If you’ve followed TRIO for a bit, you know that my husband and I are empty nesters. When our son moved to college, we started taking short courses at Meridian as a way for us to do date night differently. We both enjoy cooking and trying new recipes, so one of our recent dates included learning how to make homemade pasta in a Cooking short course. In addition to having a fun evening together, we walked away with a new appreciation for homemade pasta. This edition of TRIO focuses on three things that I learned about forgoing the box and focusing on fresh pasta.
For some reason the idea of making homemade pasta was always daunting. Like most people I know, when I get home from work I need dinner to be easy and delicious. The last thing I want to do is make anything that is going to take a lot of time. Until this class, I immediately put homemade pasta into this category. I was so wrong! Within minutes of starting our class we were on our way to cutting noodles and pressing out homemade pasta that turned out to be tender, silky and smooth. As an added benefit, while making homemade pasta takes a little bit of time, it has a much shorter cooking time than dried pasta. For us, the time spent making our own dough was worth it in terms of our satisfaction with the end product.
There are a lot of tools and attachments that can help make homemade pasta easier, but they aren’t required. Sure, like most appliances you probably have in your kitchen, having additional accessories will make a job easier, but they aren’t absolutely necessary. When my husband and I made our first pasta we simply rolled out the dough and cut thin noodles by hand. We then moved on to using a pasta machine that flattened and cut dough into our desired shape, size and thickness. Prices for pasta machines can vary, but after our class I found one online for around $25. Other helpful tools that help in making pasta at home easier are pasta cutters or ravioli cutters. KitchenAid also makes a variety of pasta attachments for their stand mixers.
If you have flour, water and eggs then you have all that you need to make homemade pasta. I’m not kidding. While that’s technically all you need, it’s really just the beginning. One benefit of making pasta at home is that you can get as creative as you want with the flavors you add to the recipe. One of my favorite dry pastas is lemon flavored. Sometimes it’s hard to find it in the store, but now that I know how to make it myself. It’s not anything I worry about anymore. Other flavors that we have enjoyed include black pepper, basil, chili and spinach. Another benefit to making homemade pasta is the ability to make ravioli with our favorite fillings. With homemade pasta, the flavor options really are endless!
Interested in learning more about making your own noodles? Join us for the upcoming Homemade Pasta class! Call 405-377-3333 with questions or register here. To find out about more courses like this sign up for our monthly e-newsletter. View all of our upcoming courses in our digital catalog.
Cara Adney is the Marketing and Media Relations Coordinator at Meridian Technology Center.
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