What’s not to love about pasta? Trust me when I tell you that until you try homemade, from scratch, pasta, you haven’t had pasta baby!
It’s now been 2 years since I had my MIL teach me how to make her homemade noodles using her mom’s recipe.
Naturally since the recipe is over 70 years or so, everything was done by hand. The old-fashioned version, hand mixing & hand cutting. Hand-everything is what I learned!
That’s a lot of noodles!!!
I can’t tell you how long I had wanted to learn the art of pasta making from a kitchen worthy guru!
But first, a selfie with my guru!
Since learning how to make pasta dough and making a couple batches the old-fashioned way, I decided to purchase the pasta attachments for my kitchen aid mixer and the drying rack. Which rocks by the way!
As much as I love the old-fashioned way of doing it all by hand, I do have a full-time job, I part time blog, and part time pretend to be a wife, homemaker, cook, etc.
The kitchen aid pasta attachments are a wonderful time saver, making it a snap! If you’ve been thinking about investing in a pasta maker, do it! No need to think about it any longer because you will ditch ever buying store bought pasta EVER again! I have! The more I can steer from buying boxed, preservative & chemical laden foods at the store—the better! This method with three main ingredients, saves you time and it tastes so much better than store bought.
The attachments allow for more control on the overall thickness and cut of each noodle and you can whip ‘em out in no time! Plus, there are so many flavors you can make. But this time I tried out spinach fettuccine, basil linguine, along with traditional spaghetti.
Me exploding from eating my weight in homemade pasta could’ve been a possibility- I kid you not!
Creamy spinach fettuccine with Cajun shrimp one night…
and several nights later had grilled chicken on a bed of al dente spaghetti with sun dried tomatoes.
Both were delicious and so filling, as pasta tends to be. The Mr. loved having homemade pasta at home since I’m not a fan of Italian food and we don’t normally ever eat it out.
Making pasta is extremely easy and the main things to think about when making it is: don’t over mix dough and get ready to fall in love! Other than that, make extra batches to dry out and freeze and have on hand!
I won’t share my MIL’s recipe since I didn’t ask her for permission but I will share this traditional recipe where I added fresh pureed spinach to the dough. To do that, add about 6-8 ounces of fresh spinach combined with a touch of olive oil, salt & pepper, and sauté it in a pan over medium heat till tender. (You’ll get about a cup of pureed fresh spinach for the fettuccine.) Allow to cool off before pureeing it in the food processor. I drained most of the liquid before adding it into the dough mixture! Combine well and watch it turn into this beautiful green ball!
(When I sent a pic to my MIL, of the spinach noodles drying, she asked, “what do you have the pasta hanging on?”)
Pasta baby!
Old-school! Never used a pasta drying rack! Ha! Every time she ever made it, she quickly dropped all the noodles in some chicken stock for homemade chicken noodle soup and it would be completely eaten!
Homemade pasta baby, is so simple and inexpensive to make but the main thing is it is so delicious. When you try the boxed kind after you’ve had this, you will find it’s cardboardish tasting (made it up)!
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