Macaroni is a versatile product. It is eaten as a main course, a side dish for meat and poultry, added to salads, soups. Italy is considered to be the birthplace of the product, but, oddly enough, China is fighting for the right to be considered the birthplace of pasta with a European country. Nowadays, pasta is an integral part of the diet. But these products are delicious when cooked correctly. After reading the article to the end, you will learn how to cook pasta.
Pasta is divided into groups and types. In Russia, it is customary to divide products into three groups (according to the type of flour that is part of the product).
- Group A: durum wheat flour of all varieties.
- Group B: soft wheat flour of the highest, first grade.
- Group B: baking flour of the highest and first grade.
The most common are products of the first group. Hard varieties are long-term carbohydrates that do not provoke sharp spikes in blood sugar, take longer to digest and do not turn into fat. They are also lower in gluten, making them ideal for allergy sufferers and health conscious people.
Pasta is divided not only into groups, but also into types according to shape and size.
- Long: bavetti, cappellini, vermicelli, spaghetti, spaghettoni, spaghettini, bucatini, makeroncini, fettuccini, tagliatelli, mafaldine, linguini. Subspecies differ in length and width. The longest are spaghetti, according to the standard, their length is half a meter, but for convenience, the length was reduced to 25 centimeters. The thinnest - capellini, translated as "hair", diameter - 1.2 mm.
- Short: cellentani (spirals), fusilli (three twisted spirals), girandole (small fusilli), maccheroni (shell), penne (tubes with carved sides), pipe rigatti (snails).
- For baking: canelloni (large tubes), lasagne (rectangular sheets).
- Soup: anelli (rings), stelline (stars), filini (noodles).
- Curly: different shapes ranging from butterflies to letters.
The composition of pasta may include spinach, tomatoes, eggs, greens.
According to the degree of readiness, pasta is divided into two types.
- Aldente: in Russia - undercooked pasta, cooked on the outside, hard on the inside. Al dente pasta is suitable for main dishes.
- Pasta cooked to full readiness is fully cooked.
Cooking times for pasta vary by group. Products of group A are cooked two minutes longer than B and C. Cooking time for baking products is 25 minutes, for soups - 12. Long ones are cooked until al dente - 7 minutes, until cooked - 9. Short ones are cooked until half cooked for 5 minutes, if desired cook until fully cooked, then keep the products in boiling water for 7 minutes.
How to cook pasta correctly - the main ways
Cooking pasta is not difficult, the main thing is to follow the basic rules and cooking time. Traditionally, the product is cooked in a saucepan, but with the advent of new technologies in the life of housewives, new types of cooking have appeared.
in a saucepan
The first step is to bring the water to a boil. You need twice as much water as pasta. When the water boils, the pasta is thrown into the pan. Cook until the first boil, then reduce the heat and cook further for the required time.
Stir the pasta several times to prevent sticking.
Before boiling again, cover the pan with a lid, then cook without it. At the end of time, the water is poured through a colander. Macaroni is ready.
In a slow cooker
First, pasta is poured into the bowl, poured with water. Set the mode "Pilaf", "Cooking", "Pasta", "Steamed". Two minutes are added to the standard cooking time. For example, long al dente pasta will cook for 9 minutes.
in the microwave
Cook pasta in the microwave only in glassware. First you need to boil water - pour the required amount of liquid into the dishes, put in the oven at full power for 10 minutes. Pour pasta into boiling water. There should be a little more water than when cooking on the stove. Turn on full power, set the timer for 7 minutes.
After the time has elapsed, leave the pasta to “cook” in a non-working oven for 5-10 minutes.
In a double boiler
Pasta is cooked not in the usual cooking compartment, but in the water container itself. Pasta is immersed in cold water, set the temperature to 80-85 degrees, close the lid. Cook for 5-10 minutes longer than on the stove.
Do I need to rinse pasta after cooking?
It is believed that pasta must be washed in order for it to be crumbly. This method appeared in Soviet times, when pasta was of poor quality and quickly boiled. A modern product does not need additional washing.
But if the pasta is accidentally overcooked, or they are of inadequate quality, you can correct the situation in a proven way. Cooked pasta is poured into a colander, and then washed under running cold water. But there is one minus - the side dish will cool down under water, you will have to eat a cold dish, or reheat it additionally.
