Homemade pasta is something that I make every once in a while and it is a treat when I do. Like baking homemade bread, it can be a time consuming and messy process that you don’t always have the time or energy for. You can always use dried pasta, but if you are a true pasta lover you might want to look for other ways to enjoy fresh pasta more easily. One option is getting a gadget like the Viante Pasta Extruder. This machine mixes and kneads pasta dough and then extrudes it in one of 14 different shapes, creating picture-perfect pasta every time. All you need to do to enjoy it is to have some salted, boiling water at the ready.
The machine is about the size of a breadmaker and looks a little bit like an ice cream machine. You add all of your ingredients (recipes that fit the machine are included to give you a good starting place) to the top of the machine and turn it on. It takes about 30 minutes to mix, knead and extrude the dough, but that is all hands-off time that you can use for other projects. To get the various shapes, you simply fit different discs on the extruding portion of the machine and the pasta will come out in the shape of linguini, spaghettini, ziti, bucatini or many others. You can also take the dough out and shape it by hand, if you prefer.
The machine isn’t inexpensive (over $300 at the time of writing this), but it does do an amazing job for a pasta lover and is a lot less work than traditional hand-crank pasta machines. As with any kitchen appliance, if you are going to use it a lot, you can really get your money’s worth – and get to eat a lot of delicious homemade pasta in the process.
What do you think?