Tortelli
tor-TEL-lee
Filled parcel, square, rectangular, or rolled, by region.
45 mm square
Name. From torta, a cake or pie, with the diminutive -ello. A little pie.
What it is
Tortelli is the Emilian and Lombard word for a filled pasta, and the shape changes from town to town. Parma makes tortelli d'erbetta with ricotta and chard. Mantua makes tortelli di zucca with pumpkin, amaretti, and mostarda. Piacenza makes tortelli con la coda, twisted into a braid. Tuscany fills them with potato.
Some are squares, some rectangles, some folded and pinched. The name is the constant.
How to cook tortelli
3 to 6 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
3:00
Start when the water returns to the boil.
Water and salt
- Pasta, dry
- 400 g
- Water
- 4 L
- Salt
- 40 g
100 g per person as a main. A litre and 10 g of salt per 100 g. Adjust with the portion calculator.
The steps
- Bring 4 L of water to a full boil in a tall pot. Add 40 g of salt when it boils.
- Add the tortelli. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Keep the water at a gentle boil, not a rolling one, so the parcels do not split. They are done about a minute after they float.
- Scoop out a cup of the cooking water. Drain, or lift the pasta straight into the pan.
- Toss with the sauce over the heat for a minute. Add cooking water a splash at a time until it clings.
Read more: what al dente means and why the pasta water matters. Times for every shape are on the cook page.
How it holds sauce
Brown butter and parmesan for almost all of them. The Mantuan pumpkin tortello takes butter and sage; the Tuscan potato tortello takes a meat ragu.
Pairs with: Butter and sage · Meat ragu · Pomodoro
Classic plates: Tortelli d'erbetta, Tortelli di zucca mantovani, Tortelli con la coda, Tortelli di patate del Mugello.
Nutrition
Per 100 g of fresh pasta. The shape does not change these numbers. The dough does, so a whole wheat or egg version of this shape reads differently. See every dough.
| Per 100 g | Energy | Protein | Carbohydrate | Fibre | Fat | Sodium | Iron |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dry | 288 kcal | 11.3 g | 54.7 g | g | 2.3 g | 26 mg | 3.4 mg |
| Cooked | 131 kcal | 5.2 g | 24.9 g | g | 1.1 g | 6 mg | 1.1 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 220 g cooked, 288 kcal and 11 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.2 times its weight in the pot.
Who makes tortelli
5 tortelli products are catalogued, most of them sold in Italy, United States, France. Of those, 1 are organic.
Brands: Giant (2), Pastificio Groppi (1), Naturaplan (1), Coop (1).
No tortelli? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Ravioli
Stuffed · All of Italy
filling sealed between two squares of egg sheet, edges crimped
Cappellacci
Stuffed · Emilia-Romagna
large folded parcel filled with pumpkin, shaped like a peasant's hat
Tortelloni
Stuffed · Emilia-Romagna
large tortellini, folded the same way around a ricotta filling
Agnolotti
Stuffed · Piedmont
small pillow of roast meat filling, folded from one sheet and cut
Other names
Cappellacci, casonsei (Bergame and Brescia), tordelli (Tuscany), tortelli con la coda, tortelli d'erbetta, tortelli di zucca, tortelli mugellani, turtello (Emilia-Romagna).
Read more
Semolina versus egg dough: the two doughs of Italian pasta
The difference between durum semolina pasta and egg pasta: flour, water, eggs, where each is made, how each cooks, and which sauces each dough wants.
Fresh versus dried pasta: neither is better, they are different foods
The difference between fresh and dried pasta: dough, texture, cook time, storage, and which shapes and sauces belong to each.
Sources
- Cook time: fresh egg pasta.
- Photograph: Tortelli.jpg, Luca Vanzella from Milano, Italy, CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Open Food Facts (products, brands, labels), Open Database License, read on 2026-08-25.
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition per 100 g, by dough: FDC 169727, Pasta, fresh-refrigerated, plain, as purchased; FDC 169728, Pasta, fresh-refrigerated, plain, cooked), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Tortelli, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q3995818, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.