Protein packed Italian food filled with hidden veggies? Yes please! These vegan stuffed shells with cauliflower ricotta won't let you down.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Silk. The opinions and text are all mine.
So where do you get your protein? I'm sure many of you plant-based friends have heard that a time or two...Or ten. I'm here to give you yet another great answer to that question. Stuffed shells. Really? Yep.
I've stuffed these babies with a low fat (you read that right) version of typical cashew based ricotta. I replaced half of the nuts with cauliflower to make this creamy delicious cauliflower ricotta that will blow your mind. And taste buds too! Get ready to rumble people.
Hiding protein everywhere!
When my next job assignment with the Silk brand was to showcase their NEW Protein Nutmilk, I took it and ran. It's easy to throw that amazing protein boost in a smoothie, pudding, or other sweet treat. But the real question is, can you really use it for other stuff?
I'm proving right here, right now, the answer to that is a big fat yes. My hubby questioned my creativity on this one, but you heard crickets as he shoveled these babies into his mouth.
Ingredients are everything
The key to getting that perfect taste using this new protein milk is the right combination of ingredients. The milk comes in two varieties, low sugar and vanilla (that has more sweetness in it). Make sure for savory uses you grab the low sugar. Don't ask me how I learned this lesson the hard way. **hides trash full of failed recipe trial**
Both of them are soy free, use a combo of almond and cashew milk and the protein is from 100% peas. There are 10 grams of plant based protein in every cup! This is a pretty thick milk, so perfect in my opinion to put in recipes for added creaminess.
Reasons to snuggle this cauliflower ricotta:
- Lower in fat than traditional cashew ricotta.
- Added protein.
- Stuff it in anything from shells to simply your mouth.
- Simple blend and ready recipe.
- Added greens, so basically it has everything.
Other high protein recipes you will love:
- Fast High Protein Mexican Fiesta Pasta Salad
- Salted Caramel Pretzel Oatmeal Cookie Smoothie
- Baked Protein Packed Vegan Buffalo Cauliflower Dip
Vegan Stuffed Shells With Cauliflower Ricotta
Ingredients
- 20 jumbo shells
- 1 cup raw cauliflower (cut into small enough pieces to fill the cup)
- ½ cup raw cashews (see note)
- ½ cup raw almonds (see note)
- ½ cup unsweetened cashew or almond milk (or use low sugar Silk Protein Nutmilk for a higher protein meal)
- ½ cup veggie broth , low sodium if needed
- 4 cloves garlic
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 cup fresh spinach
Roasted Tomato Sauce:
- 8 cloves garlic , chopped
- 19 tablespoons veggie broth , low sodium if needed (1 cup plus 3 tablespoons, see note)
- 56 ounces diced fire roasted tomatoes (two 28 ounce cans)
- 1 cup fresh basil , chopped
- 2 teaspoons sea salt (not needed if tomatoes have salt)
Almond Cashew Parmesan:
- ½ cup raw almonds
- 2 tablespoons raw cashews
- 2 tablespoons hemp seeds
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt (add up to ¼ teaspoon more if needed)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C)
- Cook shells to al dente texture, according to package directions. I cooked mine for about 6 minutes.
Make the roasted tomato sauce:
- Add the chopped garlic and 2 tablespoons of veggie broth (or you can use a drizzle of oil) and sauté over medium heat for 1-2 minutes until fragrant.
- Then add the rest of the ingredients and turn the heat down to medium-low. Allow to simmer while preparing the rest of the meal.
Make almond cashew Parmesan:
- Add all ingredients into a food processor and blend until you get a crumbled Parmesan like texture.
make ricotta filling
- Blend cauliflower, cashews, almonds, nutmilk, broth, garlic, salt and pepper in a food processor. Keep blending until you get a ricotta like texture.
- Add in spinach and pulse to incorporate.
Assemble shells:
- When the shells are done, rinse with cold water so they aren’t too hot to handle.
- Put 1 cup of the tomato sauce in the bottom of a 9 x 12 baking dish.
- Stuff each shell with 1 ½ - 2 tablespoons of filling and place side by side in the baking dish.
- Drizzle the rest of the tomato sauce on top, then sprinkle with ¼ cup Parmesan.
- Bake covered for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 10 minutes.
- Allow to set about 5-10 minutes after baking. Serve while still nice and warm!
Notes
- Recipe makes 20 shells, servings size is 4 shells.
- Because you are not looking for a perfectly smooth texture, and because you are baking this dish, you do not need to soak your nuts. I did not. However if you want a smoother ricotta you can.
- You can also use a drizzle of oil instead of the 2 tablespoons of veggie broth to sauté the garlic.
