Homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage Sauce, made with pasta dough from scratch and roasted garlic and butternut, tastes like heaven.
Homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage Sauce – it’s like fall perfection on a plate. This was my first time making homemade pasta, let alone homemade ravioli, but it shall not be my last! I take that back… I had made pasta several times before in cooking classes. Have you ever been to one of those? The fun kind where it’s like a dinner date with an activity? I highly recommend. Anyway, in those classes, they all made their homemade pasta using only all-purpose flour. I find that produces doughy pasta, which is why I highly recommend an even amount of Semolina flour with all-purpose flour.
Roasting butternut squash is something that must happen in everyone’s kitchen this time of year. It should become a seasonal ritual, much like making fudge for the holidays or roasting a turkey on Thanksgiving. Once you roast butternut squash with whole cloves of garlic, you’ll never go back. Pure heaven, I tell you!
And let’s not forget the brown butter sage sauce. You know I love my brown butter and use it for tons of goodies like brownies and frosting, but it is perfect for savory dishes like this butternut squash ravioli too. I think a lot of people do a recipe search for sauce for butternut squash ravioli, and let me tell you, this homemade ravioli has so much flavor, it requires the perfect sauce to compliment it rather than over power it. You just can’t go wrong with brown butter sage sauce when it comes to a dish like butternut squash ravioli.
How to make homemade ravioli:
I’m no expert, but since this was my first time and this butternut squash ravioli turned out perfectly, I feel qualified enough to tell you based on my experience.
- In my opinion, there are three necessary pieces of equipment: a stand mixer with a dough hook, a pasta roller, and a ravioli maker. These are amazon links to the exact products I use. Now, you certainly don’t need all of this equipment and people have been making pasta by hand for centuries, but if you have them, making pasta is a breeze.
- Like I said above, I prefer an even mix of semolina flour to all-purpose flour. It gives the pasta great texture and chew, plus it’s insanely easy to work with. The addition of olive oil to the dough can be tasted in the final pasta – YUM! You must kneed your pasta dough for a solid ten minutes. If you want to do this by hand, more power to you, but pasta dough is not a soft dough like bread dough, so you’re in for a workout. I highly recommend using your Kitchenaid mixer. You have to be sure to cover the dough and allow it to rest. This process allows the gluten to do whatever gluten does to make pasta wonderful.
- To roll out the sheets of pasta dough to make your homemade ravioli, you can roll it on the counter by hand, but I highly recommend using a pasta roller. I’ve used the KitchenAid pasta attachments before, and while they certainly are easy to use (much like the spiralizer attachment that I highly recommend), there is something so satisfying about rolling pasta dough in a made in Italy pasta roller. Just be sure you use enough flour to avoid any sticking in your pasta machine.
- To roll your pasta sheets, start with the thickest setting, and roll it through. Fold that strip of dough into thirds and then send it back through after rotating 90 degrees. This is how you get nice straight edges. Continue to tighten the thickness settings with each roll. I believe I took it to level 5 thickness. Make sure your pasta sheets are wide enough to fully cover the ravioli mold.
- Cover the ravioli mold with the pasta dough, create a well for the filling, and add about a heaping teaspoon of roasted garlic butternut squash filling to each well. Before covering with the second sheet of dough, you can wet your finger and drag it across the dough in order to get the two sheets to really stick and seal together.
- Gently roll the dough together to cut the pieces. Be sure to have floured all of your dough generously so that it releases easily from the mold. Then, all you have to do is turn it over, give it a tap, and they all fall out. Easy!
- You can freeze your homemade ravioli at this point or toss it in salted boiling water for just a few minutes until they float.
Homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage Sauce
RECIPE VIDEO
Ingredients
Pasta
- 1 1/2 cups Semolina Pasta Flour
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose Flour
- 4 whole eggs
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 tablespoons water
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
Filling
- 2 1/2 lbs butternut squash peeled and roughly chopped
- 8 whole garlic cloves
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
- salt and pepper to taste
Sauce & garnish
- 4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick)
- 10 whole fresh sage leaves
- 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
- freshly grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
To make the pasta dough:
- Combine all pasta ingredients and mix together to make a stiff dough. Knead by hand or in a stand mixer with the dough hook on medium low speed for 10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and let rest for at least 20 minutes. On a lightly floured surface roll out to desired thickness and cut as desired.
To make the filling:
- Toss the squash with the garlic in a bowl with just enough olive oil to evenly coat everything. Roast on a baking sheet at 400oF for about 45 minutes until soft. Remove from the oven and mix in a food processor to combine - slowly pouring additional olive oil into the mixture until the consistency is smooth. Add parmesan, dried sage, and salt and pepper, to taste. Use this filling to make the ravioli.
To make the sauce:
- Combine butter and fresh sage leaves in small sauce pan. Heat over low heat for at least 15 minutes to infuse the butter. Then, increase the heat just a bit (take care not to burn) and stir continuously until the butter browns slightly and the sage leaves crisp.
To prepare:
- Use a ravioli press to add and seal one teaspoon of filling in between each pasta sheet. Dip finger in water and wet edges of pasta before adding second sheet to allow for a nicely sealed ravioli. Use a roller, gently pressing down, to seal them up. Be sure to heavily flour the outside of your pasta to enable easy release.