Pasta can be washed when the main dish is not yet ready, and the side dish has already been cooked - this will stop the process of their further cooking. The longer the hot product is on the stove, the higher the likelihood of overcooking.
Overcooked, sticky pasta is the worst thing to serve on the dinner table. You can prevent sticking by knowing simple rules.
- Boil in enough water. The approximate ratio of pasta and water is ½, you can also calculate by the formula for 100 g of pasta - a liter of water.
- Throw products only into boiling water. If you throw it in earlier, the pasta will boil and stick together.
- Add salt to water until it boils. How much seasoning is needed is determined by taste. The approximate ratio is half a teaspoon per 100 g of products.
- Pour vegetable oil into the saucepan with pasta after boiling again. One or two teaspoons per liter of water will be enough.
- Choose pasta made from durum wheat, they are much harder than other varieties.
- Constantly stir the garnish during cooking. Be sure to stir immediately after the pasta enters the water.
If the pasta is still stuck together, a few simple ways will help fix the situation.
- Add a few tablespoons of melted butter to the cooked pasta and mix well.
- Fry the side dish in a skillet, separating the pasta.
- Add sauce or broth, stir.
Pasta Cooking Secrets
Macaroni - good as a side dish and as an independent dish. A few simple rules will help make pasta even tastier.
- Cook products only in purified, drinking water. The product absorbs from 25 to 30 percent of the liquid. Eating pasta boiled in plain tap water runs the risk of introducing an infection into the body.
- Macaroni will taste better if boiled in milk.
- After cooking, the product must be immediately discarded in a colander and drained of unnecessary water. But in the pan you need to leave a little broth in which the side dish was cooked. The water will prevent the pasta from drying out. How much water to leave - decide on the amount of pasta.
- Ready-made pasta is usually mixed with a piece of butter - the side dish will not dry out even after a while. It is tastier not just to mix pasta with a piece of butter, but to pre-melt it in a saucepan and add a side dish to the already melted butter.
TOP 3 recipes for an unforgettable side dish
In addition to answering the question of how to cook pasta, a real hostess should know the recipes for delicious side dishes.
- Tomato and basil will help diversify the usual dish. Diced tomatoes are mixed with vegetable oil on. Add some water. Simmer until the tomato gives juice. Add seasonings. Mix cooked pasta with sauce.
- Sprinkle finished pasta with grated cheese and mix well. It is best to add the cheese directly to the pot where the pasta was cooked. The cheese will melt a little and you will get a delicious viscous independent dish that goes well with all types of meat.
- Cut vegetables: zucchini, eggplant, tomato. Slightly stew with vegetable oil. Add pasta, pour over soy sauce, add spices. Great option for an Asian style dinner!
Conclusion
Now you know how to properly cook pasta of different groups and types. This product goes well with various sauces, vegetables, and is suitable as a side dish for fried and stewed meat. Do not be afraid to experiment - sweet pasta with the addition of milk, sugar or jam is a favorite dish for those with a sweet tooth. Bon appetit!
Pasta is usually used as a side dish for meat dishes, and few people know what amazing dishes can be prepared from them. What to cook from pasta, in order not only to surprise, but also to feed your household heartily, you will learn from our recipes with photos and detailed cooking instructions.
Warm salad with olives and chicken breast
Many pasta recipes are not at all difficult to prepare and even a novice hostess can handle them. One of them is this warm salad, for which pasta in the form of a spiral is perfect. In 100 g of such a salad, there are only 120 kcal.
Required products:
- 800 g "Spiralek";
- 400 g chicken breast;
- 3 large tomatoes;
- 100 g pitted olives;
- 4 garlic cloves;
- 100 ml of oil (preferably olive);
- a handful of basil, dill;
- salt.
Description of cooking step by step:
- Cut the chicken breast into medium-sized pieces. In a frying pan, heat the olive oil, add it and fry the meat in it until light golden.
- At the same time, bring 3 liters of water to a boil on the stove. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into it, add salt and pour pasta. We cook them until cooked. We drain the water from them, add finely chopped garlic and warm pieces of chicken to them.
- We cut the olives into rings, the tomatoes into slices, the greens - finely chop. We mix all the ingredients and season with the fat that remains after frying the meat. Delicious and hearty salad is ready.
