Homemade Pasta?

pollys

buxtonrabbitgreen wrote:

Hi there, I bought one last week. It is a bit of a performance. The ingredients are easy enough 4oz of plain flour and an egg. The result does taste nicer then bought pasta in my opinion. From my recent experience you need a long stretch of kitchen unit clear as it gets very long the thinner it gets. And one person to feed it in and another to catch it on the way out, and a handy chair back to hang it on. We have done it a few times now.

We use coat hangers to hang it on, visitors find it amusing, a kitchen full of drying pasta:D

Pink.

Hi zippy,

This older thread might help you to decide: making HM pasta

Pink

buxtonrabbitgreen

By the way Zippy I got my pasta machine in Aldi for £7.99

belfastgirl23

Bet you could pick one up cheap on ebay. We inherited one when we moved house - think it's the kind of thing people buy and then don't use. It is a fun thing to do on a rainy afternoon but tbh unless you are time rich I don't think it's worth it personally

Zed42

We had one for our wedding .... 6yrs ago .. and we've used it less than 6 times ....

However, saying that I've used it 3 times in the past 6 months

It all depends on whether you have the space for it. Making the pasta itself is easy and tastes wonderful. It also freezes or you can dry it for later use ....

Also, it does help if you have at least one other set of hands!

Fivenations

Speaking as an Italian - Homemade fresh egg pasta is superior to shop egg pasta but cannot really be compared to dried eggless durum wheat pasta as they are two different products enhanced by different types of sauces.

Italians do not look down at dried pasta, as I have noticed some TV chefs, and even friends, do. Each has its own merits and a place on in your kitchen. There are sauces that will go with eggless pasta that would not match egg pasta and vice versa.

Just to throw a spanner in the works Italians also make fresh eggless pasta such as orrechiette - by hand - but that's another story!

thriftmonster

I use mine for tagliatelle as we find dried tagliatelle goes mushy whereas the other shapes and spaghetti don't. Got it in the Christmas sale and have used it 2 or three times since. I use the back of the kitchen chairs to hang it over

jennyjelly

Yes it is nicer, but oh what a faff!

I bought one for a couple of quid at a boot sale and have used it twice. It will probably go back in the next boot sale I do.

Unfortunately the weight makes it quite impractical for ebaying as postage would take the price over what you can pay for a new one.

Personally I've just opted to buy slightly better pasta for dishes where the taste of the pasta is obvious, and stick with Value for things with strong flavours where it won't matter.

It is fun as a novelty though, so good luck if you decide to go for it.

Fivenations

Forgot to say, while my grandmother and mother made pasta every day, since you can buy high quality fresh pasta quite easily all over Italy today's Italian housewives tend to make it only on Sundays or for special occasions. Unless of course, they have a resident Nonna to make it for them! So dont beat yourselves up about not making it!

Pandora123_2

We bought one and LOVE it. The texture and flavour of the pasta is so much nicer. Plus now we can have fresh eggless pasta, which isn't available to buy.

We bought a kit which came with a pasta drying rack (no chair backs or coat hangers required!)

I don't find space a problem even in our small kitchen. If the pasta gets too long and unwieldy to manage when rolling it, we simply cut it in half crosswise. Once you get into the rhythm of it, and if there are two people doing it, it doesn't take long to do.

:A