Translated from Italian pasta literally means "dough". The term “pasta” in Italy refers to almost all pasta products made from durum wheat.

There are more than 700 varieties of pasta in the world, including spaghetti, ravioli, fettuccine, farfalle, lasagne, vermicelli, gnocchi. And, of course, pasta - but not the long kind from a pack, but maccheroni - small tubular curved cones.

A brief history of the legendary dish

The pioneers in making pasta were, oddly enough, not the Italians, but the Chinese who feasted on noodles 4 thousand years ago, that is, in the late Neolithic era.

The ancient Greeks also adored boiled dough cut into thin strips, and this dish was even mentioned in one of Aristophanes’ comedies. The Romans enjoyed eating lagana, the prototype of lasagna.

And the Etruscans prepared ravioli - at least on the wall of one of the Etruscan necropolises rolling pins and rollers are depicted, similar to those used to make ravioli to this day.

Nevertheless, It was the Italians who gave pasta its popularity, tirelessly improving its recipes over the centuries. During the Renaissance, it was already part of the usual diet of every Italian, while the rich ate it with sugar, and the poor - with garlic and cheese. In the 17th century Tomatoes were brought to Europe, and they began to season it with tomato sauce.

Worldwide fame overtook the paste only at the end of the 18th century. When was the 4-prong fork invented?(until then we ate pasta with our hands). From now on and forever, eating pasta (and much more) has become not only pleasant, but also convenient.

What you need to make homemade pasta

To make homemade pasta you will need:

• 1 kg of wheat flour;
• 10 yolks (1 egg yolk for every 100 g of flour);
• 2 tbsp. l. olive oil;
• salt to taste.

It is advisable to have a machine for rolling out dough on hand and, ideally, home dough mixer, as the dough turns out very tight and is difficult to knead with your hands.

Simple ! Tips on how to properly prepare this popular dish in Italy can be found on our website.

How to cook real Italian pizza? You will find a classic cooking recipe, and watch video tutorials from chefs here.

Here are a few recipes for making delicious risotto! Prepare this dish as you would in the best Italian restaurants.

Detailed step-by-step recipe

How to cook pasta:

• Mix flour and olive oil in a deep bowl.
• Add eggs and salt.
• The most difficult and lengthy stage is kneading the dough. It is kneaded for at least 20 minutes, and preferably 1 hour.
• Give the finished dough 30 minutes. rest and roll out very thinly (or pass through a rolling machine). Then it is sprinkled with flour, fold in 2-4 layers and roll out again, the thickness of the dough should be no more than 2 mm.
• The dough is cut into layers 50 cm long and 10 cm wide, the layers are rolled into “rolls” and cut into strips no more than 7 mm wide. It is very important to cut thinly, since during the cooking process the strips increase in size by 2 times.
• The finished pasta is carefully unwrapped and sprinkled with flour. It can be cooked immediately or dried - in this case it is left on a baking sheet for 1 day. Homemade pasta can be stored for 1 month in a hermetically sealed container..

To color it green in the dough add mashed spinach, in red - carrots, in purple - beets, in orange - pumpkin. Cuttlefish ink will give the pasta not only an exotic black color, but also a fresh “sea” flavor.

Serving rules

Serving pasta correctly and beautifully is no less important than preparing it correctly and tasty. How to serve this dish so as to delight even the Italians:

• Pasta, already mixed with sauce, served in a large special dish and place on plates with special tongs or a large serrated spoon. An option is possible when a large dish of pasta is served separately, and gravy boats with various sauces are “attached” to it.
• A must-have addition to the dish is grated cheese. in an elegant, preferably porcelain, cheese bowl. Cheese is not served with pasta with seafood or fish.
• Outside of Italy, pasta is often served in deep “soup” bowls for convenience, but the Italians themselves enjoy it from large flat plates. Whatever plates you are using, before adding pasta to them, It is advisable to warm them up– simply rinse with the hot water in which the pasta was cooked.
• Italians eat pasta exclusively with a fork - the use of a spoon, according to local canons, terrible bad manners. It is believed that only Neapolitans eat pasta with a spoon, who, according to the rest of Italy, do not have refined manners.
• Cutting pasta with a knife is also bad manners. They eat them by carefully wrapping 2-3 “strings” around the tines of a fork and delicately placing them in the mouth. Inhaling pasta with a noisy whistle, and even more so, snacking on it and “spitting” it into a plate is also the privilege of Neapolitans, but not representatives of high society.
• Wash down the pasta with water or wine, but not coffee, soda or hard drinks. Dry white wine goes well with pasta seasoned with delicate vegetable or fish sauces, as well as pasta salads. Red is an ideal “companion” for pasta seasoned with thick tomato or meat sauces (for example, bolognese).
• Ravioli Dolci (sweet ravioli) filled with chocolate or fruit are enjoyed by Italians washed down with Amaretto liqueur. Although dessert ravioli are deep-fried and resemble donuts after being “bathed” in hot oil, they are still a variety of the world-famous and beloved Italian pasta.