Lagman from noodles in a slow cooker
Thanks to electrical appliances, cooking delicious pasta dishes is even easier. This oriental recipe adapts perfectly to modern cooking conditions and turns out great in a slow cooker. For its preparation, it is better to use long noodles.
- 500 g noodles;
- 500 g of peeled potatoes;
- 500 g pork meat without fat;
- 2 large onions and carrots;
- 2 sweet peppers;
- 2 garlic cloves;
- 100 ml Olena;
- salt, pepper, parsley, herbs.
Cooking description:
- Cut all ingredients (except noodles) into cubes. Add Oleina to the slow cooker and heat it in the “frying” mode at 150 degrees. Saute onions and carrots until transparent. Sprinkle with salt and add the pork pieces. We cook it for 10 minutes.
- Add spices to the resulting mass, mix well and add potatoes and pepper. Pour in 1 glass of boiled water, close and simmer in the appropriate mode for 1.5 hours.
- Boil the noodles in salted boiling water, rinse and add to the stewed products. We will put out another 15 minutes. We crush the finished lagman with fresh herbs.
"Dumplings" with cottage cheese without effort
Vareniki with cottage cheese is a healthy and appetizing dish, but sculpting them is a rather time-consuming process. We offer you an alternative quick recipe that you will definitely like. 100 g contains approximately 140 kcal. Shell-shaped pasta is best for this dish.
Required products:
- 800 g "Shells";
- 300 g of homemade fatty cottage cheese;
- 100 g creamy spread;
- 1 st. a spoonful of olive oil;
- 150 ml sour cream;
- salt, sugar to taste.
Description of the cooking process:
- Boil 3 liters of water in a deep saucepan, add it and add a spoonful of olive oil. Boil the shells until tender. Drain the water and rinse them.
- Pour melted buttercream into them and mix well.
- Cottage cheese knead with a fork and pour into a saucepan to the shell. Stir and arrange on plates. Top with sour cream and sprinkle with sugar.
Macaroni baked with cheese
This dish will help you out in those cases when you need to quickly feed dinner to all family members. It is prepared in the oven, and will not require special cash costs, since it can even be made from pasta cooked earlier. In 100 g - only 80 kcal. Feathers are the best.
Required products:
- 400 g "Feathers";
- 450 g of hard, well-melting cheese;
- 30 g creamy spread;
- 100 g bread crumbs;
- salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.
Instructions for cooking:
- We heat the oven to 180 degrees. In salted water, boil the “feathers” until al dente, put them in a colander so that all the water is glassed.
- Cut the cheese into thin slices. Lubricate the refractory form with a spread and lay out a fourth of the total number of “feathers”, put a layer of cheese slices on top. We add a little and pepper. Thus we make three more layers of macaroni and cheese.
- In a bowl, mix bread crumbs with a creamy spread (you can add a little finely chopped parsley). Pour this mixture over the top cheese layer.
- We bake our dish in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes. A beautiful golden crust indicates that a delicious dinner is ready. Serve immediately.
Spaghetti with tomato sauce and herbs
Simple pasta can be turned into a culinary masterpiece. Try this delicious family dinner recipe. We are sure that everyone will be satisfied.
Required Ingredients:
- spaghetti - 1 kg;
- minced pork - 0.5 kg;
- large tomatoes - 4 pcs.;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- onions - 2 heads;
- basil - a small bunch;
- olive oil - 100 ml;
- salt, ground pepper.
Description of the cooking process:
- Boil 3 liters of water in a deep saucepan. Add salt (about 1 tablespoon) and add olive oil. Boil the spaghetti, drain the water, lightly sprinkle with oil.
- Pour boiling water over the tomatoes, remove the skin from them and cut into cubes. Finely chop the onion, garlic and herbs.
- In a deep frying pan, heat the fat, add the onion and fry it until transparent. Add minced meat to it, add salt, pepper and fry until the minced meat is ready. Add chopped tomatoes to the pan, cover with a lid and simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.
- Put the spaghetti on a plate, put the prepared gravy in the middle and sprinkle with basil leaves. If desired, you can sprinkle a little grated Parmesan or any other cheese on top.