- Boil the ravioli in plenty of salted water until just done. This will only take a short time! The ravioli will float on the surface of the water when they are finished. Carefully remove and drain. Serve with sage butter, a sprinkle of toasted pine nuts, and a generous amount of grated Parmesan cheese.
Make this last night, and it turned out amazing. Everything about the recipe worked great! I did run out of filling before the pasta dough, but I filled them more than you suggested and we turning that dough into noodles and cooked them anyway.
I also included a very small amount of Butternut Squash Oil in the dough and sauce, which just helped boost that flavor a little. We also added a drop or 2 of balsamic on top.
That sounds like heaven! Where did you get butternut squash oil? I’m going to be roasting a squash today for a savory quickbread recipe.
It is made by Fiore olive oils. I bought it in one of their stores, but it looks like it available on their website as well.
Do you roast the butternut squash by following your other directions on your site–cut off top and roast 4 pieces and then add to garlic and roast again?
Hi Lisa, For this recipe I roast the cubed raw peeled squash with the garlic before running it through the processor. I wanted to make it super easy so you if you don’t want to buy a whole squash and peel it, you can buy cubed raw squash.
If I wanted to make this without the cheese what would you recommend as a substitute? I have digestive troubles with cheese but dairy and eggs are fine.
Hi Katie, The cheese is mostly for flavor. You can totally leave out and they’ll still be yummy!
I use nutritional yeast. It tastes the same! And is basically B vitamins.
I prefer more texture in my ravioli filling so I sauté minced scallions and shiitake mushrooms.
My squash didn’t come out that good. Is it 2 1/2 lbs before peeled and seeded or 2 1/2 lbs once it’s all cubed? Thanks!
How did the squash not turn out? I’ve made these raviolis with various sizes of squash and it all turned out because I added enough olive oil, salt and pepper in the food processor to get to the right consistency.
I’ve looked at multiple sauce recipes for the fresh butternut squash I bought, and this is the best one I’ve seen. The maple cream sauce looks great too, but it seems it would be sweeter than i want, considering the squash has a sweet taste as well. I can’t wait to make this tomorrow evening!
Can you freeze the left over ravioli?
Absolutely! After I make them, but before I boil them, I set them in a single layer on a parchment lined baking sheet and freeze. Once frozen, I put them in a resealable storage bag, freeze out all the air, and then keep frozen. When I’m ready to cook, I just dump the frozen ravioli right in the boiling salted water.
I just made this it was really yummy. I am going to try adding a bit of brown sugar to the butternut squash next time to liven up the flavor just a bit.. thanks for this! It was really good!
My husband bought me the kitchenaid pasta make attachment for Christmas and I finally got to use it with this recipe. I will now use your pasta dough recipe for all other pasta as well, it really is the perfect texture. I immediately pinned this recipe on the board “best recipes Ive tried” and that’s where it will stay and be used often! Side note, I froze the raviolis and ate them the week after and they tasted exactly the same, I did have to boil them a few minutes longer.
Hey, just made this recipe with my dad this weekend and it turned out amazing. It was the first time I made pasta from scratch, so it was a bit of a challenge, however, I think this recipe was very good and was very happy with the overall turnout after all the work involved in making this from scratch! =)
Can you make the filling the day before? And can you add some ricotta to the filling?
Yes and yes! I’ve never added ricotta to this particular filling but that would be a great addition. You can definitely make the filling ahead of time. Enjoy! Krissy
Excellent recipe! On my second round, I made a few changes: added ricotta cheese and crushed amaretti cookies to the filling and more crushed amaretti cookies to garnish. I know it sounds weird but try it.
Now THAT is interesting! So glad you liked it. -Krissy
Just made this for the first time! Also my first time attempting homemade pasta. It turned out GREAT!! Thank you so much. I’m going to tweak the filling a little by adding a touch of sugar and nutmeg. I also grated nutmeg over the top of the completed dish. Incredible. I had a bit of a learning curve on the pasta. Had to look up some troubleshooting ideas. I think I was trying to send too much through my machine (Kitchenaide attachment). I also didn’t realize I needed to send it through on the first setting lots of times, like 15…. My pasta turned out wonderfully.
Looking forward to making this recipe this weekend! Quick question – should the filling be completely cooled before putting in the food processor / before filling?
When making the dough, iet looks like you use a Pasta machine to roll out the dough. How far do you go when thining the dough…3? 4? or thinner?
THANKS
Hi Peggy, I have an ATLAS machine and I usually take it to a level 5. I know that the levels are different on various machines though. Hope that helps! Krissy
Question: what size are you making the raviolis to get 72 of them? I wasn’t able to get that many, but perhaps am making them too large and not rolling thin enough. The dough was perfect though and the filling delicious!! I tried adding a big pinch of brown sugar and a touch of nutmeg to the filling, as someone mentioned above. Thanks for the recipe!!
Glad you liked it! I use a norpro ravioli press and they are definitely bite sized… not cut into 3-bite sized.
Oh Wow . First time ever making these . Thank you so much ! I went exactly by recipe and family loved it . So then I used the dough recipe and make potato ones as well . I’m a little braver now and did it all by hand . Thanks again
Do you remove the garlic before purring the squash or include it?
include it!