- If you want to use the ricotta as a topping for something, use less liquid to make it thicker and more stable. Start with only a few tablespoons of each liquid and add more to get the texture you like.
- Make ricotta, tomato sauce and parmesan.
- Serve ricotta filling with very cooked mushed pasta shells, make sure ricotta is pureed well. Simply cut into small pieces for older baby.
Recipe by Veggies Don’t Bite, visit our site for more great plant-based recipes.
Nutrition
Nutrition and metric information should be considered an estimate.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Silk. The opinions and text are all mine.
Sheila
I was looking for a vegan dish to take to a Christmas Eve dinner and wanted something that would appeal to non-vegans as well. I tried out the recipe today and, WOW! Absolutely delicious. If more people would give dishes like this a shot, I have no doubt there would be fewer meat-eaters. I'm glad I did a trial-run because my filling was green---I blended the spinach right in instead of pulsing it. Oops. 58 oz is A LOT of sauce. Mine looked much more "smothered" than the dish pictured here. But! Very, very tasty! I am confident this dish will be a real crowd-pleaser, even if just sampled out of curiosity. I can't thank you enough and I look forward to trying out some more recipes!
veggiesdontbite
I am SO SO happy that you love this as much as we do!!! I am making a pasta dish for Christmas too. The sauce was probably because I added less for the photo? I can't remember but I prefer more sauce! Thank you again and am so happy to have you here.
joann
Followed the recipe to the "T". Delicious! Thank you for sharing...I've forwarded to my daughters to try out as well, I know they will love it! From start to finish (not including eating) I'd say it took about an hour, so allow yourself some time to prepare this dish. Totally worth the time and effort! Will make again. Both my husband and son, who are meat eaters, enjoyed this dish. I did add some vegan sausage on the side as well. Yum.
veggiesdontbite
So happy to know you liked it! Yes, I state that it is about an hour, but it's a fairly easy one to follow. Just takes some times to stuff those shells and bake! I love the idea of the sausage. YUM. If you prep the parts ahead of time (sauce and ricotta) it is much quicker to put together! Thanks so much for letting me know!
India Wardell
Thanks for this recipe, it was surprisingly delicious. I was really skeptical about cauliflower as a ricotta substitute. Cauliflower is tolerable in my house but it isn't a go-to vegetable. But because I had most of the ingredients in the house already, I went ahead and gave this recipe a try. I AM SO GLAD I DID! Going off of one of the comments and knowing my appliances I went ahead and made some adjustments. 1) I didnt have almonds, so I used a whole cup of cashews. 2) I soaked the cashews. 3) I only had unsweetened almond milk on hand. 4) I added onion, nutritional yeast, and sundried tomato to the ricotta. 5) I used diced tomatoes that already had garlic, basil, and oregano in the mixture. I didnt use the broth or extra garlic. I simply simmered the diced tomatoes in its juices and added it to the dish. I was also skeptical about the ricotta mixture being really wet, I thought that it would make a big soggy mess while baking. Once I started scooping I saw that it was more chunky than I expected and it baked really REALLY well too.
My family gave the recipe a four. The men enjoyed it and went back for more.The little ladies and I had our fill but we knew that we'd happily eat it again if we had more.
veggiesdontbite
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! Cauliflower is actually quite flavorless and not my favorite on it's own unless it's given delicious seasonings and used in fun ways! I just made crispy cauliflower bites for dinner tonight and they were amazing. I add the sun dried tomato sometimes too to switch it up and it's delicious. I unfortunately am not much of a fan of nutritional yeast especially in sauces but glad you enjoyed it! Thank you so much for your comment and so happy your family had a great dinner.
Steph
Hi! So excited to try this especially with the cauliflower ricotta! Such a great idea! I however cannot have almonds, would it work using double the amount of cashews? What would your suggestion be in this case? Also do you happen to know if this would freeze well? Thinking it would be a great postpartum meal.
veggiesdontbite
Hi Steph! Thank you so much! I would definitely either double the cashews or even sub for walnuts. If you can have them. Either way it will still be great. And yes, this would freeze just like a lasagne would. Sounds like you are having a baby! Huge congrats!!
JD
I may be partial because I love pasta, but I can’t get enough of these shells. They have the perfect flavor and texture. I like double of the tomato sauce on mine.
Dory Gordon
Hi! This recipe looked delicious and I picked it as the substitute for my daughter and her husband who moved from vegetarian to vegan between Christmases 2016 and 2017. While I did not have the pleasure of actually tasting the fruits of my labor (is that breaking a cook's rule?), here is the feedback that I pulled from them.
NOTE: I used our Sicilian family's red sauce in lieu of the above red sauce. I also added to the filling 3 canned artichoke hearts, chopped and hand squeezed, as I did in my former recipe.
