How to Dry Pasta From a Pasta Maker
If you're having a dinner party, you can certainly make a tasty meal by serving a pasta dish. But if you want to really impress your guests, then you should make pasta from scratch. With today's pasta machines, it's surprisingly easy to do. Here's how to dry the pasta once it has been removed from the pasta maker. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Lay a clean plate or long piece of wax paper on your kitchen counter. If you have made small pieces of pasta, then a dinner plate will do the trick. If you have made long pieces (say for lasagna) then you are going to want to use wax paper so that it can lay completely flat.
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Spread the pasta so that it is lying in a single layer. You don't want to stack your pasta at all. It will stick together and take forever to dry. Make sure to leave a little space in between each one so that the air can get at it.
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Allow the pasta to rest at room temperature for about 1 hour.
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Check the pasta to see if it is ready to cook. When you check the pasta, you are looking for a "stiff" consistency. Remember this will not be like hard dry pasta you get out of bags, but the stiff doughy pasta you find in the refrigerator section of the grocery store. If pieces of the pasta are still sticky, allow it to rest for another 15 minutes. (If it is very humid, then drying may take longer.)
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Tips & Warnings
If you are worried about bugs, you can place a piece of wax paper over the pasta as it dries. This will increase the drying time by about 1/2 hour.
Don't just dry one kind of pasta, make several different shapes and sizes to impress your guests. You can even make different colored pastas in your pasta maker by adding spinach or beet juice to the recipe.
Avoid using a dish towel to rest your pasta on. While certain places do suggest this, you have to be very careful that the dish towel doesn't lint. The pasta is so sticky, it will pick up anything on the dish towel. (This also means that the dish towel must be very clean.)