Apple casserole
From pasta, you can cook not only main dishes. They make a very tasty apple casserole. Energy value - about 200 kcal per 100 g. To prepare it, take small vermicelli.
Required Ingredients:
- 800 g of vermicelli;
- 3 large eggs;
- 200 g of granulated sugar;
- 100 g cream or sour cream;
- 70 g creamy spread;
- 3-4 apples;
- 1 sachet of vanilla;
- 1 teaspoon of lemon juice;
- a pinch of salt;
- ground crackers;
- powdered sugar and cinnamon.
Cooking step by step:
- Boil vermicelli in slightly salted boiling water, put in a colander and rinse with warm water.
- Peel the apples, cut them into cubes and lightly pour over the lemon juice.
- Beat eggs with sugar and vanilla until fluffy. Stir in cream and melted spread.
- The form in which we will bake the casserole is greased with fat and sprinkled with ground breadcrumbs. We spread a layer of vermicelli, then apples and pour over the egg-creamy mass. Thus, we lay out all the components in layers.
- We send to bake in the oven, heated to 160 degrees for half an hour. Sprinkle hot casserole on top with powdered sugar and cinnamon. This casserole goes very well with sour cream or milk.
As you can see, pasta dishes are diverse. They will fit perfectly into your daily menu. And their cooking is quite simple and does not cost a lot of money.
Video: Pasta with Pesto Sauce
Cooking pasta in almost every home. Over the years, culinary experts have come up with many recipes. In the article we will tell you what you can cook from pasta quickly and tasty.
According to one legend, in the 16th century, the owner of a tavern located in the vicinity of Naples prepared noodles for visitors. His daughter, playing with the dough, made a lot of thin tubes and hung them on the street. Seeing these toys, the owner of the tavern decided to boil them, and served them to the guests, pouring them with tomato sauce. The guests liked the dish.
Neapolitans began to come to the institution, thanks to which the owner made a fortune. He spent the money he earned on the construction of a factory that produced such unusual products for that time.
The entrepreneur's name was Marco Aroni. The dish itself, no matter how difficult it is to guess, was named pasta in honor of the inventor.
How to cook crumbly pasta
I confess that before, when I cooked pasta, they constantly stuck together with me. Since they looked ugly, it was unpleasant to eat them. Later I learned the recipe for making crumbly pasta. Now I will share it with you. Looking ahead, I will say that this dish is an excellent addition to pork or rabbit.
Ingredients:
- pasta
- vegetable oil
Cooking:
- I collect water in a saucepan. It should be twice as much pasta. Bring to a boil, add pasta, mix and salt.
- Stir occasionally during cooking. The most important thing is not to overcook. For this reason, I never do extraneous matters during cooking.
- When the pasta is cooked, drain the water using a colander. Some cooks wash them. I do not do this.
- Then I pour a little vegetable or olive oil into the dish, mix and let stand for several minutes.
- After that I mix again.
Finally, I’ll add, if your pasta is still stuck together, you should not be upset. Perhaps you overcooked them, or the products themselves are made from durum wheat flour. With a little practice, you'll be perfect.
Video recipe
vegetable pasta recipe
To keep the shape of the pasta while cooking, I fry them in a pan until golden brown. I choose vegetables according to my taste. True, I definitely use tomatoes and onions. Let's move on to the recipe.
Ingredients:
- pasta
- onion - 1 head
- bell pepper - 1 pc.
- tomatoes - 2 pcs.
- cheese - 50 grams
- garlic - 1 clove
- water - 300 ml.
- parsley, olives, salt, vegetable oil
Cooking:
- Fry pasta in a pan until golden.
- Onions, tomatoes and carrots cut into small cubes. Bulgarian pepper cut into cubes. Finely chop greens and garlic.
- I let the fried pasta cool, put them in a saucepan, pour water over it and send it to the stove.
- I add onions, carrots and peppers, pour in oil, salt and pepper.
- Mix well, cover the pot with a lid and cook until the water boils away. At the very end, I add chopped garlic and tomatoes.
Before serving, sprinkle the dish with chopped herbs and grated cheese. I use olives for garnish. I serve it on the table along with meatballs.
Cooking pasta in a steamer
Almost all housewives are used to cooking pasta on the stove. Not surprising, because their mothers and grandmothers did this. Since in our time there are various appliances in the kitchen, now we will talk about how to cook pasta in a double boiler.
