Pasta makers come in different brands and types that vary in size, shape, price, functionality, and overall performance. A pasta maker can either be manual or electric; some can work both ways. Although seasoned folks prefer using manual pasta machines, electric pasta makers are quickly gaining popularity because they do (almost) everything for you especially if you’re new to making pasta. This makes electric pasta makers great for lots of pasta dishes. There’s also a slight difference between electric pasta makers and fully automatic pasta makers… but we will get to that later on as we go deeper into the topic. So what makes an electric pasta maker so special? And how do they come in handy when preparing various pasta dishes?
#1: Easy to Use — Easy Mixing, Easy Rolling, Easy Cutting
This is an advantage for both veteran home pasta makers and beginners as well. Powered by an electric motor, electric pasta machines simplify dough rolling and cutting to kindergarten play. Easy peasy lemony squeezy! Using an average electric pasta maker still requires you to mix and knead the dough manually. The electric pasta machine then helps you with the rolling and cutting. All you have to do is place your small piece of square -shaped, hand -patted, flat dough between the rollers and slowly work it through using both hands.
You can work on the dough while adjusting the thickness until you achieve the desired size of pasta. From there, you can effortlessly run the ready dough through the cutter to get the strands of pasta you want or you can push the dough out through an electric pasta extruder. As many home pasta makers will tell you, rolling the dough with a pin and cutting it to even strips is not an easy thing to do by hand.
An electric pasta maker like the Lello (2730) Pro runs on a 300 watt motor to automatically mix the dough for you (up to 3lbs in 30 minutes flat!), and also extrude the finished dough as linguine, spaghetti, maccheroni, fettuccine, lasagna, bucatini and angel hair! This gives you the opportunity to decorate your dining table with different pasta dishes every time you feel like eating pasta. Another automatic pasta machine that comes highly recommended is definitely the Phillips HR2357. Despite a similarity in mode of operation and service elivery between the Lello and the Phillips, the Phillip appears to be way ahead in terms of performance and reliability. Furthermore, the Phillips (2357) offers more pasta options such as pappardelle and tagliatelle in addition to all the options you can get with the Lello. One more thing you should probably also know about electric pasta machines with automatic mixers is that they give you the opportunity to play around with the ingredients you can include in your pasta recipes. You can go wild with herbs and veggies as much or as little as you want. The possibilities are virtually endless.
#2: Consistent Results and Reliability
Daily preparation of homemade pasta is almost an impossible feat for the average person to pull off without the help of a pasta machine. Consistency is also another major issue especially for those who are still new to making pasta from home. However, all this can be made possible by investing in a good pasta maker. Most electric pasta machines come with amazing recipes that are easy to replicate day in day out and the resulting pasta is (almost) always the same. The advantage of a well built pasta maker is that it can endure constant abuse even when used on a daily basis! And that’s without faltering in performance. Please note that many people just starting out on making pasta from home cannot produce the same quality dough even if they made two dough batches in immediate succession. However, a fully automatic pasta maker with a mixer can produce hundreds of batches of the same quality dough.
#3: Availability of Cool Accessories
Although pasta makers like the Phillips HR2357/05 come fully loaded with a mixer and an extruder to make things kindergarten easy for you, some of them like KitchenAid require you to purchase a separate stand mixer and 3 different head attachments for tagliatelle, flat -sheet pasta and linguine. However, you can avoid all this hustle by getting the KitchenAid KPEXTA extruder attachment that has 6 pasta shaping discs (plates) to help you expand the creativity on your pasta creations.
You have a choice of up to 8 pasta shaping discs (dies) for different pastas with the Phillips and the Magic Mill DeLonghi pasta makers. The Magic Mill DeLonghi pasta shaping dies give you options for linguine, ravioli, lasagna, spaghetti, tagliatelle, fettuccine, biscuit, and macaroni. The Phillips pasta maker gives you options like spaghetti, angel hair, tagliatelle, pappardelle, lasagna, and penne. It also has a small drawer where you can store all your shaping discs.
The Marcato Atlas Wellness pasta machine on the other hand is bought separately from the 2 -speed motor.
This makes it easy to replace the electric part only if it breaks down. You can also continue using the pasta machine manually as you wait for your replacement motor to be delivered! This is more of a “hybrid” pasta maker since it can deliver the best of both worlds. More accessories include cleaning brushes, measuring cups, pasta cutters, and ravioli stamps.
#4: Faster Preparation
As mentioned earlier, rolling pasta dough is not a walk in the park! You have to go a few rounds with a rolling pin to get the precise pasta thickness you’re going and this is not even guaranteed. Plus, it takes a century to cut the pasta to precision especially if you’re making a big family -size batch at once; or different batches of differently shaped pasta. Automatic electric pasta makers take a lot of the pasta making process off your hands leaving you with more time to concentrate on the sauce or soup. You can use most of these automatic pasta makers to prepare your pasta from start to finish by simply pressing a few buttons. Better yet, you can prepare a complete pasta dish from scratch in less than an hour if you know what you’re doing. For instance, the Imperial pasta maker can make up to 12 different types of pasta from a pound and a half of dough in 10 minutes.
#5: Extra Useful Features
Some pasta makers can do more than just make pasta. For instance, the Ronco Popeil P400 and the USEFUL pasta makers can be used to makes delicious sausages to go with your fresh pasta or for any other meal. As briefly pointed out earlier, the Magic Mill DeLonghi also helps you produce nicely shaped biscuits. The Imperial pasta machine mentioned above can also do pretzels, cookies, bread sticks and bagels.
Summary of Electric Pasta Makers Benefits
- *Consistent results
- *Easy to use
- *A wide variety of pasta options and shapes
- *Fast pasta preparation which saves you time
- *Versatility
- *Relatively cheap
Conclusion
To conclude this topic on electric pasta makers, it is safe to say that electric pasta machines are the perfect investment for people who want to enjoy fresh pasta rather than buy pasta stuffed full of preservatives from the store. Another thing that makes electric pasta makers such amazing gadgets is the fact that you can practically prepare any type of pasta you can think of depending on the features or functionalities or accessories available with your electric pasta maker of choice. This basically means you can mix it up or match it up whichever way you want. By this I mean you can have one “mix -crate” plate of pasta with all sorts of differently shaped pasta and in varied lengths too. The possibilities and combinations are only limited by your own creativity. These wonderful appliances make everything look and feel quite easy. Pasta experts (and sometimes keen beginners) making their own pasta from home can use these brilliant machines to make fresh pasta dishes in less than an hour. Most of these pasta makers are driven by 200 watt motors, which means they can produce batches of pasta faster than the average person doing everything by hand. Electric pasta makers are reliable and consistent when it comes to mixing dough, rolling it or cutting it to desired shapes and sizes. Get yourself a pasta maker today and change your pasta eating experience forever!
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