As I have said in other posts, my KitchenAid mixer is my best friend in the kitchen. Despite the amount of use that it gets, I still didn't feel that I was using it at its full potential. You see, we have some attachments for the mixer and I had never even taken them out of the box!! One is a sausage stuffer, and since meats fall into hubby territory, he's responsible for dusting that off this summer.
Another attachment we had was the food grinder/pasta maker. I put aside the grinder attachment for now (that's going to get lots of use come St. Patrick's Day...I love me some hash!!) and I decided to take the plunge into pasta making. The attachment that we have allows you to make noodles of various sizes and macaroni. I decided to try egg noodles, since I had planned to make beef stroganoff for dinner tonight.
I used the recipe that came with the attachments. Pretty simple...eggs, flour and water. It called for very little water, and I don't know if the altitude messed with tings or what, but I had to add quite a bit more water than it called for. Honestly, I wish I had added more.
Once I got it balled up and resting, I tackled putting the extruder on the mixer. It was quite straightforward and not hard at all. So far so good.
I had read on several websites that pasta making takes lots of practice and I now believe it. My first few tries were rippled and short. Oh well...those became the testers...aka lunch! After a few tries, I got the hang of things. The problem I ran into was finding room to lay out all of the pasta. I guess I could have lined the kitchen table with towels, but I didn't know how long it would take to dry. So, I used a method I read about online where you stretch a broom across two chairs and dangle the pasta over it (on towels of course). This worked, but I found that when I removed the pasta, much of it cracked at the bend point. I guess this isn't a big deal if you are cooking it right away.
For pasta that is going to be stored, I found that simply lying the noodles on a lightly floured cookie sheet worked well. The noodles stayed flat and would be easier to store.
In the end, I am quite happy with the results. Hannah and I tried some of the "testers" for lunch and they were yummy!!! I cannot wait to cook up the rest tonight.
Stay tuned...
Cheers!
Sharon
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