The KitchenAid Stand Mixer: Pasta Perfection
Okay, we’ve had our KitchenAid stand mixer (a red Artisan) for quite awhile, and wife Nat uses it sort-of regularly for baking purposes--enough that I feel good about getting it for her as a gift (the KitchenAid stand mixer is the best gift for a baker or cook, by the way). But while I’ve always known that with the many attachments you can do a lot more than just “mixing” with the stand mixer, I haven’t really experimented as much as I should (hey, it gets busy over here). Finally, last night, I took the stand mixer plunge in a pasta kind of way. I picked up the pasta pack of attachments as a little holiday gift for myself (which has a dough roller, fettuccini maker, and spaghetti maker) and asked Nat to help me see how the stand mixer did with pasta-making. We decided to try Ecco La Pasta’s whole wheat pasta flour, making it into fettuccini (Ecco La Pasta is ideal for the stand mixer we found after doing a little research--and after eating some of their fresh pasta, which was tasty. The company has even put out stand-mixer pasta-making videos to watch if you go in for that sort of thing.) I got the mixer mise en place in place while waiting for Nat to come home from work.
We’d both had nutty days (hey, it is the holiday season, which is joyous and all, but which can be nutty, too), and were really not overly excited about the pasta-making experience, at first. We almost skipped it completely and hit Scooter’s (best burgers, veggie and non, in Seattle). However, we’d planned on trying out the new attachments, and so fought off the doldrums and dived in. The steps were easy (as the photos below will show), but here’s the big thing: making the pasta with the stand mixer was really, really fun. Watching the clunky dough getting smoothed out by the roller, thinner and thinner, and then watching it come out in perfect fettuccini was amazing--and a kick. We just kept saying, “Why haven’t we done this earlier,” and “When can we do this again?” With the many seasonal dinners and visitors this month, we’ve already started planning out what pastas we’ll make in the mixer and for whom (the options are almost endless, as there’s a ravioli kit too, which we’re going to try out next).
As you can see, it’s a simple pasta-making process. The end result we decided to toss simply with truffle oil, red and black pepper, a little garlic and walnuts, and some freshly-grated Pecorino Romano, which was a good way to highlight the rich whole-wheat flavor of the pasta, accenting it, but not overwhelming it. Delicious, fun, and hassle free? That’s a wonderful winter Wednesday night (thanks KitchenAid mixer).
--A.J. Rathbun
dorothy brown on December 05, 2008 at 09:41 AM
When mixing the pasta dough, my recipe calls for kneading it for 7 minutes depending upon how much dcugh you are making. The kneading results in a very tender pasta. Really good.