A few simple tips will help you achieve true perfection when cooking pasta:

• Pasta loves space. It should be cooked in a large and tall saucepan. The ideal proportions are as follows: for 100 g of pasta, 1 liter of water and 8-10 g of salt, preferably coarse sea salt.
• Salt the water just before it boils, then wait until the water begins to boil, and only then add the pasta. Long varieties do not break, but simply put it in a pan, preferably in the very center, where the boiling is strongest. After 0.5-1 minutes, when the pasta has softened, gently press it down with a wooden spoon. There is no need to cover the pan with a lid.
• The average cooking time varies between 8-12 minutes (the exact time is indicated on the packaging). To make the pasta al dente (soft, but at the same time elastic, uncooked), it should be cooked for 1 minute less than indicated on the package, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
• Contrary to popular custom, add olive oil or sunflower oil is not recommended, because ready-made spaghetti will absorb the sauce less well and will not be as juicy. Add 1-2 tbsp. l. Add oil only if the pasta is being cooked in a very small saucepan and there is concern that it will stick together.
• Do not rinse pasta with cold water after cooking., unless it is preparing to become the crowning ingredient of any salad. If it does stick together, the “balls” are rinsed with boiling water right in a colander.
• It is better to keep all sauce components in a ceramic or glass container and stir, like the pasta itself, with a wooden spoon. Sauces, especially with tomatoes, are significantly (and far from for the better) change their taste when in contact with metal cutlery, even if they are made of high quality stainless steel.

All types of pasta are tasty, unique and original in their own way. Main - taste the masterpieces of Italian culinary specialists in a warm and friendly company and don’t forget about a good sip of Chianti.

Watch a video about making Italian pasta:

In contact with

Spaghetti and other pasta products are constantly between two fires - and we're not talking about the burners on the stove. We are talking about the conflicting opinions that accompany this delicious dish. Fans of Italian cuisine are ready to eat spaghetti every day, seasoning it with aromatic sauces and praising the richness and variety of its taste. They are objected to by those who watch their figure and caloric intake and avoid pasta in any form. And we continue to love this traditional Italian dish and are sure that its benefits depend on how you prepare the spaghetti pasta.

The lion's share of calories is contained in the sauce, and not in the spaghetti itself. Therefore, it is not necessary to completely deny yourself the delicacy - just prepare spaghetti pasta from vegetables, herbs and low-fat dairy products. This is one of the main rules of Italian gourmetism: do not deprive yourself of pleasure, but enjoy it, but foresee the possible consequences in advance. In our case, the consequences may seem like excess weight, so let's try to make spaghetti pasta that is tasty and light.

Sauces and pastes for spaghetti: types, composition and features
Spaghetti is the basis of many Italian dishes. The basis - because you will not find spaghetti without sauce on any restaurant menu or on any dinner table. Like meat without salt, like tea without sugar, you can eat it, but it’s not the same. “Naked” vermicelli as a side dish is the prerogative of Soviet cooking, and hedonistic Italians have always perceived spaghetti as a complete independent dish, and prepared it with dressings, gravies, sauces and vegetable pastes. Most often, tomatoes and/or tomato paste became the main component of the sauce, as the most affordable, healthy and tasty ingredient.

Besides spaghetti, there are many varieties of Italian pasta, in different shapes and sizes. All of them, one way or another, are adapted for soaking in sauce, but it is spaghetti that is most adapted for cooking with tomato paste. This classic recipe is known as Neapolitan spaghetti. In addition to tomato, the following spaghetti sauces are popular:

• With minced meat and tomatoes (spaghetti Bolognese),
  
• With brisket and raw egg (spaghetti Carbonara),
  
• With seafood (“frutti de mare”, Sicilian spaghetti),
  
• With garlic and olive oil (“aglio e olio”, spaghetti with butter),
  
• With cheese and spinach (spaghetti Florentine style),
  
• With basil and herbs (Genoese spaghetti).
  

And so on, up to 10,000 spaghetti sauce recipes. So that these culinary subtleties do not seem enormously complicated to you, do not forget that they were all created by folk chefs depending on the products available in a particular area. Spaghetti is delicious not because it is prepared according to difficult rules, but because it combines simple, natural and tasty ingredients.

Traditional tomato paste for spaghetti
The difference between the Italian and our, domestic, approach to pasta is also expressed in tomatoes for spaghetti: ordinary homogeneous pasta, as well as various tomato sauces, such as “Krasnodar” and “Kuban” are not suitable. Spaghetti paste is prepared from fresh tomatoes or tomato pulp canned according to a special recipe (indicated by the word “Pomito” on the cans). Start your acquaintance with classic pasta with this recipe:

1. To prepare spaghetti pasta for two, take 8 ripe, round, medium-sized tomatoes (more juicy than fleshy) or 1 can (300-400 grams) canned pomito tomatoes, 2 tablespoons dry white wine, 2 cloves of garlic, a bunch parsley, 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of sea salt and a little ground pepper. You can use dried Italian herbs mixture.
   
2. Chop the parsley and garlic. Place in a ceramic bowl, add olive oil, salt and crush with a pestle. Leave at room temperature.
   
3. Scald fresh tomatoes with boiling water and remove the skin. Cut the pulp into cubes. If using canned pomitos, separate the pulp from the liquid and mash with a fork.
   
4. Place the tomato pulp in a deep frying pan and heat for a minute. Add pepper and white wine, stir and simmer over low heat, covered, for 5 minutes.
   
