Whipping up homemade pasta is easier than you might have imagined. You can serve pasta made from scratch using ingredients you can easily find in your kitchen—and you won’t even need a pasta machine.
Pasta dough
You only need three ingredients for pasta dough. To make four to six servings, you need two cups of flour, a half teaspoon of salt and three large eggs. Whisk the flour and salt together before forming a mound with a deep well in the center. Break the eggs in the well and mix it with the flour until a dough starts to form. Take note that this process can get messy and might take a while since you need to make sure that all the flour is thoroughly combined with the eggs.
Once combined properly, you can start kneading until it turns into a smooth and elastic ball. Afterward, cover it tightly using cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
If you’re allergic to eggs or you prefer vegan pasta, you can also make pasta dough using all-purpose flour, water and olive oil. Following the same steps above, substitute salt with olive oil and use water instead of eggs.
Take your dough out from the refrigerator and let it rest under room temperature for a while before cutting it in portions and rolling it out one by one until it’s flat.
If you don’t have a pasta machine, you can manually cut it into strips by gently folding and rolling it back until it looks like a coil. Make sure to sprinkle the dough with flour as you do so in order to avoid its layers sticking to each other. Once done, cut the roll equally depending on the thickness you prefer. Uncoil the dough and dust it with some flour—and then you can proceed to cook it, which will take less time compared to store-bought pasta.
Pasta Sauces
There are a lot of pasta sauces that you can also make from scratch, with most of them taking less than 30 minutes to prepare.
In just one pot, you can melt butter, add garlic, mix in chicken broth, milk and your homemade pasta, season with salt and pepper, boil, simmer and stir in parmesan cheese to make an easy and creamy garlic parmesan pasta dish.
Using butter, garlic, flour, whole milk and pepper, you can also make creamy garlic sauce that can be cooked with the homemade pasta in approximately 15 minutes.
If you want some red sauce, making some marinara sauce using canned or fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, dried oregano and olive oil is your best option. A sprinkle of red pepper flakes can also be added in the recipe if you prefer spicy sauces.
You can also make some pesto sauce using fresh basil leaves, pine nuts or walnuts, garlic, olive oil and cheese (preferably parmesan).
Although its list of ingredients is a little lengthy, basic carbonara sauce requires items you can find in your kitchen. This includes olive oil, sliced beef or bacon strips, garlic, egg and egg yolk, heavy cream and cheese (again, preferably parmesan). You can also sprinkle it with chopped parsley afterward as garnish.
Header photo by Raphael Nogueira on Unsplash
Get more stories like this by subscribing to our weekly newsletter here.
Read more:
What to cook now: White truffle pasta
What to cook now: Anchovy-garlic pasta
Mom & Tina’s to reopen Pasig branch for takeout, pickup, delivery