Fun with small appliances

[brooksmoses]

So it turns out that the combination of a masticating juicer and a pasta extruder is kind of the best thing ever. (Though, whee, looking at the new prices on those, I'm glad I bought mine secondhand!)

I suggested to Morgan that she could help make pasta for dinner, and she demanded pink pasta. So, I peeled and loosely chopped a third of a beet and ran it through the juicer, and then helped her measure out two scoops of flour into the pasta-maker, and then turned it on and poured the beet juice and water in the top. She was fascinated watching it mix, and when it started extruding, although she didn't want to cut off the noodles herself, she told me when the noodles were long enough to cut.

And then we had sort of shockingly-pink very-slightly-beet-flavored pasta. It was a little less shockingly so once it was cooked, but still quite distinctly and pleasantly pink.

(I'm still pondering what's the best flour to use, though. This is clearly a case where the flavor of the flour comes through strongly, and differences will matter.)

Comments

[artan]

I think we got rid of our (manual) pasta extruder for lack of use. I was recently threatening to make the children meat-noodles, which I don't think that one could do as ours was one of the press-and-slice ones. That looks much more capable of fancy mold shapes.

Do they make fancy mold shapes? Have you tried experimenting with the veggie-to-dough ratio as a way to incorporate higher veggie content for veggie-averse children?