5. Add the herbs in olive oil to the pan, stir and simmer the sauce for another 3-5 minutes.
   

The tomato paste prepared in this way is spread on boiled spaghetti, mixed with two forks and served. You can do it differently: add the prepared spaghetti to the frying pan with the tomatoes, mix, and then transfer the entire contents to a large dish.

Spaghetti Pasta Recipes
Low-calorie spaghetti sauces will not harm your figure, but will only benefit your health, not to mention your mood! Moreover, they begin to lift your spirits even during the cooking process. You don’t think that a truly tasty and aromatic sauce can be bought in a store? And we are of the same opinion, so we have chosen the most successful spaghetti recipes for you:

1. Sun-dried tomato pesto spaghetti. Take 500 grams of pomito or 250-300 grams of sun-dried and canned tomatoes in their own juice, half a glass of extra virgin olive oil, 3 cloves of garlic, half a bunch of fresh basil and parsley, 2 tablespoons of wine vinegar and peeled almonds, a pinch of sea salt ( large crystals). Cut the canned and sun-dried tomatoes into cubes, place in a blender bowl, add salt, add almonds and 2/3 of the oil and turn into a homogeneous mass. Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan. Chop the garlic and heat in oil for 30-40 seconds. Add tomato paste, wine vinegar and cover with a lid. Cook over low heat for about 10 minutes (or until sauce thickens). Remove from heat. Meanwhile, chop fresh herbs and place them in a blender bowl. When the sauce in the pan has cooled slightly, return it to the blender and puree again along with the herbs. Serve with boiled spaghetti, stirring into serving bowls.
   
2. Spaghetti with tomatoes, basil and capers. For half a kilo of fresh red juicy tomatoes you will need half a glass of extra virgin olive oil, basil leaves from one medium-sized bunch, a couple of cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons of capers and a pinch of ground pepper and salt. Scald the tomatoes with boiling water, peel them and remove large seeds and cores. Cut the tomato pulp into cubes and set aside. Peel the garlic and chop or tear the herbs with your hands. Place capers, garlic and basil in a blender bowl, add salt and pepper and puree. Add tomato pulp and stir with a spoon. Serve over spaghetti at room temperature without reheating the pasta.
   
3. Spaghetti with tomato paste and fresh tomatoes. You will need 5 ripe juicy tomatoes, 5 tablespoons of tomato paste without preservatives, dyes and flavor enhancers, 1 medium-sized onion and half a head of garlic. Additionally, don't forget to take some olive oil for frying. Prepare the ingredients: peel the garlic and chop it with a knife, peel the onion and cut it into cubes. Scald fresh tomatoes with boiling water, cut crosswise at the stem and remove the skin. Cut the fresh pulp into cubes, and dilute the tomato paste with water to the consistency of juice. Place the tomato pulp in a saucepan, pour in the liquid paste and simmer for 3 minutes over low heat under the lid. Meanwhile, coat a frying pan with olive oil and fry the onion until golden brown. Then add garlic, stewed tomatoes to the onion and simmer, stirring, until thickened (this will take another 3-4 minutes). Serve the pasta over spaghetti and other pastas as desired.
   
4. Spaghetti Putanesca. The classic sauce is prepared from fresh tomatoes (6 medium-sized pieces), a can of pomito (about 300 grams), 1 large onion, 200 grams of anchovy fillets, large pitted olives (150-200 grams). You will also need olive oil. Scald fresh tomatoes, remove the skin and chop. Cut pomito, fish, olives and peeled onions into cubes or strips. Grease a frying pan generously with oil, heat and fry the onion until golden brown. Add anchovies, olives and both types of tomatoes to the fried onions. Stir carefully and cover with a lid. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 15-20 minutes. Then, without removing the pan from the heat, add the boiled spaghetti, stir and heat everything together for about 30 seconds.
   
5. Spaghetti Salsa. The taste of a spicy vegetable sauce depends on the spices, so for 700-800 grams of ripe juicy tomatoes, 1 large red salad onion and 30 ml of extra virgin olive oil, take 3 cloves of garlic, half a bunch of fresh basil, 1 full tablespoon of dried basil, a third of a bunch of rosemary , 1 heaped teaspoon of dried rosemary, a pinch of ground black pepper, a pinch of ground paprika, 1 tablespoon of fennel seeds and a pinch of finely ground sea salt. Prepare tomatoes (peel, cut into cubes), garlic (peel and chop) and onions (peel and cut into cubes. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion and garlic until translucent. Add the tomato pulp and simmer covered for about 20 minutes. Finely chop the fresh herbs , add to the pan along with dry herbs and spices, add salt, stir and cook for 3-5 minutes.
   

Italian dishes are usually prepared for a large company or a friendly family, so the recipes given are designed for large portions. You can reduce or increase them while maintaining the proportions of the ingredients. But don't be afraid to improvise: making spaghetti pasta is as much an art as enjoying life. Buon Appetito!

The traditional Italian dish, pasta, has long and firmly taken root on our tables. In any store you can find a huge assortment of pasta, but not every housewife knows how to prepare spaghetti pasta on her own. But home-cooked spaghetti has a softer, more delicate taste; Once you try this pasta, you won’t want to buy it in the store, especially since it’s quite easy to prepare.