He's a garlic lover but this was too much garlic even for him. Next time, I would reduce the 4 cloves to 2 and maybe roast or saute them before using. My filling was too course/grainy, which definitely could just have been my not knowing just how long to blend them. Next time, I would soak the nuts beforehand and really blend that filling quite thoroughly. I hadn't realized that the recipe does not contain any classically Italian herbs. Next time, I would add some oregano, basil and fennel.
veggiesdontbite
Hi Dory, glad you were able to make something for your daughter and husband to enjoy. Too bad you didn't get to try it! I like the addition of artichokes, sounds delicious. You can try soaking your nuts next time, but if you blend them a little more, and perhaps your oven bakes different as well, you should get a great texture without needing to soak. I haven't had an issue with that and I don't soak them. But I actually prefer my filling not super smooth so it may also be a difference in the preference of texture. Feel free to change any of the spices to fit your preference! It was the perfect amount of garlic for me, and paired well with my red sauce, which also affects the final product. So for sure if you use a difference sauce check the flavors in that and adjust accordingly. Hope you had a merry Christmas!
granny
Has anyone tried freezing? I cut the recipe in half (it's just me) but it's sooo delish I want to make the full recipe and save half.
veggiesdontbite
Hi! Thank you so much! I am so happy you loved it! It is definitely a family favorite. As for freezing, I have frozen all the parts: ricotta, sauce, etc. but never as a whole because we eat the entire thing so fast, LOL. However I am pretty sure it would freeze much like a lasagna. The only difference is the pasta is in shell form versus sheets. The texture of everything won't be like fresh but if you slowly defrost it on the counter, then bake a little it should be great.
Tori
Hi!!! I just have a quick question. I'm super excited to try this, but I'm allergic to almonds and almond milk. Do you have any recommendations to replace the almonds? I feel a bit silly asking this on a sponsored recipe, but I really want to try it 🙂 Thank you!!
veggiesdontbite
Hi! Yes! Just use any non dairy milk you usually drink and you can sub cashews very easily! Or walnuts too. Would either of those work?
Tori
Those should work great! Thank you so much!
veggiesdontbite
You're welcome!
Sara
Just made this with cauliflower and kale (instead of spinach) from the garden. Delicious! I couldn't find any whole grain shells, so I layered with a penne and it worked out just fine. Thanks for the wonderful recipe.
veggiesdontbite
Awesome Sara! Kale is a great sub. And I love that you layered it!! Thanks so much for letting me know!
Veronica from Elegantly Vegan
Oh gosh, cauliflower ricotta, how clever. I've just made a kind of raw mash with cauliflower but this is really nifty! 🙂
veggiesdontbite
Thank you! I use cauliflower to cut down fat but keep some creaminess in a lot of my recipes, so it's a fave around here!
Alisa Fleming
I was just thinking how cauliflower would add nice fluff to "cheese" and this looks divine! Innovative as always lady!
veggiesdontbite
Thank you! It sure does!!
robin
These look sooooo yummy. I've got to find some large gluten free shells that don't have tapioca in them, so my daughter can have them. And I will have to make a few substitutions.....but I am going to do my best to try to make these!!!!
I was quite disappointed in Silk putting sugar in their protein nutmilk. Their cashew milk doesn't have it, so WHY put it in the other? SMH. LOL 2 of us in my house can't have sugar at all....due to yeast overgrowth. One little bit of sugar...and whatever bit of yeast is in the gut ....it starts going all nuts like GREMLINS.....hahaha
veggiesdontbite
Thank you so much!! The brand Tinkyada is awesome for gluten free things like this. No tapioca according to the box ingredients. As for the sugar, the one I used does not have much sugar at all, only 2 grams which for us is totally fine. They put a tad in there for flavor, the protein addition needs a little to counteract the flavor of the protein. However I get there are those like you that cannot do sugar at all, so I suggest just using one of their unsweetened varieties! The cashew would work great. Let me know if you give it a try!!
The Vegan 8
This is so beautiful Sophia! Such an eye-popping dish and I love that you did half/half nuts and cauliflower, that way it's not too light OR too heavy. Smart! I haven't had stuffed shells in soooo long!! These are making me drool right about now.
veggiesdontbite
Thanks so much sweet mama! Yes, the half and half was perfect. I didn't like it with all cauliflower, as healthy and low fat as that is I like some fat and flavor from the nuts.
Linda from Veganosity
Stuffed shells is one of my favorite pasta dishes. Thanks for making this deliciously vegan, Sophia!
veggiesdontbite
Once of my faves too!
Matt
Wow - what a great recipe! I love the cauliflower ricotta 🙂
veggiesdontbite
Thanks!!