I made fresh pasta without splurging on fancy equipment.

So you’ve made the brilliant yet unfortunate mistake of trying fresh pasta. Because now, you’re addicted, and you can’t go back to the boxed stuff.

If you’re anything like me, you would’ve foreseen your fresh pasta stock running low within a matter of weeks and scoured the internet for homemade pasta tutorials, eagerly hoping to make some of your own. But as you watch more tutorials, your heart sinks, learning that most recipes call for some sort of pasta maker.

You battle with your mind for a second, debating if it’s worth the extra $60 at all. Eventually, you nearly abandon the idea, when suddenly it strikes you – what if I try rolling it out on my own?

So that’s what I tried to achieve here – testing to see if rolling out pasta dough by hand is as difficult as they say it is. For this project, I followed Jernej Kitchen’s ramen egg noodle recipe. And yes, I am aware of the fact that pasta and ramen are worlds apart, but they ultimately fall under the same family, and the end result was somehow more similar to pasta.

All the recipe asks is that you fry your baking soda prior to mixing it in with the other ingredients. Nope, no need for an egg well, and you can even knead the dough by hand. I don’t have the patience for that, so I used the dough hook attachment on my hand mixer.

To be fair, they might’ve turned out pasta-esque just because they weren’t sliced thinly enough, resulting in the linguine-like shape. I’m not mad about it, though.

It’s not obvious, but I tried using a piece of parchment to cover my stove while working the dough but it kept moving, even when I used blu-tack (#notsponsored).

So, I eventually gave up and threw it to the back. Don’t worry, my stove is sparkling. And if it’s not then, eh, I’m the only one getting poisoned here.

Dropped the pasta into a pot of boiling salted water for 2 minutes, and all done!

I stuck to my initial plan of having ramen – boiled a couple of dumplings, added a dollop of honey soy garlic marinade, a splash of light soy sauce, and a drizzle of sesame oil, then gave everything a quick zhuzh. And of course, some chilli oil to tie everything together.

Update (2 May 2020)

So, the fresh pasta finally donned some actual pasta sauce this time round (chicken alfredo). Here’s how it looks like – for the curious kids.

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Verdict?

Almost too easy. Of course, if you’re a busy parent in a household of 5, you probably won’t feel that motivated to make your own pasta from scratch.

But if you’re a fresh pasta fanatic with too much time on your hands, I say go for it. In fact, you don’t even need to have too much free time in order to try this recipe out. All you need is about an hour a week to get the job done, and it’s worth every second.

AND you can store them in the freezer for up to 3 months!