This Spinach and Cheese Stuffed Manicotti is a favorite family recipe. Watch the video in the post showing you how to make manicotti, then scroll all the way to the bottom of this post and print out a clean copy of the recipe so you can make it at home.
Spinach and Cheese Stuffed Manicotti
Manicotti is a dish of great comfort. It makes plenty, it’s filling, it’s completely family-friendly, and the leftovers are even better than the freshly made batch. We make this when we have a handful of friends or family around. It’s a nice, no-fuss recipe that everyone seems to love. Make it ahead, keep it in the fridge and toss it in the oven when everybody is ready to eat.
If you didn’t know, manicotti is a pasta noodle shaped like a tube. It’s about 4-inches long, and 1-inch in diameter. Usually it’s boiled until al dente, then cooled, filled with some kind of cheese filling, covered with sauce and baked. In this recipe, you don’t have to bake the noodles before filling them. They’ll cook in the sauce when you bake the manicotti in the oven.
🛒Ingredients needed:
- ricotta cheese
- mozzarella cheese
- cream cheese
- parmesan cheese
- frozen spinach
- eggs
- salt & freshly ground black pepper
- manicotti noodles
- marinara sauce
✏️How to make Spinach and Cheese Stuffed Manicotti:
*The complete, printable recipe with all ingredients and instructions is at the end of this post.
The filling is very simple to make. Just mix it all up in a bowl until it’s well-blended. If you (or your kids) don’t like spinach, you can always leave it out… though I’ve found that you don’t really detect it all that much with all of the other wonderful things and sauce in the recipe.
You might consider it a good way to “sneak” some good stuff into dinner.
A layer of sauce goes into the bottom of a 13×9-inch pan.
The easiest way to stuff manicotti shells is the put the mixed filling into a plastic bag. You can use either a frosting piping bag or a gallon zip bag. Snip the corner, gather the top and squeeze the filling into the corner.
Hold an uncooked manicotti shell in your hand and squeeze the filling inside the shell. Let it overflow on both sides.
Place the filled shell into the sauce-lined pan.
Repeat with remaining manicotti and fill the pan with the stuffed shells, until you run out of shells and filling.
Cover with a generous layer of marinara sauce.
Sprinkle cheese on top. At this point, you can cover with foil, refrigerate and then bake when you’re ready. It’s ok to leave it in the refrigerator overnight.
Cover and bake for about an hour.
Pop open a bottle of red wine and eat! This Spinach and Cheese Stuffed Manicotti recipe will feed 6 or 7 hungry people- 2 stuffed shells each is plenty when served with salad and garlic bread. And lighter eaters will be plenty full with just one shell.
★How to Store:
Store leftovers in the refrigerator and enjoy over the next few days. I guarantee they won’t last long. Manicotti also freezes well. Just place leftovers in an airtight container and you can keep them in the freezer for up to 3 months.
❤️Why I love this recipe:
- My family has been loving this recipe since I was a kid. At our house it’s always been our traditional Christmas Eve meal.
- It’s a crowd pleaser. Even people who say they don’t like spinach love these manicotti!
- I love that it can be made ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator until I’m ready to bake it. Makes getting dinner together so simple.
The Best Manicotti Recipes:
- Pumpkin Manicotti with Bechamel Sauce
- Chicken Manicotti
- Ham and Cheese Manicotti
- Chicken Manicotti Alfredo
Spinach and Cheese Stuffed Manicotti
Ingredients
- 15 ounces part skim ricotta cheese
- 8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
- 4 ounces cream cheese
- ½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
- 10 ounces frozen spinach, thawed & squeezed dry
- 2 large eggs
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 box (12 to 14 shells) manicotti noodles
- 4 cups marinara sauce (jarred or homemade)
- ½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese, for topping
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉.
- In a large bowl, mix the cheeses, spinach, eggs, salt and pepper. Stir together until well blended.
- Place about 1½ cups of marinara sauce in a 9x13-inch pan. Spread it around to cover the bottom.
- Place the mixed filling into a plastic bag. You can use either a frosting piping bag or a gallon zip bag. Snip the corner, gather the top and squeeze the filling into the corner. Hold an uncooked manicotti shell in your hand and squeeze the filling inside the shell. Let it overflow on both sides. Alternately, you can stuff the uncooked noodles with a small spoon or fork. Place the filled shell into the sauce-lined pan. Repeat with remaining manicotti and fill the pan with the stuffed shells, until you run out of shells and filling. You should be able to fill 12 to 14 shells- if you run out of room in your pan, use a separate smaller pan to accommodate the extra.
- Cover the pasta completely with marinara sauce, using about 2½ cups of sauce. Sprinkle ½ cup Parmesan on top. At this point, you can cover with foil and refrigerate until you're ready to bake, or you can cover with foil and place it in the oven immediately.
- Bake, covered with foil, 50 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 10 minutes.
Notes
- It's perfectly okay to use low fat ricotta and low fat cream cheese.
- If you don't wish to use the spinach, it's ok to leave it out and just turn this into a cheese-stuffed manicotti.
- If you don't wish to use the plastic bag method of squeezing the filling into the shells, you can use a very small spoon or fork to stuff the filling-- it will just take a bit longer and might be a little messy.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This is a very easy , to make recipe. It’s like I cant believe I made it.
and re-heated left-overs, the next day are even better.
Im thinking making a ex’s favorite food will somehow attract him to me again. idk i hope so at least. it did before. but now im gonna make his favorite food which is manicotti tomorrow and i need a recipe. me and him are best friends now. and i really want him to feel the same way i do. they say food is the way to a man’s heart. if its true i might as well give it a try. Do you think this recipe will do the trick? 🙁
I am making this tonight with large pasta shells. They’re much easier to fill than real manicotti. Also I am leaving out the spinach and adding basil, parsley, and garlic salt. I would have kept the spinach, but my step dad isn’t a spinach lover and I prefer to have raw spinach. I’m hoping it works out well. 🙂
The first time I ate Manicotti was when I was living in New York for a year. It was those frozen already filled shells that u simply pour sauce over and I fell inlove with it! Now I am back home in South Africa and could NEVER find anything that was even slightly similar… Until I found your recipe! So simple and yummy omw! Thank you so very much 🙂 and the fact that I made it from scratch was even more rewarding!!
I made this last night and it is absolutely AMAZiNG!!!!! It took me a while to cook but you know it’s all worth it at the end! I used all the shells and still have left over filling! I’m so glad I found this! He filling is the fun part;)
this is so easy to make and even impressed my sisters boyfriend who is italian.lol
Spinach can be defrosted in the microwave. Punch some holes in the box with an icepick, defrost. Squeeze the box till all liquid is gone. Either buy chopped spinach or cut spinach up with scissors.
Will the Manicotti actually cook? i’m worried they will be hard?
Yes! It should cook up just fine- make sure the manicotti are completely covered with sauce. I use Classico Tomato-Basil sauce and it turns out perfect!
I made this last week for my daughter & family. I did use fresh spinach – no one mentioned it was watery! Looked & smelled wonderful – wich I could have tried it!
I just made this for dinner, and unfortunately the shells stayed hard 🙁 not sure what went wrong. I am wondering if I should have boiled them first.
No idea!– were the shells completely covered in sauce? They should have softened up w/ baking (no need to pre-boil noodles). Works every time for me using Classico Sauce.