Homemade Pasta
There’s nothing like fresh homemade pasta. When I am having a bad day, week, or even if I just want something comforting and hearty…I carb load and my carb of choice is usually pasta. Once you have made your own pasta or purchased fresh pasta, it’s difficult to go back to dry boxed pasta. Yeah…I am a food snob. In this post, I am going share my experiences using a manual pasta maker versus the Kitchen Aid pasta attachment.
I was gifted a manual pasta maker for Christmas a few years back from a friend. Time used to be more limited for me and it took me awhile to put it to use because making pasta is time consuming. Noodles.PDX and I decided to dedicate a whole day to make Braised Beef Lasagna (recipe to come), every component from scratch. Most people know that lasagna is my all-time favourite dish—if I was on death row and could request one final meal, it would be a pan of lasagna so this was a fitting first pasta to attempt.
Ingredients
Basic Egg Pasta
10 oz all-purpose flour
2 whole large eggs
4 large egg yolks
1 tsp salt
This is the Classic Egg Pasta Recipe that I usually use for fettuccine or lasagna, you can follow the directions on how to make the dough and how to roll out the pasta.
We found that the manual pasta maker is difficult to use because it tends to stick and tear, we realized that we have to heavily dust it with flour in between each roll and it takes two people to work it. One to turn the crank and the other to guide the pasta through and make sure it doesn’t stick to the underside of rollers. It was constantly rolling onto itself so we would have to stop and attempt to pull it apart without tearing the sheets. Our lasagna sheets did not come out perfectly, but could you tell? Still delicious.
My second attempt to use the manual pasta maker was to make Fettuccine by myself and found it was hard to maneuver on my own. Same issues, it still sticks even if you generously dust it with flour and I needed an extra hand. I got really shredded looking Fettuccine that still tastes amazing though.
My friend suggested that I should get a Kitchen Aid pasta attachment because she loves hers. Spend money on an attachment when I already have a manual pasta maker? I was hesitant. Some times, I am just really practical—I purchased a spiralizer attachment and barely used it. She offered to let me try hers out. I put it to the test, I attempted to make Fettuccine again using the same recipe but with the attachment. I was blown away! Since the Kitchen Aid does the rolling, all I had to do was guided the pasta through. The rollers have some sort of non-stick coating that I barely had to dust it with flour. It took me less than 10 minutes to roll out and cut the pasta. What?!
I ended up purchasing my own pasta attachment during Black Friday when they were on sale. The first thing I made with my attachment was lasagna. I was curious to as how long with would take me to make my own noodles and assemble it versus using dry pasta. In the time it took for me to boil the dry noodles, I was able to make my fresh lasagna noodle, which only take about two minutes to boil. In conclusion, making my own pasta didn’t take any longer. Keep in mind, I am pretty quick at putting together a dough. I am sold, I love my Kitchen Aid pasta attachment! I will say, it is a little bit dangerous because you could have fresh pasta whipped up in no time, however, I have been doing a good job at self-restraint.
