Cutting Homemade Pasta Without a Pasta Machine

Steaming Bowl of Hot Pasta

Kitchen Tip Tuesday:

I like making homemade pasta but I do not have a pasta machine. I don't like having around a kitchen gadget that is large and good for only one thing, as my storage space is very limited.

In the past I would cut my homemade pasta with a knife or with a pizza cutter - but I wasn't able to get uniformly sized noodles.

For some time I had been looking for a little kitchen gadget that I saw at the grocery store one time. I didn't know what it was called or what it was used for - but it looked similar to a pizza cutter except it had more wheels or blades on it.

I finally found one at Garden Ridge for $7.00...and it's actually an herb mincer.

Fresh Herb Mincer

I used my normal recipe for pasta, rolled it out, let it dry for about 1/2 hour and then ran the herb mincer down it. Worked great...at least the first batch did. When I made it today using the same recipe except included some whole-wheat flour it tended to gum up the mincer...I think it had more to do with the consistency of the dough...I sprayed some cooking spray on the mincer and continued and it worked fine.

Uncooked Pasta

You do have to press down hard on the mincer and run it down the dough really quickly to get the cuts all the way through the dough.

Here is a link to another post I wrote on homemade pasta and it includes the recipe I use and my preferred method for drying the pasta.

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Incidentally I tried the herb mincer on some fresh herbs and it didn't work worth beans!