Making pasta with your Kitchen Aid

If you're one of those cooks who has some amount of time greater than 7 minutes but less than 4,000 years to create your pasta dish, then this might be the route for you. It's the delicious taste of homemade noodles meets the beauty of technological advances.

Step #1. Get a fantastic mother-in-law who buys you cool stuff, like this:


Step #2. Mix together some flour and eggs as directed here:


Step #3. Remove that funny little knob on the front of your mixer that you always wondered about and attach your pasta maker.



Step #4. Turn your mixer on one of the lowest two settings and feed your dough through a few times until it's nice a smooth and a uniform thickness. Look, I can even make dough with one hand and take a picture with the other:


Step #5. Turn the dial to a progressively higher number as you run your dough through again and again until the pasta is as thin as you like. If you try to do it all at once, though, you'll end up looking like this. So feel free to cut it into workable lengths.


Step #6. Change the attachment to the cutter of your choice and once again feed the pasta dough through on the slowest setting. As it comes out, simply cut the noodles to your desired length.


I cut mine over a cookie sheet and let them drop right down into a pile. Then just toss them with a little extra flour if they are too wet and let them rest on the counter until you're ready to cook them. They can also be dried out most of the way and then frozen if you want to do all this work ahead of time.


Step #7. Drop the noodles into boiling water - they only take 3 or 4 minutes to cook through!


Step #8. Top with your favorite meat & sauce combination for a pasta creation that will rival an Italian restaurant.