The main thing in the article

Interesting facts about making homemade pasta

The first paste in history was nothing more than ordinary flour, which was mixed with water and dried in the sun. In appearance, it only vaguely resembled the one we are dealing with today. Then, for several centuries, pasta was made in the form of wide plates, exclusively from durum flour (this tradition is strictly preserved to this day). Italian cuisine has been strongly influenced by Arab culture, which is perhaps why various and numerous spices are always added to a dish such as pasta.

Already in the 15th century, pasta gained great popularity, as it became possible to keep them dry for a long time. With each decade, new ways of preparing pasta were invented: it was boiled, baked, fried, poured with oil, sprinkled with cheese, and generously seasoned with a variety of original sauces.

When a machine for making pasta was invented in the 19th century, which made it possible to quickly roll out the dough into the thinnest layers, its production became noticeably easier and became widespread and very convenient.

To this day, large producers of Italian pasta adhere to a clear recipe for its preparation, using only durum wheat flour and water. However, you can often find dry pasta, which is made from soft varieties of wheat and to which eggs are added. The paste may also differ in the way it is extruded and dried.

How to make your own pasta?

Before you cook pasta or spaghetti, you need to decide on a clear recipe for making it. By adding certain ingredients to a dish, or slightly changing the proportions, you can get a completely new type of pasta each time, which, however, will be much tastier than those purchased in the store.

The most common recipe for making pasta at home, for which you will need:

• 300 grams of durum wheat flour;
• 2-3 chicken eggs;
• a pinch of salt;
• a little olive oil.

Restaurants often use Semola flour to make pasta, which is made from coarse wheat; it is somewhat reminiscent of semolina.

• Sift the flour and pour it onto the table in a neat pile.
• In this slide we make a small depression into which we drive 2 or 3 eggs (at first it’s better to have 2, and if the dough turns out to be too loose and dry, then drive in a third one).
• When the eggs are beaten, add a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil, then gently mix the eggs in the center of the flour mound with a fork.
• We begin to knead the dough - you need to do this from the edges to the center, carefully mixing the flour with the egg mixture.

If the dough sticks to your hands and is not very elastic, you can add more flour to it, but do not overdo it so that it does not become too stiff.

Ideally, you should get a smooth and even lump of dough, quite tight and elastic. When the dough is ready, wrap it in a towel or cling film and leave to rest for 10-15 minutes.

• Next, cut a small piece from the dough, level it, place it between two sheets of parchment paper for baking and roll it out with a rolling pin to minimum thickness and maximum uniformity, doing this in the direction away from you.
• Wrap the finished dough layer loosely around a floured rolling pin and let dry for 10-15 minutes.
• After this procedure, the dough will become glossy, dried and easily cut into strips of the required thickness, depending on what type of pasta you want to get.

Types of Italian pasta

The above method of preparing pasta is the easiest to apply at home. However, there are many types of pasta, which is a little problematic to prepare at home, but it is quite possible to purchase even in our stores, not in Italian ones. Many of them are familiar to us first-hand, and some are yet to be learned about for the first time.

Bucatini - outwardly resemble spaghetti, but are much wider in diameter and have a hole in the middle. Bucatini is cooked for 9-10 minutes and then served with oil-based sauces, as well as vegetables, cheese or fish, with which they harmonize perfectly.

Tagliatelle – flat, fairly wide egg-based noodles. In our stores you can often find it “curled into nests.” This pasta goes well with béchamel and Bolognese sauces and is served with veal sausages or sausages.

The closest “relative” of tagliatelle is pasta fettuccine , with the difference that the latter is slightly wider. We usually call this pasta “noodles” and serve it with tomato sauces and herbs.

Ravioli – this is also a paste, but few people know about it. It looks like dumplings, but according to tradition, ravioli should have a square shape, although we often find round ones in stores. Traditionally, ravioli are filled with meat, although in Italy they are also stuffed with spinach and nutmeg.

An alternative to ravioli are Cappelletti – classic dumplings, as we imagine them.

Rigatoni – paste in the form of small tubes with a hole in the middle. Such pasta has a grooved surface, thanks to which it perfectly holds any, even liquid, sauces.

Orecchiette – we call them ears and we like to serve them with simple butter and tomato sauces, as well as add them to soups.

A pasta similar to orecchiette is called conchiglioni , however, the latter are quite large in size, thanks to which each such “shell” can be stuffed, for example, with meat filling.

Elbow macaroni , which we call nothing more than “horns”. A universal pasta, suitable for serving with cheese and butter sauces, and for use in soups and casseroles.

Fusilli - This is a paste that imitates spirals. The closest “relatives” of fusilli are pasta Rotini ), but the latter are slightly more curved and elongated. Served with tomato sauces, pesto sauce, minced meat and vegetables.

Cannelloni – paste in the form of large tubes with a hole in the middle. Due to its size, this pasta can easily be stuffed with minced meat, then topped with bechamel sauce and baked under a cheese crust.

Lasagne - pasta that serves as the basis for the dish we know. This wide pasta in the form of layers of dough is baked with minced meat, bechamel sauce and cheese and all the ingredients are laid out in layers. This is one of the most popular types of pasta not only in Italy, but also here. Pasta lasagna can be easily prepared at home.

