How to make various healthy Pasta at home (Easy Recipe for beginners)

Are you seeking an easy recipe for healthy homemade pasta? How about bright red beetroot pasta and gorgeous green spinach pasta? Well, this page is going to change your life! No jokes… read on to see how you can easily make various kinds of healthy pasta at home.

If you have a food processor, it literally take just minutes. Use this post as a guide on how to use the food processor to make the dough. And yes, you can make the dough ahead of time too! And I’ll also share how you can roll it out and store it ready to cook, even without a pasta machine.

Basics of healthy pasta at home

There are just a few steps to remember when making your own pasta. Incidentally, once you do, you will just not feel like buying the readymade kinds!

I find it astonishing how similar we all are all around the Earth. The dough making, the rolling is universal… and the availability of the local produce and the techniques are the real differences.

So my friends, it is just like making the firm dough for puries. And if we have the advantage of a food processor, it will save you a ton of time and effort. But honestly, the good old fashioned way of kneading it in a large plate or mixing bowl will work too.

Choosing the flour

In general, pasta is made with all purpose flour or maida. It is perfect for the creamy texture of good pasta. However, I have found that by adding a little extra moisture, it works perfectly well with whole wheat flour or multigrain flour.

It may be not as smooth and creamy as the homemade pasta make with maida, but it will definitely be healthier for our body.

A trick I use often… use maida, but add whole wheat bran to the filling or the sauce. It is the next best thing to making food with whole grains. Not the same, but healthier than just the refined all purpose flour or maida.

The moisture for binding the flour together

Eggs are your best friends here! They help in the final rolling out into a thin pasta. There are other kinds of pasta that do not use eggs as well, we will come to those kinds in my next post.

In addition, when you use ingredients that have moisture content, you need to calculate and adjust for that as well. We are going to see two varieties…beetroot and spinach homemade pasta here.

You can however add any vegetable of choice… carrots are wonderful. Tomato Pasta can be make by including few tablespoons of tomato powder.

Salt

It is important to add salt to the dough. Adding salt to the water while the pasta is boiling or to the sauce it will be cooked in is not enough. It will not penetrate the pasta. A teaspoon per 150 g of flour is a good ratio.

Herbs

True to the experimentalist in me, I tried adding finely chopped herbs to the dough and I loved the extra kick it gives. Try it!

Healthy pasta at home must include vegetables and other goodies!

I suggest you use my easy pasta sauce for the recipe, or coat it in my easy basil pesto. And then use your creativity to add on other stuff that adds texture, taste and of course, health!

Enjoy!

Healthy Pasta at home

Recipe by Sheetal RabindranCourse: MainCuisine: WesternDifficulty: Medium

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

10

minutes

Resting time

1

hour 

Ingredients

• Plain Pasta

• 300 g flour

• 3 eggs

• 1/2 tsp salt

• Beetroot Pasta

• 300 g flour

• 2 small beetroots, boiled, peeled and pureed

• 1 egg

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp pepper

• Spinach Pasta

• 150 g maida

• 100 g atta

• 1/2 cup spinach leaves, pureed

• 1/2 tsp salt

• Tomato Pasta

• Add 2 tbsp tomato powder to the plain pasta recipe

• Carrot Pasta

• Replace beetroot with carrot in beetroot pasta recipe

Directions

• In food processor, mix the ingredients till you get a firm dough. Let the machine knead it for a few minutes. Rest, covered in a box for at least an hour. You can also knead by hand.
• Remember to keep the doughs separate as the colours will definitely stick to each other.
• You can make the dough a day in advance if you wish. It will discolour if you keep dough in the fridge for a longer period.
• When ready to roll, ensure you have plenty of the flour handy to avoid any sticking.
• Always roll as thinly as possible.
• Using a Pasta Rolling Machine
• If using the pasta rolling machine, use the instructions provided along with it.
• For simple hand rolling, ensure your dough is not sticky. Feed it through the thick setting after rolling it out into a rough rectangle.
• Use the back of your hand to hold the pasta sheet as it emerges from the machine.
• Fold it and feed it again.
• Repeat it 2 more times before changing the setting to the thinner setting.
• Repeat the folding and feeding till you reach the thickness you desire.
• You can further cut it into spaghetti, or any pasta shape.
• Cut out the desired shapes, use the dough to make lasagna, fill it, use it in any pasta recipe of your choice.
• You can also decorate it as seen in the video.

Recipe Video

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sheetal | Cosmopolitan Chef (@kitchen.rings)

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Notes

• Use a rolling pin and roll out the flour if you do not have a pasta machine. Use flour to avoid sticking.
• Ensure you keep the rolled out dough well coated in rice flour or semolina to prevent sticking. Do not use the same flour for this purpose. Else it will merge into the rolled out sheet and also stick the sheets together.
• Keep the coloured doughs separate… the colours will merge.