If you raise chickens (or ducks) and aren't making your own pasta, what are you waiting for? Fresh pasta far surpasses dried/store bought pasta in taste, texture and nutrition - no surprise there - and it's super easy (and fun) to make.
There are limitless variations, shapes and flavors of pasta you can make. Some do require special equipment and tools, while others you can hand cut with a knife or a simple pastry roller.
But you can keep it simple and make a basic dough which you then form into spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine, or you can get fancy and make herbed or vegetable pasta flavors, stuff and shape them into ravioli or tortellini.
I am going to share with you a very basic egg pasta recipe that you can use as a jumping off point to get familiar with the process, and then you can experiment from there. I'm making fettuccine, using just flour, eggs and salt, which you can just cut with a knife or pastry roller once you have it rolled out.
I generally just use regular all-purpose white flour because that's what I have on hand most often, but you can use a semolina mix, wheat flour, even gluten-free options.
Some people add a bit of water or oil to their dough, but all you really need is flour, eggs, and salt.
Here's the basic recipe I use.
How to Make Homemade Fettuccine Egg Pasta
Measure out your flour into a mound on a clean surface such as your kitchen counter, table or a large cutting board. Make a well in the middle and pour in the egg.
Using a fork stir to combine the egg and flour, and then knead the dough for about 10 minutes, until it has come together and is smooth. Form the dough into a ball, flatten it into a disk, and then wrap it in plastic wrap.
Let the dough rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes (and up to several hours) or until you are ready to cook it.
Once the dough has rested, roll it out on a floured surface with a rolling pin and cut it into your shapes or use a pasta machine.
I have the Marcato Atlas 150 Pasta Maker and love it. It's manually operated, easy to use, and you can make angel hair and linguine noodles with it as well as flat sheets to use for lasagna, tortellini or ravioli, which you would then fill by hand or using a ravioli mold.
You can also buy the pasta attachment for your KitchenAid stand mixer, or it's very easy to just cut your pasta by hand once you've rolled it out.
Once you have your pasta cut and shaped, drop it into boiling, generously salted water for a few minutes. Generally, it should only take about 3 to 4 minutes to cook fresh pasta. Drain and serve with your favorite sauce.
If you don't want to eat it right away, you can hang your pasta on a pasta drying rack to dry and then store it in the pantry, or you can freeze the pasta (coil it into round single-serving "nests" if you're going to freeze it) to cook later.
Watch as I show you how to make Homemade Fettuccine Egg Pasta below.
(Despite how it may look in the video, the pasta maker does have a clamp that keeps it steady as you use it, but it didn't attach well to my beveled edge counter tops, so for the sake of the video I struggled a bit. However, it works great clamped to our dining room table!)
Once you have mastered the basic recipe, you can start experimenting with different types of flour, or even adding herbs to the basic dough.
I started making my own pasta years ago when I was living in New York, but somehow got out of the practice.
Now that we have our own chickens and fresh eggs, I am even more excited about all the flavorful varieties of pasta I can make quite easily.
I was recently sent a copy of Mastering Pasta: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pasta, Gnocchi, and Risotto by Marc Vetri with David Joachim.
It's a beautifully photographed pasta cookbook which offers a wonderful variety of unique and creatives recipes for handmade pasta, plus lots of instructional text and photos to help with form and technique. I can't wait to dive in and start making some of the tantalizing recipes.
Another good book is Making Artisan Pasta by Aliza Green if you are interesting in making your own pasta - which I highly recommend!