Actually, pasta (Maccheroni) - the most popular type of pasta in our country. The name of this pasta has become such a household word that now we call any pasta pasta.

Stellini - the smallest of all star-shaped pastes. Children especially like this pasta, and it is also actively used in soups and even salads.

And, of course, spaghetti - favorites of our tables. In our country, spaghetti is eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner, served with tomato sauces, butter, cheese, sausages, canned fish, minced meat, in general, with everything your heart desires.

Recipes for delicious Italian pasta Carbonara

Let's learn how to cook Italian carbonara pasta . Despite such an elegant name, this is a rather simple but very tasty dish. To prepare it you will need:

• 2 eggs;
• 50 g parmesan;
• a little hot pepper;
• 100 g lean meat (chicken breast or pork tenderloin);
• a little olive oil;
• salt and spices as desired.

• Place water for the pasta in a saucepan, and while it boils, cut the meat into small cubes and fry it in olive oil for 4-5 minutes.
• To give the meat some piquancy, you can add a little chopped hot pepper to it.
• Cook spaghetti or any other type of pasta in boiling salted water. The finished pasta can be placed in a colander and rinsed thoroughly.
• In a separate bowl, thoroughly mix 2 broken eggs and grated Parmesan. Place the pasta and fried meat in the same pan, mix well and serve.

Recipes for delicious Italian pasta Fettuccine with pesto sauce and chicken breast

Required:

• a large package of fettuccine (wide noodles) or 500 g of homemade noodles;
• 20 g butter;
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil;
• chicken fillet – 150-200 g;
• 1/2 kg of tomatoes;
• 200 ml pesto sauce;
• seasonings, salt, pepper.

• The pasta should be boiled until it reaches what the Italians call "al dente" , in which the noodles are almost ready, but the middle itself is slightly hard.
• For fettuccine, al dente occurs after 12 minutes of cooking. Drain the pasta, but reserve 1 cup of liquid: this will come in handy during the cooking process.
• While the pasta is cooking, the chicken breast is cut into cubes, and the tomatoes are also chopped.
• In a frying pan, mix olive oil with melted butter and fry the chicken until beautifully browned, adding seasonings: dried basil, oregano, rosemary, salt and pepper.
• Transfer the finished chicken to a container, and fry the chopped tomatoes in the remaining oil in the pan, stirring them frequently.
• Let's combine our dish: add chicken, tomato sauce and pesto sauce to the pan with pasta, mix everything well. We remember the glass of water we left in which the pasta was cooked and gradually add it to the pan with the dish so that it is not too dry.

This dish in itself is tasty and beautiful, but when serving you can add fresh herbs, cherry tomatoes and grated Parmesan to it.

Recipe for delicious Italian pasta with seafood

To prepare the dish you will need:

• 250 g spaghetti;
• 500 g of sea cocktail (you can take separately the types of seafood you like, for example, squid, shrimp or mussels);
• 20 g butter;
• a glass of 20% cream;
• 150 g hard cheese;
• salt and any dried Italian herbs.

• Cook the spaghetti in salted water for no more than 7 minutes, then place in a colander and let the water drain. If the spaghetti is cooked correctly, there will be no need to rinse it - they should not stick together.
• Pre-defrost seafood and boil for 3 minutes.
• Melt butter in a frying pan and add sea cocktail to it.
• Then, having mixed the seafood well, add cream to it and simmer the dish for 5-7 minutes.
• At this time, grate the cheese on a coarse grater and add it to the pan with the seafood.
• Melted cheese will give the sauce the necessary consistency: it will become viscous and appetizing.
• Add the pasta to the finished sauce, mix well and serve.

Italian pasta dough recipe: what do you need?

The main components of any paste are:

• flour;
• water;
• salt;
• olive or sunflower oil;
• eggs (sometimes).

Methods for preparing pasta may vary in the ingredients of the dough and their quantity, and also depending on whether the household has a machine for rolling out the dough. If you have one, the process of preparing pasta is greatly simplified. Moreover, the result is real Italian pasta - no worse than the kind served in restaurants in Rome.

After the dough is ready, the rolling machine is sprinkled with flour to prevent fresh pasta from sticking to it. A small piece is cut off from the dough and flattened a little with your hands (to the size and thickness of the flatbread). The machine has a special wheel with numbers that indicate the thickness of the resulting dough layer. This indicator must first be set to 6 or 5, and with each scroll of the test, reduce it. In this case, at each division, the dough must be passed through the machine at least 3-4 times, after which it must be folded in half and passed again. This is necessary to achieve the greatest homogeneity and smoothness of the dough. Typically, spaghetti dough is stopped at 2.

Using a machine, the dough is also easy to cut (you can choose a mode that produces spaghetti or wider tagliatelle).

The resulting paste is laid out on the table, sprinkled with a little flour to prevent sticking and left to dry briefly. After this, the pasta can be cooked, or left to be stored in the refrigerator, but no more than 3-4 days.

