Novel Noodles: Homemade Pasta Two Ways

With our focus on homemade meals and conquering new culinary territory, it was only a matter of time before we ditched box pasta and started making our own.

Done by hand, making pasta at home can be quite frustrating, but with a couple of tools like a mechanical pasta cutter and a drying rack, this becomes a fun way to put together incredible meals.

We've done quite a few pasta sauces over time at Six-Seven-Eight like roasted red pepper sauce, oven roasted fresh tomato sauce, homemade pestos, and the almost sauceless lemon zest and kale pasta. Today we'll cover two more ways to prepare pasta into meals that will make you forget all about restaurant dinners.

There are myriad pasta recipes out there from the very basic to the very complex, and we've found that in most cases simpler is better. For these recipes, our pasta will consist only of:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup Semolina flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. olive oil

To get started, make a well out of the white flour, and then pour the semolina in the middle.

Crack your eggs and pour them in the well along with the oil, and then begin the process of folding it all together by hand until it becomes more firm.

Hand kneading pasta takes a significant amount of effort - a full 10 minutes of kneading is more tiring than you'd think - but there is a possible shortcut if you've got the right kitchen equipment. Most bread machines have a pasta setting, taking care of all the work for you!

Once you've got a solid ball of pasta, roll it up tightly in plastic wrap and let sit for half an hour. Sprinkle some extra flour on the workspace as you'll need it to keep the pasta from getting too sticky.

Slice off about a fifth of the pasta dough and flatten it with your hands in the extra flour.

Here we're going to start rolling out the pasta with our pasta machine. Start at the thickest setting and work your way down to your desired thickness. After rolling it through once, fold the length of pasta in half and then roll it through again at the same setting. Repeat that process at each thinner setting.

Cutting pasta into similar shapes by hand is more effort than its worth, so we're going to run our flattened dough through the linguine attachment for perfect strands of delicious noodles!

Fresh pasta will frequently stick together and become a clump - which you don't want! So either store your pasta on a drying rack like this one, or pour a cup of flour on a cookie sheet, toss the pasta in, and quickly separate each strand by hand so it can sit before cooking.

For our first pasta meal, we're going to use a very basic recipe - canned tomatoes, garlic powder, basil, basil infused olive oil (we got some of these great tasty oils as a Christmas gift and they are fantastic!), sugar, and balsamic vinegar. Mix it all together in a blender or food processor.

Pour your sauce in a pan, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes to an hour. This time around we're using whole tomatoes instead of diced, with gives a thicker texture, but also requires adding more sugar, as the addition of tomato seeds will give a more bitter flavor as the sauce simmers down.

To make this more of a full meal without a side, we're going to add in our ground pork and bacon meatballs, but of course the delicious cheese stuffed version works just fine too!

Fresh pasta cooks much, much faster than the store-bought variety, so that gets thrown in a pot of boiling water last, taking only about 4 - 5 minutes.

Toss it all together and get ready for a taste of Italy far better than what you'd get at most sit-down restaurants!

Don't forget some extra Parmesan and pepper on top!

Next up we're going to go a very different direction by making a hearty, down home potluck favorite: chicken and noodles! For this one-pot meal you'll need:

• 2 bone-in chicken breasts (for serving a large group, use a whole chicken)
• ½ white onion, chopped
• 3 carrots, chopped
• 2 -3 stalks celery, chopped
• 3 cups water
• 1 container chicken soup base, bouillon, or stock
• ½ cup chopped mushrooms
• ½ lb – 1 lb homemade pasta
• 1 can evaporated milk
• salt and pepper to taste

The chicken here serves two purposes: its going to flavor the meal by acting as a stock, and we're going to shred the meat. To get the meat tender enough, boil the chicken in water along with the onion, carrot, and celery.

About an hour later, remove the chicken from the water and discard the skin and bones.

Shred the chicken meat by gently pulling it apart - just dig in two forks and pull them opposite directions. The meat should easily come apart.

Lower the temperature, toss the chicken meat back into the water, and add in the mushrooms. At this point the flavor should already essentially be at chicken stock level, but if you find the taste isn't strong enough you could mix in some extra store-bought chicken stock or bouillon.

We're almost done, so it's time to throw in the noodles! Big thick, long noodles work great here to make this more hearty.

We want to further thicken up the meal so its less of a soup and make it more creamy, so add in some evaporated milk and continue cooking. If it doesn't thicken up enough, mix together a little water and cornstarch and stir in the mixture.

Here's a big simmering pot of finished chicken and noodles waiting to be devoured. Guaranteed to be eaten up if you take this to a pot luck or dinner party!