Picking Pasta Shells For Italian Stuffed Shells

Video Transcript

"MATT SENATORE: Hi! This is Matt Senatore on behalf of Expert Village, and today we're going to learn how to make my Italian stuffed shell appetizer. And before we make our pasta, I want to talk about one thing that I think is extremely important. We've been talking about presentation, so most people you know, they get a box of pasta and they open up their--the pot and they just dump it all in and they don't care because they just going to eat it. They don't care what's broken and what's not broken. With stuffed shells, remember we talked about presentation and we don't want broken shells. So, it's very important to go into the box and to hand pick the shells that are not broken, you know, and discard the shells that are 'cause we don't need them. I'm going to show you a good example of a shell that you're not going to use. These are the shells that you will use. They are not broken. This is what they look like, you see? And we're going to put our stuffing and our filling in the middle here, so these shells are great, just like this. Now I'm going to show you a couple of examples of shells not to use. These are shells right here that you do not want to use. Look how they're broken on the edges, just shattered over here. Look at this one. You know? And how are you going to present this? That looks terrible. So you don't--and how are you going to keep the filling in? You know what I mean? So definitely, take the time, care enough to open the box, and inspect every shell. Take the ones that you want, such as this. Discard the ones that you don't want, such as this. Okay. Now let's boil our pasta."