Making Your Own Pasta

I used to have a pasta maker. I found it not to be worth the time or the trouble, and the machine had to be cleaned all the time. It is so cheap to buy spaghetti from the store, I really think that is the way to go. I have had homemade noodles though, and I thought they were extremely awesome, and tasted much better than those you buy in the store. I can't say the same for the pasta.

 

I don't know if I've just grown too used to packaged pasta or if I've just been tasting badly made fresh pasta but at this point I think I prefer the packaged type a lot more. Although, I am familiar with the process of making homemade pasta and it does seem like it is not that difficult to make so it might be worth the effort if it is your preferred type, as long as you only plan on making the kind you can cut with a knife instead of a pasta machine which can be difficult to clean everytime. I'd say this is most worth it if you are cooking for a large group since you'd at least get more for the effort you are putting in.

 

There is a restaurant here called Kan Zhu that showcases how noodles is made - to my mind, pasta and noodles are almost the same except maybe for the ingredients but practically has the same procedure in making. The starting step is the making of the dough from the flour that is mixed using egg and oil and some other ingredients. When thoroughly mixed, the dough is pulled and strands until those strands are as thin as the noodles they serve. Just looking at how they make those noodles would turn me off. It's easy to just buy pasta or noodles, no sweat.

 

In most cases, I usually prefer packaged pastas as well, with a few exceptions such as making home made manicotti or gnocchi. Home made gnocchi are a great way of using up some extra baked (or fresh) potatoes you may have laying around. Home made manicotti, which are essentially like crepes, are really easy to make and only require a little flour and egg.

I don't mind buying "fresh" pasta when it's something like tortellini or ravioli, since those are really time consuming to make by hand. Plus, once you factor in the costs of all the ingredients you would need for the filling, buying it fresh from the refrigerated section of your grocery store isn't really that bad of a deal.

But for pastas like spaghetti or linguine, I find it much more cost friendly to just buy them dried vs. making them from scratch. Plus, fresh pasta is more fragile and unless its dried out properly before cooking, it becomes too mushy too easily.

 

Pasta is very cheap anyway, and I buy it in 5kg sacks. I doubt it would be much cheaper making it myself personally. I would certainly like to try it one day for fun, but then I'd be willing to spend even more if need be.

 

@ohioTom I never thought of making homemade gnocchi. It is expensive to buy and hard to find. Gnocchi is probably my favorite past really. I think I will look up some recipes for that because it sounds really interesting. I generally have potatoes hanging around here to, that are past their prime. They might be good to make a dough of.

 

I have found at Walmart durum wheat pasta Best Bet brand that I really like for even though it's so cheap 1.12 for a pound of spaghetti it's good for your health. They have whole wheat and durum wheat pasta at Walmart so you can make your choice of which one you'd like to eat. I've never made homemade pasta, but the prices at Walmart seems to be cheaper to buy than to make with all that labor involved to make it and time needed to make pasta too.

 

I can get pasta cheap enough that it wouldn't be worth it for me to make it for the cost savings alone. I mean, it is better quality when it is homemade, but I also consider the saying, "time is money." If I spend so much time making pasta (when I could have bought it very cheaply) then I feel like I've wasted time that I could have been using to either make money online, research other ways to make more money, or research other ways of saving money.

 

Yeah, I didn't think of specialty pasta when I commented. I was just picturing typical stuff like fettuccine or soup noodles. I would guess it does make a difference when it comes to specialty items, since those can sometimes be pricey. You could end up saving some money, especially if you need lot of one of those products.

The only pasta I will really bother making homemade is for making pierogies. I don't care for store bought versions, and our family loves homemade. I'm not sure of the cost differences for those. I've never calculated it. I know that the ones made from scratch disappear in no time, and when I have bought prepackaged ones, they didn't all get eaten. That would make homemade the better value.

 

I have never even tried to make pasta, or tasted any that was homemade. I have actually thought about trying to make some, just because home-made is usually better, and I wanted to see what it tastes like.
Making egg noodles, and maybe other pasta, was actually an old-fashioned way of food preservation. Chickens do not lay eggs in the winter usually, and in olden times, there were no refrigerators, or any other ways to store a fresh egg.
However, when they mixed the eggs with the flour and water and then dried them in strips, the resulting pasta would have all of the nutrients of the eggs, and would keep over winter once it had been dried in the sun.
I just ordered one of those spiralizer things, and it is supposed to make pasta out of veggies, like zucchini . That is not actually real pasta; but it is much more fresh and healthy,and can be served with just about any sauce that regular pasta is served with.

 

That is very interesting. I didn't know any of that, but it makes sense.

I have been considering a spiralizer too, but there is

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as well. I really like the idea of it, and you know, in the summer time something like that would be even better. I am often gifted with lots of zucchini and other fresh vegetables from people who have an abundance in their gardens. I did miss having my own garden, but now, I really do okay without one.

Who doesn't like free food? I'll be making lots of free zucchini pasta soon.

 

Even though virtually everything eaten in my household is made from scratch and we also eat pasta on a very regular basis - as its a staple where I come from - this is one instance - unless it was for a special occasion - that I could never justify making something from scratch .

Particularly as - not only is good quality dried pasta extremely inexpensive to buy from the store and in fact costs next to nothing compared to making home-made pasta - but from a cost saving point of view - dried pasta is way better value for money too - especially considering that - one pound of dried pasta = 8 servings - whereas one pound of fresh pasta = 4 servings.