How and Why to Make Homemade Pasta (yes, even with kids)
Oh so messy, but oh so worth it.
Hello! This week we’ve been talking about letting your kids feel like an important part of the team. The word some cultures use for this is acomodido. Yesterday we shared some tips to make cleaning together more fun.
Today’s activity/meal inspiration is a beautiful way to help kids feel like a useful part of the team as they prepare a meal. It’s very empowering—for children and adults alike—to say “I made pasta all by myself!” and the process engages each of the five senses. Forget buying slime or Play-doh when you can make pasta!
The process isn’t easy, but it’s simple. Or maybe it’s easy, but it isn’t simple; I don’t remember the saying 😅 Either way, it’s a little challenging, a lot of mess, but it’s very forgiving. Plan for about 2-3 hours start-to-cleanup for this one. We shared a cute reel of this process on our Instagram; check it out! 😊
Bonus: after you have a pasta roller (about $24 on Amazon) or if you’re using a rolling pin, it’s also very cheap!
There are a lot of pasta-making videos online—they’re addicting—but check out Billy Parisi’s pasta recipe and 10-minute video to start. He has fond memories of his Italian grandma making pasta in their basement.
Here’s his basic recipe:
560 grams 00 or All-Purpose flour (4 cups + 3 tbsp)
140 grams semolina flour or more All-Purpose flour (3/4 cup + 1 ½ tbsp)
7 eggs
If you want an egg-free recipe, simply combine 3/4 c water, 2 Tbsp olive oil, and 3 c flour.
Before you do anything, of course, you must turn on some good Italian Restaurant Music! Search “Italian Restaurant music” or even “Pasta making playlist” on Spotify, Youtube, Amazon Echo, etc.
First, clean your table and hands because you’re going to be getting dough alllll in your fingernails. Put the flour in a pile and dig a little well for the eggs. Then mix it up with your hands. Knead for 7 minutes, then knead for 5 more minutes. (Whew.) You could use an electric mixer for this part 😉
Ball up the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
During this time, consider making a basic meat sauce by frying up chopped onions and garlic with ground beef, salt, and herbed pepper, and adding crushed tomatoes once everything is browned. Stir, add some cooking wine and pasta water, let simmer, and you’ve got some good smells going on.
If someone’s hands are free while the dough rests in the fridge, give them the instructions for Katharine Hepburn’s brownie recipe because it’s only seven ingredients. For my daughter’s reference, I called them “Movie Star Brownies.”1
Once your dough has rested, now the real fun can begin.
Keep parchment paper, flour, and a chef’s knife or bench scraper handy. Cut up your dough into three parts (or more.)
If you don’t have a pasta roller, use a rolling pin on that dough until it’s thin enough to read the newspaper, then slice it up into fettuccine. (Billy shows how to do this in the video.)
If you have a pasta roller, your kids will have a blast with this part. Sprinkle generous amounts of flour on your roller and your dough. Start with the thickest setting (ours was a 7) and roll your pasta through. It’s probably going to have holes and fall apart. Just keep folding it onto itself and rolling it through!
When you feel good about it, adjust the setting down to 4 or 5. Then run it through at 1 or 2. When it really looks and feels like pasta, make up a catchphrase to celebrate! We always say “It’s-a pastaaaa!” when it’s reached that point. I really can’t describe how satisfying this process is 😅
If you’re making angel hair pasta, move your roller’s crank to that part of the attachment and run your flattened dough through. Here’s a picture of when we made pasta while living in an RV! You can experiment with all kinds of different shapes; check out this video for how to make 29 different shapes.
Wrap up your pasta in little nests to let them dry for about ten minutes. Boiling them should only take a few minutes since they’re fresh. Make sure your water is as salty as the sea before you begin!
We picked some fresh basil and sprinkled Pecorino as garnish, and voila! A noticeably fresh pasta. Made almost completely by young children.
Since one batch of pasta dough makes a lot, you can experiment with all kinds of fancy pasta combinations that are going to instantly have a boost of special-ness because of the fresh pasta. Here’s a concoction with roasted radishes, garlic, chickpeas, Swiss-Gruyére cheese, lemon, and sage! It definitely follows all the Michael Pollan Food Rules that we discussed in June: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
When you make your own pasta dough, there’s so much you can do with it! A big one is adding color naturally with foods such as spinach or turmeric. Reader and personal friend Shawna—who introduced me to pasta-making—has tried quite a few of these!
A couple years ago, our daughters made heart ravioli together using beets and blackberries as dye!
If you want to be blown away, check out Linda from @saltyseattle making rainbow pasta. (Her monarch butterfly pasta is my favorite of her masterpieces.)
Hopefully that wasn’t overwhelming! I hope your family gets to try making this. It just might become a regular habit! Pasta dough lasts about 3 days in the fridge (or longer in the freezer.) There are resources galore online if you want more details.
Enjoy!
Warmly,
Hope from Family Scripts
It’s probably worth it to for you to watch Vaughn Vreeland’s experiments and silly commentary on this fun (and slightly helpful) Katharine Hepburn’s Brownie Recipe video.
Has it really been years?😭 Making pasta really is a core memory for me. 😘 So proud of your progress. Everything looks yummy!