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This restaurant-quality Braised Beef and Tortelloni is loaded with tender chunks of beef in the most amazing Marsala wine sauce, and spooned over Asiago cheese tortelloni.
If you are like me – and you always order the Braised Beef and Tortelloni every time you eat out at Olive Garden – you are going to love today’s recipe!
I adore just about any meal made with tortellini or its larger cousin, tortelloni. (It’s my favorite pasta!) And this particular dish – made with beef short ribs that are braised until fork-tender and hearty chunks of Portobello mushrooms, all served with a super flavorful creamy Marsala wine sauce – makes my pasta-loving heart very happy!
After noticing that I always order the Braised Beef and Tortelloni every single time we go out to eat at Olive Garden, Jack suggested we try making a copycat recipe at home. And dare I say…our Braised Beef and Tortelloni is EVEN BETTER than the version at the restaurant? Yep – Jack totally nailed it!
I’m going to say right up front that this Braised Beef and Tortelloni isn’t a quick recipe, and it does take a little bit of time and effort to prepare. But if you follow our recipe below – you’ll be rewarded with a delicious pasta meal with deep, rich flavor that will have you tempted to lick then plate clean!
Using a quality Marsala wine in this recipe is important. Whatever you do, please don’t make this dish with the Marsala cooking wine you find on supermarket shelves – it just isn’t going to give you the flavor you want. Instead, buy a real Marsala drinking wine from a liquor store.
Additionally, this Braised Beef and Tortelloni recipe makes a generous amount – so it’s perfect for feeding a crowd, or for enjoying as leftovers the next day.
Enjoy!
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Braised Beef and Tortelloni
This restaurant-quality Braised Beef and Tortelloni is loaded with tender chunks of beef in the most amazing Marsala wine sauce, and spooned over Asiago cheese tortelloni.
Ingredients
3–4 pounds short ribs, bone left on **see note below
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup sweet onion diced, such as Vidalia
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped, plus more for garnish
1 cup marsala wine (do not use the Marsala cooking wine from the supermarket, get real Marsala drinking wine)
1 1/2 cups beef stock (store bought is fine, or see here)
1 cup water
1 bay leaf
2 large portabella mushroom caps *see note
2 plum tomatoes, cut into eight pieces
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 20-ounce package Asiago-filled fresh tortelloni (or any fresh cheese-filled tortelloni available at your market)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Salt and pepper all sides of the short ribs.
In a large Dutch oven or heavy bottomed oven proof pot with an oven proof lid, heat the olive oil over medium high heat.
Add the beef ribs and sear on all six sides for 2-3 minutes per side. Remove the seared meat to a platter and pour off all but two tablespoons of the fat remaining in the pan but do not discard the remaining fat. More will be used later in this recipe.
Add the onions and sauté for three minutes. Add the basil and cook for one more minute then add the marsala wine.
Reduce by half then add the beef stock, water and the bay leaf and add the seared ribs back into the pan. The liquid will not cover the tops of the beef. Cover and place in the oven for two hours, untouched.
While the beef is braising, in a large skillet, add 2 tablespoons of the reserved beef fat and once hot, add the mushrooms. Sauté for 5-6 minutes or until tender.
Add the tomatoes, cook for one minute then add the balsamic vinegar. Cook for one more minute and remove from heat. Set aside.
After two hours, remove the pot from the oven and pick the beef pieces out to your cutting board with tongs. The bones should slip right off and be discarded. Once they are cool enough to handle, use a sharp knife and remove fat and gristle from the beef. Cut the remaining beef pieces against the grain into slices.
Place a large pot of water on to cook the tortelloni while you finish the dish. The tortelloni takes about 6-7 minutes to cook, assuming you are using fresh.
In a small sauté pan, melt butter and once melted, add flour. Cook for three minutes over medium heat and then remove from heat.
Heat the liquid left in the pot of beef over medium high and once it starts to boil, add the butter and flour mixture and whisk to combine. Once thickened, add heavy cream and whisk again. Add cooked sliced beef and cooked mushrooms and tomatoes from earlier. Stir to combine.