Ingredients:
- pasta - 300 grams
- salt - 1 teaspoon
- vegetable oil - a quarter of a teaspoon
Cooking:
- Fill the bottom of the steamer with water. Pour pasta into a bowl, add water, salt and vegetable oil. I note that it is due to the oil that they do not stick together.
- I cover the bowl with a lid and turn on the kitchen appliance.
- After a third of an hour, the dish is ready. I take them out of the steamer and rinse well with warm water. This will get rid of excess starch.
As you can see, there is nothing complicated in the recipe. I cook the dish in those cases when there is no time to prepare more complex culinary masterpieces, such as baked salmon.
Delicious navy pasta
Ingredients:
- pasta - 0.5 kg
- minced meat - 300 grams
- carrot
- salt pepper
- greenery
Cooking:
- I clean my vegetables first. I chop the onion well, pass the carrots through a coarse grater.
- I send the vegetables to the pan and fry. Then add minced meat, mix well and fry until tender. Pepper, salt.
- While the minced meat with vegetables is fried, in another pan I fry the pasta until they get a pink color. After that, I move them to a pan with minced meat and vegetables, add water. Cover the pan with a lid and cook until done.
- Stir occasionally while frying. At the end I add chopped greens.
Video recipe
You may already know the recipe. However, I only recently got to know him. I tried it and I liked it. First you can taste a plate of delicious borscht, and then switch to pasta.
sardine pasta recipe
I present to your attention a quick recipe for pasta with sardines. It is prepared so simply that even bachelors can handle it.
Ingredients:
- pasta - 250 grams
- sardine in tomato - 1 can
- cheese - 150 grams
- onion - 1 head
- garlic - 2 cloves
- pepper, salt, olive oil
Cooking:
- Boil the pasta until it's a bit firm on the inside. I throw it away in a colander.
- Pour a little olive oil into the pan and fry the chopped onion well.
- I take the sardine out of the jar and remove the bones. Add to chopped onion. I crush the fish with a fork, mix, pepper and salt.
- After 2-3 minutes, add boiled pasta to the fish with onions. Stir and simmer over low heat for 5-10 minutes.
- At the very end I sprinkle with grated cheese. I cover the pan with a lid and keep it on fire until the cheese is melted.
Agree, there is nothing complicated in cooking. If you want something special, cook this delicious and nutritious dish.
What in our culinary tradition is called pasta, in Italy, in other countries of Europe and the world is called pasta. Pasta should be made only from durum wheat, then it will be nutritious and healthy. You can store pasta for a long time, and cook it quickly.
If you are thinking about how to cook pasta deliciously, you need to know a few simple rules. First, the pasta must be properly cooked. Secondly, each new pasta sauce makes this dish unique and individual. Let's discuss all the secrets of how to cook pasta quickly and tasty, in order.
Short or long pasta
Roughly speaking, all pasta can be divided into two huge categories: short and long. Spaghetti are the most famous representatives of long pasta, capellins, fettuccine, tagliatelle also belong to this category. There are even more types of short pasta, these are tubes, and spirals, feathers, shells, etc.
Choice of Pasta Sauce
The sauce will help in how you can cook delicious pasta. Moreover, any kind of pasta can be combined with different sauces. But there are some rules. For example, it is believed that short pasta is most compatible with sauces with pieces of meat and vegetables. Because such pieces of sauce fall into the cavities and pockets of the pasta, and this simplifies the process of absorption of the dish. For long pasta, smooth sauces or sauces with very small pieces (like ) are most suitable. But these are just recommendations. There are no strict rules here, so you can fantasize and combine pasta with sauce solely at your discretion.
How to cook pasta
Amount of water
First, there should be enough water for cooking pasta. Even if the dish is cooked in a hurry and you want the water to boil faster, there should be the right amount. If there is not enough water, the paste will stick together. Also, water may start to foam and flow out of the pan, which will definitely not speed up the cooking process.
The fact is that pasta consists of flour, which contains a lot of starch. When cooked, starch swells and gives softness to products. Protein provides elasticity to pasta and prevents it from overcooking. During cooking, there should be enough water for the starch granules to bring the pasta to the desired condition.
