Recipe

Seafood cannelloni

Serves 4 · Prep 25 min · Cook 40 min · 9×13 dish, 12 tubes

The obvious way to make seafood cannelloni — cook the seafood, mix it into a filling, bake — is exactly how you end up with rubbery prawns, because the seafood cooks twice. This recipe uses the opposite principle: the seafood goes into the tubes raw and cold, so the oven cooks it exactly once. Inside its jacket of pasta, ricotta and béchamel, it steams gently to just-done in the same 35–40 minutes the pasta needs. It is the same logic as a fish pie, and it works every time.

Ingredients

Filling

• 250 g raw prawns, peeled and deveined (thawed frozen prawns are fine — pat them very dry)
• 250 g skinless firm white fish fillet — cod, haddock or hake. Avoid delicate fish like sole (dissolves) and oily fish like salmon (overwhelms)
• 250 g ricotta, drained in a sieve 15 minutes
• 1 egg yolk · zest of 1 lemon · 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 small garlic clove, finely grated · pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
• Salt and white pepper

Assembly

• 12 dried cannelloni tubes (~250 g)
• Lemon béchamel: 60 g butter, 60 g flour, 750 ml whole milk, 100 ml dry white wine, 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 30 g Parmigiano-Reggiano mixed with 1 tbsp fine dry breadcrumbs

Tomato is deliberately absent: this is a bianca dish by default, and the larger béchamel (60/60/750, loosened with wine) is the pasta’s only liquid. Yes, there is a little Parmigiano on a seafood pasta — the cheese-with-fish rule relaxes in baked dishes, and 30 g is a browning aid, not a flavor takeover. Skip it if it offends; the breadcrumbs alone will color.

Method

1. Cut the seafood cold. Straight from the fridge, chop prawns and fish into 1 cm pieces — big enough to stay distinct, small enough to pack into tubes. Return to the fridge immediately. Cold matters twice over: for safety, and because a cold center buys the pasta time before the seafood finishes cooking.
2. Mix the filling. Beat the ricotta smooth with the egg yolk, lemon zest, parsley, garlic, 1 tsp salt and white pepper, then fold in the cold seafood. It should look like seafood bound in cream, not a paste. Refrigerate while you make the sauce.
3. Lemon béchamel (12 min). Melt the butter, whisk in the flour for 2 minutes, add the milk in four additions and then the wine. Simmer 3–4 minutes — aim slightly looser than a meat-cannelloni béchamel, since the bake will thicken it. Off the heat, stir in the lemon juice (added earlier, it can split the sauce) and season.
4. Assemble fast. Ladle a thin layer of béchamel into a 9×13 dish. Fill the tubes with the cold seafood mixture — a sturdy piping bag with a full 2 cm opening handles the chunks; the spoon-and-poke fallback is in the filling guide. Arrange in one layer and cover completely with the remaining sauce. Any exposed pasta or seafood will dry out.
5. Top and bake. Scatter the Parmigiano-breadcrumb mix thinly. Bake at 190°C / 375°F: 25 minutes covered with foil, then 10 minutes uncovered — the shorter uncovered phase (versus 10–15 for meat versions) keeps the seafood tender; take it out at pale gold, not mahogany. Rest 10 minutes: carryover heat finishes the very center.

Check oven thermometers on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate, cannelloni.net earns from qualifying purchases. We only recommend equipment we would use in our own kitchens, and recommendations are never influenced by commissions.

To drink

A crisp, unoaked white with acidity to cut the béchamel: Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi and Gavi are the classic matches, and a good Vermentino works where those are hard to find. Whatever you open, use 100 ml of it in the sauce — the “cooking wine” category is where sauces go to die.

Make ahead — with one exception

Unlike every other recipe on this site, do not freeze this one unbaked if your seafood was previously frozen (most supermarket prawns and much white fish are). Refreezing raw thawed seafood is a quality and safety loss. Assemble up to 12 hours ahead and refrigerate, or bake first and freeze portions — the general rules are in the freezing guide.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use cooked or frozen prawns?

Thawed raw frozen prawns are ideal — pat them dry first. Pre-cooked prawns are the one thing to avoid: they've already been cooked once, and the bake makes it twice, which is where rubbery texture comes from.

Can I make seafood cannelloni with a tomato sauce?

Yes — replace the béchamel base layer with 400 ml of light passata sauce and keep béchamel on top, skipping the cheese. The all-white version is the default because tomato easily overpowers delicate white fish.

How do I know the seafood inside the tubes is cooked?

After 25 minutes covered plus 10 uncovered at a true 190°C, 1 cm pieces are reliably done. If you want proof, a probe thermometer pushed into a center tube should read at least 63°C/145°F. If your oven runs cold, this is the dish that exposes it.