I’ve never seen ravioli with a chicken filling before, but I couldn’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be nice so I decided to give it a try. I used a good quality free-range chicken with a lot of flavor, cooked the legs sous-vide for the filling and used the rest to make a chicken demi-glace (reduced stock) for the sauce. You could also just braise the chicken legs instead, so it is not needed to own a sous-vide cooker to be able to give this a try. The chicken ravioli turned out just like the name suggests, with a good chicken flavor. The concentrated flavor of the sauce helped to get this effect. If you like chicken, you’ll love these ravioli. Here’s what I did…

Ingredients

For about 50 ravioli

2 chicken legs and 2 chicken wings

1.5 litres (6 cups) chicken stock, reduced to 150 ml (2/3 cup)

3 eggs

200 grams (1 1/4 cup) Italian 00 flour

4 Tbsp minced fresh sage

1 garlic clove, minced

salt and freshly ground black pepper

60 grams (4 Tbsp) butter

60 ml (1/4 cup) dry white wine

optional: zest of 1/2 a lemon

freshly grated parmigiano reggiano

Preparation

Season the chicken pieces with salt and freshly ground black pepper on both sides.

I vacuum sealed the chicken pieces with some butter…

…and then I cooked the chicken sous-vide for 48 hours at 62C/144F. This is because I used a 100+ days old chicken to get the same flavor as the chicken my grandmother used to serve. A shorter cooking time will suffice with younger chicken. You could also braise the chicken in butter until it is tender.

Take the chicken meat off the bones.

Put the chicken meat in the bowl of your food processor with 1 egg, 2 handfulls of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, and 2 Tbsp of reduced chicken stock. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you like you can also add some lemon zest. This will give the ravioli a ‘fresher’ taste, but it will also make it less ‘chickeny’.

Pulse a few times until the chicken is coarsely chopped. You want to keep some texture, so do not puree the chicken. Put the stuffing in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for a few hours to allow it to firm up.

Make pasta dough from 2 eggs and the flour, roll it out to the thinnest setting, and make ravioli with the chicken stuffing according to my instructions.

To make the sauce, melt the butter, add the sage and the garlic, and stir for a minute. Do not let the garlic get brown.

Add the white wine and cook, stirring, until most of it has evaporated.

Add the remaining concentrated chicken stock. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning if needed.

Cook the ravioli in salted boiling water for a few minutes.

Transfer the ravioli to the sauce with a slotted spoon, and toss gently to mix them with the sauce without breaking them.

Serve the ravioli on warm plates. Add some more of the sauce and sprinkle with freshly grated parmigiano reggiano.

Wine pairing

Serve with a well-rounded full-bodied dry Italian white wine. The wine should be barrel-aged to make it round, but no new oak as that would make the wine too oaky for this dish. We enjoyed it with a nice Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi.