Actually mine can make pasta, never tried making home made pasta before so I need to give it a try some time.
What model do you have? Some have accessory nozzles & others are cut-to-length, depending on what the model's capabilities are.
I'm married to an Italian, so I have access to great homemade Italian food, but tbh, I can't really tell much of a difference between boxed pasta & fresh pasta lol. I think it's more of the culture & the idea of fresh pasta that drives the fun of it, at least to my (somewhat limited) palette. However, I still make it fresh from time to time. We got a manual hand-crank machine when we got married, plus I picked up a Philips Smart Pasta machine a few years ago & buy aftermarket extruders for it a few times a year. It's fun to do different shapes & colors, plus it makes a great gift (fresh pasta in a bread bag + some sous-vide chicken, for example).
The automatic machine is pretty easy to use...weighs, kneads, and extrudes all-in-one:
It's pretty heavy & the discs are a pain to clean, but you can make a bunch of random stuff with it:
If you have a food processor, here's a good starter pasta recipe: (you can also knead it manually by hand, but I've got carpal, so it's not my favorite way lol)
This recipe is basically just an egg with half a cup of flour. Pulse it per the instructions, let it sit for half an hour, then use a rolling pin & a pizza wheel cutter. You can also use a pasta roller to get it thin:
Fresh pasta at home is easier than you think. This easy almost-no-work recipe will show you how to make pasta as good as the fancy Italian place in town.
iamafoodblog.com
Nerd note, I picked up a chamber-vac last year, which has the unique feature of being able to instantly hydrate doughs:
Here’s a small secret: I love vacuum sealers. Several years before I even started getting into sous vide cooking (over 10 years ago now!)…
fields.medium.com
Which means I can skip the 30-minute rest period! So for a quick homemade egg pasta, I can make it in the food processor, chamber-vac-seal it, and then it's ready to cook! Also, if you want to get into pasta, I'd 110% recommend picking up this pan:
After much trial and error, we found the perfect pan for making pasta (particularly, for saucing it). It's aluminum and is used in Italian kitchens.
www.seriouseats.com
I got it a year or so ago & it's absolutely fantastic! I've been working my way through the Serious Eats articles on different kinds of pasta for a few years now, with pretty good results! I'm looking to get more into homemade gnocci this year because there are so many fun shapes & I like the texture. Here's a great video on different kinds of hand-made pastas you can do:
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