There are so many wonderful ways to stuff pasta with cheese, meat, and vegetables. These are 10 of our favorites.

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

As we enter the cold stretch of the year, our thoughts turn to pasta—specifically, to filled pasta. Luxurious little pockets of dough stuffed with creamy cheese, savory mushrooms, or salty prosciutto are a hearty, warming balm for the winter blues. Can you name a dish more comforting than manicotti filled with ricotta and spinach and doused in warm tomato sauce? I can’t.

We’ve compiled a list of filled pasta recipes below. Most are projects that involve making your own pasta dough, stuffing it with filling, then carefully rolling or folding it into shape. We think the effort involved makes these recipes especially suited to winter. Cozy up inside with a few friends or family members and take on a cooking project with the ultimate reward. Still, if you’re looking for something easy to do with that box of tortellini you bought on a whim, we’ve got a recipe for that, too.

Serious Eats / Robby Lozano

Breaded and deep-fried ravioli is a St. Louis specialty. In this recipe for replicating it at home, Julia Levy adjusts the cheese ratio: A higher proportion of ricotta to mozzarella yields a lighter filling with plenty of rich cheesiness. Kneading the pasta dough by hand and carefully achieving the right texture is crucial—you’re aiming for ravioli that are crisp and light, not overly doughy.

Serious Eat / Amanda Suarez

Genevieve Yam got the idea to make a creamy tortellini soup from Reddit—but found the recipe she tried lacking in flavor. Her version combines Italian sausage, fresh fennel, and fennel seeds, and it’s topped with Parm and pesto for a soup that’s aromatic, herbaceous, and decidedly not bland.

J. Kenji López-Alt

Using sheets of fresh pasta is a total game-changer in this version of the Italian-American classic, manicotti. Stuffing the shells becomes much easier: You simply roll the filling up in a pasta sheet, rather than maneuvering it into a prerolled tube. You can buy fresh lasagna sheets at the store or make your own. For a shortcut, use no-bake lasagna sheets—just wet them first, then roll the filling inside. This recipe also adds arugula to the spinach mixture for a peppery boost. One final tip: Make sure both your greens and your ricotta are well-drained to avoid a soggy, too-soft manicotti.

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

Nidi di rondine originated in the Republic of San Marino, in Italy. This showstopping comfort dish involves rolling béchamel, fontina, and prosciutto in sheets of fresh pasta to form little lasagna-like wheels.

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Serious Eats / Kevin Vaughn

Sorrentinos are an Argentinian pasta typically filled with ham. Due to the large wave of Italian immigration to Argentina between 1870 and 1920, pasta shops and Italian restaurants are now common throughout the country. This recipe from Kevin Vaughn offers a vegetarian twist, using the meaty savoriness of oyster mushrooms to mimic the ham and layering in flavor with fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, and red pepper.

Jonathan Lovekin

This recipe is adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s beloved cookbook Plenty. It features the kind of flavor combination that shouldn’t work on paper—but does—something Ottolenghi always manages to pull off. The pasta is filled with goat cheese and finished with pink peppercorns, tarragon, and lemon zest. The result is tangy, a little funky, herbaceous, and bright.

Vicky Wasik

Homemade tortellini is worth the effort—store-bought versions are often overly doughy. This guide from Niki Achitoff provides thorough, step-by-step instructions for making delicate, flavorful tortellini, from getting the pasta dough’s hydration just right to techniques for filling, rolling, cutting, and folding. You can use any filling you like with this recipe, but if you opt for the suggested mushrooms and Parm, use a variety of mushrooms for nuanced, earthy flavor and cook them thoroughly to remove all moisture—this will help prevent soggy tortellini.

Photograph and video: Vicky Wasik

While manicotti is a rarely used pasta shape in Italy, it’s a cornerstone of Italian-American comfort cooking. In Italy, manicotti is seldom filled, but in the U.S., it’s typically stuffed with ricotta, covered in tomato sauce, and baked. At some point, Italian-American cooks developed an offshoot called crespelle, where crepes stand in for the pasta. In this version from Daniel Gritzer, thin crepes are filled with a white ragù and baked with béchamel and tomato sauce. While we love the ricotta-filled Italian-American manicotti, this version is more luxurious and refined—a cross between the classic flavors of authentic Italian lasagna and the spirit of a distinctly American dish.

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Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

More pasta wheels! This recipe, inspired by a version served at Don Angie in New York, channels the flavors of lasagna while borrowing its technique from nidi di rondine or rosette al forno, a baked pasta dish from Modena. The result is lasagna rosettes that are far more camera-ready than a traditional slab. But they’re not just about looks—you’ll make a deeply flavorful, long-simmered ragù and a creamy béchamel, both rich and satisfying. And because the rosettes have more exposed edges than a classic lasagna, they deliver extra crispiness for the corner-piece crowd.

Speaking of visually-appealing dishes, the way the pink beet filling pokes through in these ravioli, inspired by a dish served at the Brooklyn restaurant Al di La, makes them look like little gems. You’ll make a simple filling of pureed roasted beets combined with ricotta and Parm, and nestle it between layers of thinly-rolled homemade pasta.