Drain the cooked tortelloni and add back into the pot it was cooked in and add a little of the finished sauce to coat.
Pour the tortelloni into a serving platter and pour the finished braised beef over the top.
Garnish with some chopped fresh basil.
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Notes
*To prepare the portabella mushroom caps, remove stem if present and discard. Use a soup spoon and scoop out the dark ribs and also discard. Cut up the remaining cleaned mushroom cap into ½ inch sized pieces. After cleaning and cutting, you should have about 6 ounces or approximately two cups.
**3½ pounds of bone-in short ribs will yield one pound of usable meat. The rest are bones and scrap after cooked.
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If I use beef sirloin instead of short ribs
How long do I leave it in the oven?
Tina, this is Jack. The braising process is a long and slow process that cooks and tenderizes tough cuts of meats like chuck or in this case short ribs. Sirloin is best cooked quick as it is a tender part of the animal. When sirloin is cooked for a long period of time, it dries out, loses taste and gets chewy. You can use sirloin but the whole recipe is going to change to cook it quickly and without remaking it and testing it, it would be too difficult to just give you a cooking time without adjusting the liquid and testing the results. I would be guessing. You are better off finding a different recipe to use the sirloin and buying short ribs to make this.
Wish I was more helpful,
Jack
Mine didn’t turn out correct! I did everything exactly the way you said too, but after the meat came out of the oven, do we strain the fat that’s left in there?
I didn’t, and when I brought everything to a boil prior to adding butter and flour mixture, it seemed burnt and never got the creamy consistency that it shows.
This is my husband and my favorite OG recipe and we really want to perfect it!
Hi Christine, this is Jack.
A few presumptions here…
When you seared the beef, you didn’t let them get too dark?
When you made the roux (butter and flour) you didn’t let it scorch and kept stirring?
In the recipe, it talks about how to handle the fat (some used and some discarded) You followed those steps, correct?
Did you watch the video that came with the recipe? That may help identify what went wrong.
The whole process is pretty standard for most recipes like this (Sear meat, braise meat in oven, cook veggies in rendered fat, thicken liquid with a roux (butter and flour), combine and serve).
Wish I was there to watch your process.
Good luck,
Jack
I notice in your recipe you use a 6 Qt Dutch Oven. Do you think a 5 Qt Braiser pan would work as well? It’s 3 niches deep.
Hi Samantha – You should be ok in the braiser. It’s possible that a wider, flatter pan will allow the liquid to evaporate more quickly so we’d suggest that you check half way through the cooking time and add more beef stock if needed.
This recipe is perfection!
Thanks Regina!
Very tasty! Time consuming for sure but tastes very similar to the food chain’s dish.
Glad you liked it Shoe!
Hi Martha, since we tried the dish at olive garden, we searched for a recipe to make this at home. I did it several times, and of course I need more Marsala 🙂
Thank you, its really tasty.
You’re very welcome Max – glad you enjoyed the recipe!
I have made this a few times and its always so so good! My husband does not like pasta dishes much, and he tells me a few times throughout the meal how good it is! We buy a cow once a year and never did much with the short ribs….. now I am out thanks to this recipe!
So glad you (both) enjoyed the recipe Christie!
Tried this with a little more than 2 lbs of ribs and the amount of fat that was in the pan after cooking the ribs was overwhelming. There was no way of removing it so the dish was very greasy and heavy
Thanks for your feedback Lauren – The 4th step in the instructions had you remove the ribs from the pan and drain off the fat at that point in the recipe. Did you happen to miss that?
Thank you so much for this. I was very sad to find out OG has taken this meal off their menu. This is also the only thing I ever order there. So glad to find a way to still have it. 😊
Oh no Heather – I didn’t know that it’s off the menu! (I ordered it all the time too!) Hope you enjoy our version! 🙂
Could I make this without the balsamic vinaigrette? Should I make any changes if I omit it?
Hi Shanna – Balsamic vinegar has a very distinctive flavor so you might not achieve the same copycat flavor without it, but in a pinch you could swap in a different vinegar such as red or white wine vinegar.