Tag: pasta

How to Cut Pasta the Easy Way
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When making homemade pasta you have several options in forming your noodles, but while there are many ways of doing it, I want you to know the easy way to cut pasta.
- You can extrude it (like my play dough experiment for next week )
- Run it through a dedicated pasta machineCut individual noodles
- or as this article demonstrates an Easy Way to Cut Pasta, you can roll the dough and cut noodles very efficiently and quickly.Once you get your dough as thin as you desire, simply roll it into a tube, and using a sharp knife, slice it as thin as you want.
After cutting the dough spirals, simply unroll each spiral into a long noodle, and either dry or cook immediately.

This is a very simple way of cutting pasta noodles, and I hope it makes your life easier.

This used to be something I thought was the realm of the super skilled Italian mother – but after trying it I found that homemade pasta is extremely simple to make, as well as being pretty inexpensive.

Once I found an easy way to cut pasta I was all set to make it all of the time – but then I discovered gnocchi and then all my pasta making stopped.
January 14, 2016
Tomato Pasta

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This article on tomato pasta is the next evolution from my homemade pasta experiments.

Once you get the basics down you can experiment to get your recipes tweaked to culinary perfection.

In this post we will use homemade tomato powder to make a flavored Tomato Powder Pasta. This would work with almost any other powders.

Feel free to experiment with spices, herbs, or other vegetables like spinach.

Step 1: Create Powder

In an upcoming post on my blog, I will show how to make a great tomato powder by using the leftover tomato skins from making salsa, but if your in a hurry, its really easy to make this powder by putting a can of cheap tomato paste in your dehydrator and drying it down until it is like a fruit roll up.

We used a “bullet” but any blender would do the trick. I cut the chewy tomato sheet into strips about 1×1/2 inches so that they would pulverize easier.

I choose to stop after most of the tomato was a powder, but there were still some little chunks.

Step 2: Mix pasta

Dump the tomato powder in with your flour and mix while dry.
Next make a small imprint into the center of your flour and add one egg per cup of mix.
Beat eggs and slowly enlarge your strokes to incorporate flour. Don’t rush or you will end up with a bowl of crumb. Go slowly and you will be rewarded with a lump of dough.
If you need to fix your crumbly dough because you whisked too fast, you can add a little water.

Step 3: Knead and Roll

Knead your dough until it become smooth and uniform in texture.
Then roll out the dough as thin as you possibly can.,

Step 4: Cut Boil and Serve

Cut your noodles however you wish
Boil for two minutes in slightly salted water
Serve immediately with a tasty sauce.

January 27, 2014
How to Use a Play Dough Machine to Make Pasta

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I have always wanted to make my own pasta, and its been on my list for a long time, but I really didn’t want to mess with hand cutting my own noodles, and I did not want to buy a $50 dollar pasta machine.

However, while researching another project I happened to find a $20 sheet press for polymer clay that looks exactly like a pasta roller. Being the cheapskate I am, I started thinking about even cheaper ways to solve the problem when it hit me. Play Dough is Dough… A play doh fun factory is around 6 dollars, and if it didn’t work, my wife could use it in her class (she is a special educator that works with autistic children).

Here is my attempt to make an Improvised Pasta Maker from a play doh fun factory toy.

To test I just made a simple pasta dough recipe 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, knead until you have a ball of pasta dough.

I dug through the package to get the dough press and the two sliding bars with different sized holes and shapes.

After some experimentation, I found that the bar with the 4 small squares made the best compromise between shape and ease of use. If I tried to press the dough through the very small holes, the pressure created caused the dough to escape from every available orifice on the machine.

Once I had the noodles made, I simply dumped them in a pot of boiling water and cooked for about 3 minutes.

This works, but unless you want to make stars or some other funky shaped noodle, then I found it much easier just to hand cut the dough into noodles. But I think it was a neat experiment, and as I said in the video, once my boy gets to the age where he likes playing with play dough, we will recreate this experiment to start crossing over into cooking.

January 6, 2014
Making Homemade Pasta

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I have a very easy recipe for making your own homemade pasta. I love pasta, and since boxed pastas cannot compete with fresh noodles, I wanted to share my recipe. It is very simple and easy to modify once you get the principles down.

Basically it is one cup flour to one cup egg.

All you need is flour (I used All Purpose, but adding some high protein flour helps), eggs, and water.
You can mix directly on your table and use your hands, but I used a mixing bowl and fork to start.
A rolling pin and knife are needed to shape and cut your pasta.

Step 1: Add eggs and incorporate into dough

Make a indent into your flour, and break the egs into the center of the depression. Gently beat eggs, and slowly move outward incorporating the flour bit by bit until you end up with a ball of dough.
Depending on the weather, the flour, the size of the eggs, and if you held your mouth right, you may need to add a small bit of water to totally form the dough.
Once you have a ball of dough, dump it out onto a large floured surface.

Step 2: Knead

Knead the dough thoroughly. You want to really work the gluten in the wheat. It will become smooth and take a consistency a lot like play dough.

Step 3: Roll out very thinly

Using a rolling pin roll your dough out until it is as thin as you can make it. Pasta will plump as it cooks, so take that into consideration. It is nice if you can keep your dough roughly rectangular in shape, but I always give up as I try to keep it thin.

Step 4: Cut into strips

You can cut your dough by hand (great if you have patience and attention to detail and want very thin strips) This is most easily done with a pizza cutter or very large dough knife. BUt I find it easier to roll the dough and cut little pinwheels (see my article on the easy way to cut pasta dough).

Step 5: Cook

You could dry the noodles for later by handing them up. They make special drying racks made of small wood dowels, but I think past is much tastier if cooked fresh.

All you need is boiling water. Dump the noodles in the water and they will cook in 2 or 3 minutes.

Drain and serve with whatever sauce you like best.

Enjoy

November 18, 2013