Have you tried this yet? How does the end result compare to forking over the extra $ for fresh pasta rather than dried?
Between this tip and the baking pasta one, my girlfriend is going to look at me very oddly next time I cook pasta.
Between this tip and the baking pasta one, my girlfriend is going to look at me very oddly next time I cook pasta.
Why not just make your own fresh pasta, it's not that hard!
I have an attachment for my food mixer - so all I have to do is put my dry flour in the mixing bowl until the gluten is developed and then feed it through the pasta rollers.
$200 gets you a dedicated machine
http://www.pasta-recipes-made-easy.com/electric-pasta-machin...
or even cheaper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDImZ493V3U
Watch Gordon Ramsay do it by hand
Making your own pasta is a great idea. Also delicious. But it's like a Sunday afternoon idea.
Turning dried pasta into alkalized ramen-style noodles, though, is something you can set up in 4 minutes on a Tuesday night and then on Thursday when you remember you did that setup have for dinner in 3 minutes of cooking time.
The two cooking techniques just aren't comparable. The point of the Ideas In Food technique isn't to approximate fresh pasta. It's to make a better and more interesting use of dried pasta, which is simply a different product.
You can freeze it.
I use something like this [1] to make pasta very often. Ok, making ravioli is something that takes at least 30 minutes (and up to 4 hours if you're making an elaborate recipe for a large party). But you can make tagliatelle for four in the time the water boils.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/CucinaPro-150-Imperia-Pasta-Machine/dp...
This. I have a pasta roller and some different cutters and I really enjoy the fruits of my labor when I do it. However, it's such a PITA that I rarely do it - it's so much easier to throw a box of dried pasta in some water I often just do that.
I suppose that's true of just about everything in cooking but I'd rather skimp here and spend my time making some other component super awesome.
...but, here's the kicker: I haven't touched it in years (and I mean years!). Premade noodles are far too convenient to pass up. And if I'm making a few other things at once, I often don't want to be bothered with fiddly stuff like making noodles (and the counter space is usually at a premium anyway). I love cooking, but I often don't have the patience I used to for some things. These days, I'd rather sink my time into making some really amazing breads or trying out new recipes.
I'll have to clean up that old roller. But gosh, the time investment sometimes makes me dread the thought. ;)
http://www.amazon.com/CucinaPro-150-Imperia-Pasta-Machine/dp...
When we use ours, it has to be clamped to a wooden TV-tray table, and I have to hold it down with my legs as I crank, because both hands are occupied with the pasta, and the table is too light to keep the work surface from bouncing around.
If you have no suitable surfaces in your home, get the freakin' electric roller.
http://www.amazon.it/Kesper-2012-2-Spianatoia-pasta-68x48/dp...
http://www.amazon.it/Asse-pasta-betulla-100x60x1-E2011/dp/B0...
http://www.amazon.de/Nudelbrett-aus-Birkenholz-100-E2011/dp/...
http://www.amazon.fr/Planche-pâtes-bouleau-100x60x1-E2011/dp...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beechwood-counter-board-100x60x1-2-E...
Fresh pasta is not better than dried pasta, just different. You can't get an al dente texture with fresh pasta, for example.
Also, my feeling is that the definition of "al dente" is a little nebulous. I've seen it used to mean "the end result should be slightly chewy", but I've also seen recipes where it means "don't cook the pasta all the way so that it can finish cooking in the sauce pan". I get the feeling that the latter is what's more common in Italy.
(But I could be totally wrong about all this!)
Finishing the pasta in the sauce is always a good idea when it's possible, but you'd still aim for an al dente final texture (e.g. put it into the sauce when it's about a minute away from being al dente).
We mainly eat dried pasta; it could be that fresh pasta is overrepresented in restaurants, though.
That's true in the trivial sense that "better" is subjective, so nothing is inherently better than anything else.
OTOH, plenty of people do find fresh pasta better than, and not merely different than, dried pasta.
> You can't get an al dente texture with fresh pasta, for example.
Untrue. Al dente texture can be achieved with fresh or dried hard-wheat pasta; you can't get it with soft-wheat pasta, and soft-wheat pasta is easier to work by hand, and is for that reason increasingly popular as fresh pasta -- but you can make fresh hard-wheat pasta, and it used to be more common than it is now among fresh pastas, and you absolutely can make such pasta al dente.
That's not at all what I meant. Sometimes dried pasta works better than fresh pasta, and vice versa.
> you absolutely can make such pasta al dente
That's interesting. Does it have advantages over dried pasta?
Cold water rehydration? It's pretty much our default way of cooking pasta. I roasted it dry last night before rehydrating, until the pasta was a medley of different earth tones. First time I'd tried that. It was extremely cool.
Actually making fresh pasta is pretty fun…
Recently I decided I would start getting a lot more use out of an Imperia I bought years ago, with the specific goal of getting good/fast enough to not make a huge mess and be able to (literally) crank out a few helpings quick enough for dunner. Practice makes perfect...
The most time consuming part is mixing the flour and egg, and if you don't do it well enough you're going to have a hard time rolling and particularly cutting.
It turns out that it's a perfectly acceptable 'cheat' to just use a food processor... I tried it the last time and I ended up with a decent dough in a fraction of the time it takes to hand mix. That was an encouraging development :)