For example, 400 grams of dry pasta requires a liter of water. After all, when cooking, part of the starch, moreover, goes into the water. And, if there is not enough water, then the starch will begin to act as a paste and stick the pasta together.
To prevent pasta from sticking together, it is also necessary to stir it constantly during the cooking process.
This is interesting! There is an opinion that if oil is added to the water during cooking, the pasta will not stick together. Actually this is a delusion. Ceteris paribus, the oil does not affect the bonding ability.
How much time to cook?
Usually reliable information on this issue is contained on the packaging. Two minutes before the expiration of the time indicated on the package, you can already check the pasta for readiness. Cook pasta properly until al dente. If the pasta is cut across, then there should be a thin, barely noticeable light strip in the center, and the pasta itself should be chewed well. This is a sign of properly cooked pasta to the state of al dente.
It is important! Even when the pasta has already been removed from the heat, while the water is drained and while the pasta is seasoned with sauce, it still continues to come to readiness.
Does it need to be washed?
Wash pasta only in those situations when you plan to cook pasta salad or if you are cooking Asian noodles. In other cases, washing pasta is strictly prohibited. First, the starch will be washed off the product, which is necessary for the absorption of the sauce. So, from the washed pasta, the sauce will simply drain onto the plate. Secondly, by washing the pasta, you make it cold. Which, of course, is unacceptable for a hot dish.
When to salt pasta?
An average of ten grams of salt is taken per liter of water. It is best to salt the water at the very beginning, this will improve the taste of the pasta. But, remember that salted water boils more slowly.
How to cook delicious pasta: recipes
With cheese and spinach sauce
As long as there are ingredients that can be mixed together to make all sorts of sauces, then the number of options for making pasta will be huge. Here is one of the very successful recipes. 400 grams of spaghetti, two onions, a bunch of spinach, 200 ml of cream, ten boiled peeled shrimp, 100 grams of butter are taken.
Fry the onion in butter, add finely chopped spinach and fry for another five minutes. Pour in the cream, let it boil and simmer for another five minutes. Add cheese and shrimp. Stir until thickened. Pour the sauce over properly boiled spaghetti and serve.
To cook tasty pasta in a naval way, you should use an old proven recipe. You need to take 300 grams of beef and 100 grams of pork, 250 grams of short pasta, ground black pepper and salt, onion. Boil the meat, add the onion and salt during the cooking process. Turn the boiled meat through a meat grinder, adding one fresh onion. Then simmer in a pan, pepper and salt. Add cooked meat to properly boiled pasta, you can also add a piece of butter. Mix everything well and serve.
With mushrooms in creamy sauce
For cooking, take 150 grams of long pasta, 120 grams of fresh mushrooms, 150 ml of cream, two tablespoons of dry white wine, two onions, a couple of parsley sprigs, a little wheat flour, half a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of butter. Finely chop the onion and fry in vegetable oil, set aside separately. Fry finely chopped mushrooms in the same pan. Finely chop the parsley and add to the fried mushrooms, and then all this to the onion. In the same pan, where everything was fried, wine and cream are poured. A pinch of flour, sugar. Bring to a boil, stir constantly. Pour onion, mushrooms and parsley into the boiled sauce. Salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a while under a closed lid over low heat. Boil the pasta, drain the water and add the sauce to the pasta in a saucepan. Mix well and the dish is ready.
You need to take 400 grams of shell pasta, 400 grams of broccoli, one hundred grams of bacon, 50 grams of hard grated cheese, a couple of cloves of garlic, one red chili pepper, two tablespoons of olive oil. Boil broccoli for five minutes. Heat olive oil in a pan, add garlic and bacon. Then add broccoli and pepper, salt to taste. Simmer for about seven minutes. When the pasta is cooked, drain the water and add to the broccoli and bacon. Sprinkle with grated cheese before serving. It turns out a hearty and very appetizing dish.
Before you can cook delicious pasta, they must be cooked properly. Pasta sauce is out of the question. Here you can combine all kinds of ingredients, giving pasta different shades of flavors.
And if now we mainly buy noodles in the store, then quite recently neither Russian nor Italian housewives had much choice, and they constantly made pasta at home. There is nothing complicated about this (especially if you get a pasta machine), but you will know exactly what products your pasta is made of. Today you will have a long read - first the recipe itself, and then a video and a story about various methods of making pasta.
