Recipe

Chicken & mushroom cannelloni

Serves 4 · Prep 35 min · Cook 40 min · 9×13 dish, 12 tubes

An all-white cannelloni: no tomato anywhere, just shredded chicken and browned mushrooms under a white-wine béchamel. The dish stands or falls on one step — cooking the water out of the mushrooms before anything else touches the pan. Mushrooms are about 90% water; skip the dry sauté and that water re-emerges in the oven as a gray puddle under the pasta.

Ingredients

Filling

  • 400 g cooked chicken, shredded — from 500 g raw boneless thighs, poached 15 minutes in salted water, or the equivalent picked from a leftover roast
  • 300 g chestnut (cremini) mushrooms, sliced 5 mm
  • 1 small onion, finely diced · 2 garlic cloves, minced · 2 sprigs thyme, leaves only
  • 100 ml dry white wine (split with the sauce below)
  • 150 g ricotta · 40 g Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated · 1 egg yolk
  • Olive oil, salt, black pepper

Assembly

  • 12 dried cannelloni tubes (~250 g)
  • White-wine béchamel: 60 g butter, 60 g flour, 750 ml whole milk, the reserved 50 ml wine, grating of nutmeg
  • 40 g Parmigiano-Reggiano · 100 g mozzarella, torn

Note the béchamel is bigger than in our tomato-based recipes (60/60/750 instead of 50/50/600): with no tomato layer, it is the only liquid the pasta has to drink, so there must be more of it.

Method

  1. Dry-sauté the mushrooms (10 min). Heat 2 tbsp oil in your widest pan over high heat and add the mushrooms in one layer. Leave them alone for 2 minutes, then stir occasionally. They will squeak, flood the pan with liquid, and then — keep going — the liquid evaporates and they start to brown. Only brown mushrooms go in the filling. Don’t salt them yet; salt pulls water out faster than the pan can evaporate it.
  2. Build the base. Drop the heat to medium, add the onion, garlic and thyme and soften 5 minutes. Pour in 50 ml of the wine and let it cook away completely. Tip onto a board, cool 10 minutes, then chop the whole mixture finely so it packs into tubes without air gaps.
  3. Béchamel (12 min). Melt the butter, whisk in the flour for 2 minutes, then add the milk in four additions, whisking smooth each time, and finish with the remaining 50 ml wine. Simmer 3–4 minutes to a pourable coating consistency; season with 1 tsp salt and nutmeg.
  4. Mix the filling. Combine chicken, mushroom mixture, ricotta, Parmigiano, egg yolk and 4 tbsp of the béchamel. The ricotta and yolk bind it; the borrowed béchamel keeps it from baking dry. Season until it tastes slightly too strong on its own — the pasta will mute it. Chill 20 minutes so it pipes cleanly (all the ways to get it into tubes are ranked in the filling guide).
  5. Assemble. Spread a thin ladle of béchamel over the base of a 9×13 dish — straight sides matter, as covered in the baking-dish guide. Pipe the filling into the tubes (~45 g each) and arrange in one snug layer. Pour over every drop of the remaining béchamel, making sure no pasta is left naked, then scatter both cheeses.
  6. Bake. 190°C / 375°F, middle rack: 25 minutes covered with foil, then 10–15 minutes uncovered until golden with bubbling edges. Rest 10 minutes before serving.

Leftover roast chicken? Even better than poached — the browned skin-side meat adds flavor the filling can’t get otherwise. You need 400 g picked meat; a supermarket rotisserie bird yields roughly that from the two legs and one breast.

Getting the chicken texture right

Shred the chicken with two forks, then run a knife through it so no strand is longer than 2 cm — long fibers snag at the tube opening and tear the pasta. If you own a food processor, four one-second pulses does the same job faster; our food-processor guide covers which bowl sizes handle a full batch. Do not process to a paste: you want distinct pieces bound in cream, not chicken mousse.

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Make ahead

Assemble up to 24 hours ahead and refrigerate covered, adding 10 minutes to the covered bake time. It also freezes well unbaked — the béchamel protects the filling from freezer burn. Full timings from frozen are in the freezing guide.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use raw chicken in the filling?

No — the filling only reaches gentle-bake temperatures inside the tubes, which is not a safe or pleasant way to cook raw poultry. Poach, roast or use leftovers first; the bake is for heating and browning, not cooking the meat.

Why did my mushroom filling turn watery?

The mushrooms weren't cooked far enough. They must release all their liquid and then brown in a wide pan over high heat — if they steamed in a crowded pan or were salted early, the remaining water leaks out during the bake.

Can I add tomato to chicken and mushroom cannelloni?

You can spread 300 ml of passata under the tubes in place of the béchamel base layer, but the classic version is all white. If you do add tomato, reduce the béchamel to the 50 g/50 g/600 ml ratio used in our beef recipe.