- Cooking With Kids
Colleen Beck, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and author of The OT Toolbox website. She manages all of The OT Toolbox social media accounts and runs the popular newsletter. Colleen created The OT Toolbox in 2011 and since then has written thousands of blog posts designed to support therapy providers, educators, parents, counselors, admin, and caregivers in promoting the healthy development of kids.Check out Colleen's blog posts below:
- byColleen Beck OTR/L
- March 17, 2015
We’re back for another week of our Cooking With Kids A-Z series. Today’s recipe is D is for Dough and we’re sharing a childhood memory with homemade noodles. Homemade Pasta noodles were drying on our dining room table quite often as a child. Now, my husband makes homemade noodles for his Chicken Noodle Soup and we’re bringing you his recipe.
How to Make Homemade Pasta
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Cooking with kids is fun stuff! I love to share these recipes with my kids and learn and play in the kitchen. My kids have a love for cooking already, so when I say, “Who wants to help me cook?”, I have kids running to the kitchen! This Pasta recipe is one that is extra special to share with my kids, based on my childhood memories of noodles drying on the table.
We’ve made noodlesbefore, for a Haluski recipe. These are the noodles of my childhood. They aren’t much different than the recipe we’re sharing today.
One of the key items to making homemade pasta is a pasta maker
. They aren’t too hard to figure out and in fact, this was our first time using a pasta maker. We usually just roll the dough with a rolling pin and cut with a knife to make noodles. That style of pasta is typically better for soups and stews as it produces a thicker noodle. Today, we wanted to makefettuccineand thepasta makerwas the way to go.
To make the pasta dough, start with 4 eggs. Whisk them together in a bowl. Little Sister only broke one of the shells into the eggs. Success!
Pour 2 cups of flour directly onto a cutting mat or counter top surface. Sprinkle in one teaspoon of salt. Mix gently and form the flour into a well.
Pour the eggs into the flour well.
Homemade Noodles Recipe
Start kneading and mixing by hand. The dough will be very dry and crumbly at first. Keep kneading and mixing. This is a long process. My kids were able to help at first, but the dough tends to get tough and I needed to step in to finish kneading.
**Depending on the size of eggs and type of flour, your dough consistency may be different. We used “medium” sized eggs and “all-purpose” flour. You can add a small bit of water, but I would hold off on adding the water. You want the dough to rest for at least an hour and the resting time seems to help with the toughness of the dough. Adding water will produce a sticky dough that can’t be rolled out.
Pour a small amount of olive oil onto plastic wrap. Coat the dough and wrap it up. Allow the dough to rest, coated in the oil for about an hour.
When you are ready to roll the dough, flour the counter top surface and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough into a rectangle. I LOVEthis rolling pin
for it’s heavy duty rolling and sturdy handles. It’s perfect for rolling out dough that springs back a bit. You will want to roll the dough into a long rectangle that can fit into the roller of thepasta maker.
If you are not using the pasta maker and are just rolling out the dough, Keep rolling and rolling until the dough is very thin. Use a sharp knife dipped in flour to cut long noodles.
If you are using the pasta maker, Adjust the dial to the widest thickness of dough. Roll the dough through the rollers and gently hold it out as it rolls through. You will need to re-roll the dough several times, adjusting the thickness of the rollers using the adjustable dial. When the dough is thin, position it into the cutter side of the rollers. As you roll the dough through, gently separate and lay out the noodles onto a floured surface.
These noodles are as long as a three year old!
Position the noodles so that none are touching another. Allow the noodles to dry for several hours.
You will know when the noodles are ready to cook when you can snap them. Drop into boiling water and cook for 4-5 minutes. Drain the pasta and serve.
Watch all of the noodle action on our YouTube channel:
This post is part of theCooking with Kids ABC series. You can see all of the D is for Doughrecipeshere:
Be sure to try our other cooking with kids recipes:
Apple Dumplings Recipe
Banana Cheesecake Bites
Carrot Veggie Puffs Recipe
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