How to cook pasta with minced meat in Italian: recipe

We all know how to cook navy pasta, that is, pasta with minced meat. In Italian, this dish is called pasta Bolognese and it is prepared a little differently. Why not experiment and make an ordinary dish original and festive? To prepare the dish you will need:

• spices and herbs (salt, pepper, basil, oregano);
• fresh dill or parsley;
• hard cheese, preferably Parmesan – 100 g;
• minced meat – 500-600 g;
• 1 meaty bell pepper;
• several ripe tomatoes;
• 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil;
• a package of spaghetti or 250 g of homemade pasta;
• medium bulb
• a couple of cloves of garlic.

• Chop the onion and garlic and fry in oil until golden brown (no more than 5 minutes), then add the minced meat to the pan.
• Cut the pepper into cubes, remove the core and seeds. Add the pepper to the fried meat and mix well.
• Grind the tomatoes by hand or in a blender, add to the minced meat, salt, pepper and generously sprinkle with your favorite spices, then simmer the Bolognese sauce for another 15 minutes.
• 7 minutes before the sauce is ready, boil the pasta.
• Place spaghetti on a plate, pour Bolognese sauce over it thickly, then add chopped herbs and sprinkle with grated Parmesan.

What sauce should I serve with Italian pasta?

Many sauces go perfectly with Italian pasta:

• classic tomato sauce , which can be prepared at home from ripe tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are ideal for its preparation: they are sweeter and meatier. Chop the tomatoes and place them in a frying pan in heated olive oil. While the tomatoes are stewing, add seasonings that we like, and before finishing cooking, add chopped herbs and garlic.

• béchamel sauce - not only harmonizes perfectly with any pasta, but also serves as a connecting link for the ingredients of some dishes, for example, cannelloni. It is prepared from butter, milk and flour; A little nutmeg is added to the finished sauce for a sharp taste.

• pesto – green Italian sauce, which can be purchased ready-made in the store or prepared at home. For this you will need:
  fresh basil To;
  pine nuts And;
  Parmesan;
  garlic;
  half a glass of olive oil.
  Grind all the products as much as possible, then add olive oil and mix well.

• Withwhether cream cheese sauce – will make any pasta a masterpiece. Melt the butter in a frying pan, pour in a glass of cream and bring it to a boil, then add the grated cheese. The more cheese, the thicker the sauce, so adjust the consistency as needed.

Italian pasta at home: how to choose flour

Now we constantly buy pasta in stores, but several centuries ago neither Russian nor Italian housewives had this opportunity: they had to make pasta at home. As we have already found out, there is nothing complicated about this, but by preparing pasta at home, we will know exactly what it is made of. A dough sheeting machine makes the process of making pasta much easier.

The key to delicious homemade pasta is to buy the right flour: in Italy they use typo 00 flour, which is made from durum wheat. This is a very finely ground flour, and it produces denser pasta that does not become mushy. If you don’t find such flour in the supermarket, ordinary premium wheat flour will do.

It is also important to boil the finished pasta correctly: when preparing spaghetti or noodles, for every 100 g of pasta you need a liter of water, and the cooking itself lasts 7 minutes.

Another advantage of homemade pasta is that it can be made in different thicknesses and shapes, resulting in an almost new dish each time. In Italy, pasta made by hand is valued much higher than that made by machine.

I recently looked at my catalog of recipes and, without surprise, emphasized once again that my blog is mostly "Italian": pasta, risotto, pizza... even sweets are mostly Italian. It’s not surprising, because Italian cuisine is beloved in our family and has long become homely and dear. Favorite restaurants are also Italian. The most delicious family Sunday lunch... Italian of course! I can confidently say that on my blog the number of Italian dishes will now increase for three reasons:
1. I have increased the number of cookbooks on Italian cuisine.
2. Italian dishes, or rather recipes and ideas, I dream about at night or suddenly appear in my head when, for example, I am walking down the street or driving a car...
3. Ta-dam! I now have KitchenAid Pasta Press Attachment. Today I’m telling you about her miraculous nature! I will also tell you about my experiments with pasta dough, share recipes and tips so that you, too, will be inspired by the idea of ​​making homemade pasta!

So, let's take a closer look at this miracle attachment.

The most important thing I want to note is universal nozzle and fits both the new mixer with a 6.9 l bowl and the mixer with a 4.83 l bowl. The function of the attachment is to form a variety of pasta from the dough. The set includes six plates for forming different types of pasta: Spaghetti, Bucatini, Rigatoni, Fusili, Large Macaroni, Small Macaroni.

The principle of operation of the nozzle is this: the dough is simply passed through the press, and at the end all that remains is to cut the products to the desired length. Assembly of the nozzle is simple and the instructions are provided with detailed pictures. As always, KitchenAid has no unnecessary parts, everything is accessible and functional. A simple example: a part such as the Combo Tool simultaneously serves as a wrench for tightening the attachment and a press for pushing the dough. The kit includes a special brush for cleaning the plates, because... You can't wash them!

The process of installing the attachment on the mixer will also not take much time. The nozzle is installed in the “socket” and then tightened with the fastening handle. All.

