I would definitely make this one again!!! Yummy!!!

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that said this recipe is "bland". Good crabmeat is so perfectly sweet and delicate that it would be terrible to hide that behind too many spices and flavors that would overcome the taste of the crab, rather than enhance it. This recipe does beautifully in showcasing the crab. All the flavors in this recipe do this beautifully. The only changes I made were that I lowered the amount of white pepper in the bechamel (I somehow can't imagine a quarter cup of white pepper in anything, upped the amount of nutmeg in the bechamel to about a half tsp (because I love nutmeg in white sauces and I added ONE tsp of Old Bay seasoning to the crab mixture. After tasting, I went back and forth on the idea of adding perhaps just a tiny bit of lemon to the crab, but ended up leaving it alone--I might try that the next time I make it. But all in all, it was absolutely a perfectly balanced and MILD pasta dish--which I prefer with seafood, because I like seafood enough to want to TASTE it. It was delicious, through and through, and I would proudly serve it to anyone.