How to cook pasta, noodles and macaroni at home
In Italy, typo 00 flour is used to make pasta from durum wheat, and if you are going to cook Italian dishes from your pasta, look for it in supermarkets: this is an extra fine flour, and the pasta from it turns out to be denser and not so soft. However, if there is no such flour, take ordinary wheat flour of the highest grade, with it the pasta will turn out not the same as that of Italian grandmothers, but also not bad.
Sift 200 grams of flour into a bowl, break two large chicken eggs into the same place, add a pinch of salt and knead the dough. It should be tough but elastic and not sticky to your hands, so you may need to add a little flour or water when you cook the pasta. It is impossible to predict this - it all depends on the quality of the flour, the weight of the eggs, the humidity of the air and other factors, but over time you will learn to feel the correct consistency of the dough. After vigorously kneading the dough, roll it into a tight ball, cover and let it rest for half an hour or longer.
Roll out the dough ball into a sausage and cut it into several smaller balls. Roll each ball into a thin rectangle, generously flouring both the surface of the table and the dough itself on the top side - so that it dries faster and does not stick to the table and rolling pin. Having rolled out all the dough, arm yourself with a sharp knife and cut it into strips of the desired thickness (very narrow for spaghetti and noodles, wider for tagliatelle), rectangles for either beshbarmak, or any other shape that you like. Dough is prepared in the same way for all varieties: it is better to cook them right away, but all other varieties of pasta should first be dried and then put in the refrigerator or frozen.
How to cook pasta with a pasta machine
From the kitchen inventory for the method described above, you only need a bowl, a rolling pin and a knife, but apart from them you will need remarkable strength - after all, kneading and then rolling out a tough dough is not as easy as it seems at first. In this sense, a very useful tool is a pasta machine - so useful that I highly recommend getting one for anyone who loves pasta, noodles and so on, and cooks dishes with them regularly. Such machines are manual, electric, and I have mixer nozzles in this role, about which I wrote recently.
The kit includes three nozzles, one of which is used to roll out the dough, and the other two - to cut the rolled sheets on linguine and tagliatelle, respectively. This disposition surprised me - for some reason I expected that it would be possible to change the width of the cut, but here there are only two rigidly fixed options, to switch between which, in addition, you need to change the nozzles. At the same time, their width is only about 10 centimeters, that is, it is better not to overdo it with the amount of dough that you will roll out at a time.
However, in practice, making pasta with these nozzles is quite convenient. Having installed the nozzle for rolling out the dough - it is attached to a special connector in the head of the mixer - turn on the second speed (the instruction suggests setting the speed from 2 to 4, but the lower it is, the less risk of spoiling something), and set the thickness of the dough to 1 First, roll a small piece of rested dough a couple of times to make it a thick but flat sheet, and then pass it through the nozzle several times, folding in half after each rolling, so that the dough becomes as elastic as possible. After that, reduce the thickness of the dough by 1 division, each time rolling the sheets through the nozzle 2-3 times, until you reach the thickness of the dough 5. After that, you can install the selected dough cutting nozzle and pass all the rolled sheets through it. To prevent the pasta from sticking together, do not be greedy with flour for dusting, the nozzles themselves should not be washed with water after finishing work - instead, let the dough dry and clean the nozzles using the brush included in the kit.
In principle, your pasta is already ready: you can either dry it by hanging it on a special stand, the box with which I captured a couple of photos above, and then either put it in the refrigerator or freeze it until better times. In the latter case, it is better to roll the paste into nests for easy storage. KitchenAid, by the way, in addition to these nozzles, also has a press that allows you to form tubules of various diameters, spirals and spaghetti, but these are enough for my needs so far.
For better clarity, I made a video recipe for homemade pasta, which, in my opinion, describes this process in some detail and exhaustively:
(As you know, video recipes are not my forte, so I will be very happy if you leave your comments on what you liked and what you didn’t, so that next time I can make it even better).
If you are interested in the attachments that participated in the filming of this video, then here they are - KitchenAid Roller Pasta Knives.
Finally, I will give advice - more homemade pasta, noodles and macaroni, good and different! They are worth it.