The most important what a housewife should do before preparing pasta, choose the right dough. It would seem that everything is simple - there are many recipes for pasta dough. Yes, of course it is. But, having tried more than one pasta dough recipe, I can assure you that not all of them are ideal and for each specific task (preparing lasagna sheets, ravioli dough, curly pasta, etc.) there is a “perfect” recipe , and most likely, each housewife has her own recipe. So, experiment! I have already tried several dough recipes, and I have plans for at least 5 more, or even more. There is no limit to imagination here. Actually, only bold ideas from you, and KitchenAid will do the rest.

1. Form the finished dough into balls the size of a walnut.
2. Place the required plate on the pasta attachment. Secure the nozzle.
3. Set the mixer speed (6-10) depending on the type of paste and recommended speed. For Fusili, speed 6 is recommended as the maximum. In general, the shorter the paste, the slower the speed. So, Spaghetti can be cooked at speed 10.
4. Place the balls one at a time into the “funnel”, pushing with the back of the “key” if necessary. In general, the machine is smart and “picks up” the dough perfectly.

How long should the finished pasta be?

My personal opinion is whatever you want. But in general, recommendations regarding the length and speed of kneading are as follows:

Spaghetti - speed 10, length 24 cm
Bucatini - speed 10, length 24 cm
Rigatoni - speed 6, length 4 cm
Fusili - speed 2-4, length 24 or 4 cm
Large Macaroni - speed 6, length up to 5 cm
Small Macaroni - speed 6, length up to 4 cm

As I already said, there can be thousands of pasta recipes and it is possible that you will invent your own unique recipe. Therefore, the recommendations are general and it cannot be said with confidence that they work in all cases without exception. You can use different flours, make the dough with or without eggs, add water, olive oil, puree... All this will affect the result. But anyway:

1. Practice. At the beginning, it is better to prepare the dough with a reserve to see how it behaves when using different plates. I noticed this peculiarity for myself - the dough that is ideal for spaghetti does not seem ideal to me in the case of rigatoni. You may have a different opinion.
2. As a rule, in the case of egg paste, you don’t need a lot of liquid; you can do without it at all. In order for the finished products to “keep their shape” well, the dough must be very tight. The correct consistency of the dough is this: you take a small piece of dough from the mixer bowl (for example, at the moment you change the flat mixer to the hook) and squeeze it with your fingers. The right dough sticks together without sticking to your hands or crumbling. Then look: the dough is dry, crumbly - add a little water, the dough is sticky - add flour.
3. The pasta dough should be kneaded well. At least 10 minutes by hand and at least 5 minutes in a mixer. During the process of kneading the dough, gluten threads are formed (gluten swells), thanks to which the dough holds its shape. However, if you knead the dough too long, the bonds will break, so it is important to stop kneading when a homogeneous, elastic mass has formed.
4. After kneading, leave the dough covered with a damp towel or wrapped in cling film for at least 30 minutes to an hour.

1. Pasta can be cooked immediately after cooking. As a rule, in this case, 2-4 minutes of boiling is enough (depending on the type of pasta and dough). Cook dry pasta for about 7 minutes.
2. To dry the pasta, place the pasta in one layer on a towel placed on a flat surface.
3. You can store the paste in a vacuum container in the refrigerator for about 5 days. The paste can be frozen and stored for up to 4 months. Frozen pasta is boiled immediately, without prior defrosting.
4. For easy storage, the long paste can be dried in a "nest" shape.

To get started, you have a choice of 4 simplest pasta dough recipes. I've tried every dough with every attachment, so I'm making recommendations based on what worked for me.

1 dough - BASIC, egg dough (universal, but works somewhat worse with curly pasta, for example, rigatoni and fusili)

Ingredients:

300 g white flour type OO
3 eggs
a pinch of salt

How to do:

1. Install a flat mixer. Pour the sifted flour and salt into the mixer bowl. At mixer speed 2, start mixing, adding eggs one at a time. Knead for 30 seconds. The mixture will look like cookie crumbs.

2. Install the hook attachment. At second speed, knead the dough until elastic. The longer you knead, the tighter and more elastic the dough will be. So, it is recommended to knead by hand for at least 10 minutes. 5 is enough in the mixer. But this is individual and depends on everyone’s preferences. The dough turns out quite tough. If you find the dough too dry, add a little olive oil while kneading.
3. Form the finished dough into a ball with your hands, wrap it in cling film or cover with a damp towel and leave for 30 minutes to an hour. After a while, you will notice that the “ball” has become soft and elastic.

4. Form the “rested” dough into balls the size of a walnut.
5. Place the required plate on the pasta attachment. Set mixer speed (6-10) depending on the type of paste and recommended speed. Next, lower the balls into the “funnel” one at a time, pushing them with the back of the “key” if necessary.

Bucatini

Spaghetti

2 dough - Egg dough (harder and more elastic than Basic, therefore ideal for preparing rigatoni, fusili)

Ingredients:

500 g white flour type OO
3 eggs
2 yolks
a pinch of salt
olive oil optional (if dough is too dry)

How to do:

Cm. BASIC, egg dough(elastic, with a pronounced yellow color, universal)

3 dough - With semola

Ingredients:

200 g flour type OO
75 g semolina
7 yolks
1 egg
a pinch of salt

How to do:

Cm. BASIC, egg dough

Fusili(note the bright yellow color due to the large number of yolks, I also had country eggs)

Important! The only thing I never managed to achieve was perfectly curled Fusili. Those. they had to be brought to “perfection” by hand. I assume that some special dough recipe is needed in order for the pasta to come out fully prepared.

