Ravioli vs tortelli: what’s the difference?

Short answer: ravioli and tortelli are the same idea under two names. Both are fresh pasta filled with something and sealed between two sheets. Ravioli is the broad, national word. Tortelli is what we call them in Tuscany and Emilia, and ours are usually bigger.

The longer answer is more interesting, because the naming tells you where you are standing.

The one rule that actually holds

Italian filled-pasta names are regional first and descriptive second. There is no national standards body for this, and any Italian who tells you their region’s definition is the correct one is doing it affectionately rather than accurately.

That said, here is the working map:

Name	Shape	Size	Home	Usually served
Ravioli	Flat square or round, two sheets sealed	Small	The general Italian term	With sauce
Tortelli	Square or half-moon	Larger	Tuscany, Emilia	With sauce
Tortellini	A ring, folded round a fingertip	Tiny	Bologna	In broth
Agnolotti	Rectangular pinched pocket, often one sheet folded	Small	Piedmont	With roast juices or butter
Cappelletti	”Little hats”, a ring with a peak	Small	Romagna, Le Marche	In broth

If you remember only one thing: tortellini go in broth and are tiny; everything else is bigger and gets sauce.

Ravioli or tortellini, in one line

This is the question people actually ask, and the one that gets answered worst, because tortelli and tortellini sound almost identical and are two different things.

Tortellini are rings. A small filled square is folded around a fingertip and the two ends are pressed together, closing it into a ring. They are tiny, about the size of a thumbnail, they come from Bologna, and they belong in broth. The filling is meat: pork loin, mortadella, prosciutto.

Ravioli are flat. A mound of filling between two sheets, sealed all round, cut square or round. Much bigger than a tortellino, served with sauce, filling depending on the region.

So the difference is not the filling and not the dough. It is the fold, and what happens next: a ring in broth versus a flat parcel with sauce.

And tortelli, which is what this article is actually about, are not large tortellini despite the name. They are flat parcels like ravioli, only bigger and Tuscan. The -ini ending is a diminutive in Italian, which for once misleads: tortellini are not small tortelli, they are their own shape from a different city.

What makes Tuscan tortelli different

Here is the part visitors do not expect. Ask for tortelli in the Mugello, the hill country north of Florence, and what arrives is filled with potato, mashed with garlic, parsley, a little tomato, parmesan and sometimes nutmeg. Not ricotta. Not spinach.

The reason is the reason behind most regional Italian food: potatoes grew well up there and meat did not go far. It is one of the genuinely great dishes of Tuscany and it surprises almost everyone who orders it expecting the ricotta-and-spinach version they know from home.

The other Tuscan version, tortelli maremmani, does use ricotta and spinach and comes from the Maremma on the coast. Both are correct. They are simply from different valleys, and people from each will tell you the other one is a bit odd.

We wrote more about this in the tortelli page of our shapes library, including the folding, and the flatter, smaller version has its own page under ravioli.

The technique is identical, whatever you call it

Whether you are making ravioli in Rome or tortelli in the Mugello, the method is the same, and so are the ways it goes wrong.

Roll the sheet slightly thicker than you would for ribbons. A filled shape has to survive being stuffed, sealed and boiled. Tagliatelle-thin dough tears at the seam.

Lay the filling out in a line with proper gaps. Crowding the mounds is what makes sealing impossible later. A teaspoon each, well spaced.

Push the air out before you seal. This is the whole game. Lay the second sheet over and press down around each mound with your fingertips, working outwards towards the edge so the air escapes rather than getting trapped over the filling. Trapped air expands in boiling water, and that is what bursts a raviolo, not the water, not the pot, not bad luck.

Seal firmly, then check every edge. Cut with a wheel, then run a finger round each one. One weak seam empties the whole parcel into the pan.

Do not drown it in sauce. You have just spent an hour putting the flavour on the inside. Butter and sage (foamed until it smells nutty, with a few crisped leaves) is the classic for a reason. A restrained meat ragù is the Sunday version. Anything louder is competing with your own filling.

So which should you say?

In Tuscany, say tortelli and you will sound like you have been paying attention. Anywhere else, ravioli is understood everywhere and nobody will correct you.

And if you want to make them with your hands rather than read about them, filled pasta is one of the four shapes in our three-hour class in the Oltrarno, along with pici, tagliatelle and pappardelle. It is reliably the shape people are proudest of at the end, mostly because it is the one that takes patience. Bring children if you have them: the family class runs from age six, and folding parcels turns out to be exactly the kind of job a seven-year-old is good at.