Choosing the Best Pasta Roller

If you love pasta (and I am sure you love it), some or the other time you have dreamed of making it yourself at home. But for that you need a pasta roller, the price of which may be holding you back, which is over $100! But believe me, if you invest that amount, you will never repent because you will get to eat the freshest pasta with a guarantee of purity and quality. The question is how to choose the best pasta roller. Let’s see.

Understand Basic Design Types of the Roller

There are two main designs in homemade pasta roller – the roll-and-cut (or roller type) design and the other, the extruder design.

In the former, you have to put in the dough you make yourself through a chain of rollers which progressively flattens it out and elongates it to make it into a long thin sheet. Then you have to cut the sheet into strips the way you want your spaghetti and pass each strip through a cutter to cut it up into many individual strands.

On the other hand, with the extruder type, the dough is placed in a machine that pushes it through small round holes in a die. The dough comes out from the die formed into a bunch of individual strands of spaghetti. You have to cut the strands to your desired length.

Fresh and dry spaghetti noodles required by large restaurants and factories are made in bulk in extruder type machines. These rollers are heavy duty, reliable, commercial machines which produce a lot of pasta in a short time. They are fully automatic, and mix up the ingredients into dough and knead it completely before extrusion. They are large in size and made of high quality material, including copper dies. However they cost thousands of dollars and are rarely bought for home use. If you want to make lots of pasta for lots of people in a big family quite frequently, an extruder type machine is ideal for you. However if pasta-making is your momentary whim, this can’t be the best investment.

Extruder Machines for Home Use – In fact a few extruder type machines are available for home use too and are sold as attachments to stand mixers. They are indeed fun to use, to make pasta in smaller quantities. However, they are usually made of plastic, so do not hold up firmly and also are notorious for clogging up and breaking down often.

Choosing between Manual and Electrical Machines

Pasta roller is powered manually or electrically. Manually powered roller requires you to make dough and put in it and operate it by hand to make pasta strips. On the other hand, in the electrical roller, you have to just put all the ingredients in the roller and switch it on. The machine will do the rest. Obviously electrical machines are fast and easy to use. But their cost is also more. Plus, they are more complex and so, pose more chances of damage, and in turn, more repairing expenses.

Two Things to Remember about Hand-operated Rollers

Hand-operated machines are found by many people easy to operate and so, they prefer them with their simplicity and low cost. However before you go for a hand-operated machine, you should remember two things about them.

Each of them has a screw clamp to attach them to the countertop or worktable. These screws may not work well if you don’t have enough “lip” at the border of your supporting surface and/or if you have a cured surface. So, if you buy one and find that it is not attaching to your worktop, you will have to change your work surface or find some other way to attach the roller.

Other thing is many people think that a hand-operated machine needs three hands to make it run, two for holding the dough and one for operating the crank.

Despite these apparent problems, many people find hand-operated pasta rollers quite easy to operate, by making two people to operate them or making some such adjustment.

A Good Thing

Good news about a hand-operated machine is you can first buy it and then buy an attachment to make it electrically operated. The benefit of this is if the machine becomes troublesome, you can remove it, but the machine is still functional.

So, just think over how much pasta you will need at a time and how frequently, and if you think that the demand of pasta and meatballs will increase every week in your family, an electric pasta-maker will be perfect for you. On the other hand, if you will be making spaghetti for just two persons, that too once in a month, a hand-operated machine is your best bet.

Think on All Kinds of Pasta

Understand that a pasta roller is not just used for making spaghetti. You can use it for making tagliatelle, fettuccine, capellini, linguine, lasagna and spaghetti. And some people can even make ravioli with it. But for making such a variety of pastas the machine should have various cutter accessories. So, before settling on the thought of buying a particular of roller, think about all these kinds. That will make you sure about the price you are paying for all those attachments regarding whether you need them.

Quality

As far as kitchen appliances are concerned, high quality matters the most, because they are connected to your and your family’s health. If you don’t think so and are not ready to pay for high quality, you can at least remember a few points:

• Metal parts are more durable and sturdier than plastic.
• Stainless steel surfaces score over chrome plated steel in terms of not catching rust.
• As it concerns with pasta, “Made in Italy” machines are the best. Those who cannot afford Italian models can buy Chinese models too, but they are not as good as the Italian ones, though Chinese noodles are ummm…. yummy!
• Heavy-weight machines are of better quality and durable.
• One important factor regarding quality is the more you will be using the machine, the higher quality you will need. If you will be using the machine once or more a week, you will be making it work more and so, you will obviously need the machine to be more durable and sturdier.

Having said this much, I wish you all the best in choosing exactly your type of pasta-roller and enjoy a mouthwatering spaghetti!