Rigatoni

4 dough - Pasta made from durum flour (perfect in every sense)

Ingredients:

300 g semolina
150 ml warm water (about how much flour will take)
a pinch of salt

How to do:

1. Install a flat mixer. Pour the sifted flour and salt into the mixer bowl. At mixer speed 2, start mixing, gradually adding water. Knead for 30 seconds.
2. See BASIC, egg dough(from 2 points)

Large macaroni

Important! Here, carried away by photography, I forgot to cut the pasta 5 cm long... I remembered when they were already drying together on the towel. I didn’t get upset, but decided to leave it in this form as an experiment to test its strength. To my surprise, pasta made from this dough is actually much stronger, does not break and retains its shape perfectly during cooking. True, eating them so big was not very convenient, but the taste... The taste fixed everything!

Small pasta

Conclusion

Having tried several types of dough, I opted for pasta made from durum flour.

Advantages over egg paste:

1. Beautiful milky color that does not change during storage.
2. The dough is tight, holds its shape perfectly, and is very elastic.
3. After drying, the paste is not fragile and stores well.
4. During cooking, it does not break, crumble or deform.
5. This paste, when dried, has the longest shelf life.
6. The most dietary and healthy pasta, which definitely plays a decisive role when it comes to healthy eating.

PS. Looking ahead, I will say that soon there will be recipes for delicious pasta and you will see how beautiful homemade pasta is and that absolutely nothing happens to it during the cooking process.

P.P.S. For those who have not seen reviews of the KitchenAid mixer itself, you can look at

And if now we mostly 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 from. Today you will find a long read - first the recipe itself, and then a video and a story about various methods of preparing pasta.

How to cook pasta, noodles and macaroni at home

In Italy, typo 00 flour from durum wheat is used to make pasta, and if you are going to cook Italian dishes from your pasta, look for it in supermarkets: this is a particularly finely ground flour, and the pasta from it turns out to be denser and less boiled. However, if you can’t find such flour, take regular high-grade wheat flour; with it, the pasta will not be 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 it, add a pinch of salt and knead the dough. It should be stiff but elastic without sticking to your hands, so you may need to add a little flour or water when you cook the pasta. This is impossible to predict - it all depends on the quality of flour, the weight of the eggs, air humidity and other factors, but over time you will learn to feel the correct consistency of the dough. After kneading the dough vigorously, roll it into a tight ball, cover and let 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 sprinkling flour on 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 (for spaghetti and noodles - very narrow, for tagliatelle - wider), rectangles for either beshbarmak, or any other shape that you like. The dough for all varieties is prepared in the same way: it is better to prepare them right away, but all other types of pasta should first be dried and then put in the refrigerator or frozen.

How to Cook Pasta Using a Pasta Machine

From the kitchen equipment for the method described above, you only need a bowl, a rolling pin and a knife, but besides them you will need remarkable strength - after all, kneading and then rolling out stiff dough is not as easy as it seems at first. In this sense, a pasta machine is a very useful tool - so useful that I highly recommend getting one for anyone who loves pasta, noodles, etc., and regularly prepares dishes with them. Such machines can be manual or electric, and in my case this role was played by attachments for a mixer, which I wrote about quite recently.

The set includes three attachments, one of which is used for rolling out the dough, and the other two are for cutting the rolled sheets for linguine and tagliatelle, respectively. This arrangement surprised me - for some reason I expected that it would be possible to change the cutting width, but here there are only two rigidly fixed options, to switch between which you also need to change the nozzles. At the same time, their width is only about 10 centimeters, that is, it is better not to initially overdo it with the amount of dough that you will roll out at a time.

However, in practice, making pasta using these attachments is quite convenient. Having installed the attachment for rolling out the dough - it is attached to a special connector in the head of the mixer - turn on the second speed (the instructions suggest 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 the rested dough a couple of times until it forms a thick but flat sheet, then pass it through the roller several times, folding it in half after each roll to make the dough as elastic as possible. After this, reduce the thickness of the dough by 1 division, each time rolling the sheets through the attachment 2-3 times until you reach a dough thickness of 5. After this, you can install the selected attachment for cutting the dough and pass all the rolled sheets through it. To prevent the pasta from sticking, do not be greedy with flour for dusting; you should not wash the attachments themselves with water after finishing work - instead, let the dough dry and clean the attachments using the included brush.

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 in a couple of photos above, and then either put it in the refrigerator or freeze until better times. In the latter case, it is better to roll the paste into nests for easy storage. By the way, KitchenAid, in addition to these attachments, also has a press that allows you to form tubes of various diameters, spirals and spaghetti, but for my needs these are enough for now.

For better clarity, I made a video recipe for homemade pasta, which, in my opinion, describes this process in quite detail and exhaustively:

(As you know, video recipes are not my thing, so I will be very glad if you leave your comments about what you liked and what you didn’t, so that I can make it even better next time).

If you are interested in the attachments that were used in the filming of this video, here they are - KitchenAid Pasta Roller Cutters.

Finally, I’ll give you some advice - more homemade pasta, noodles and pasta, good and different! They're worth it.