I want to buy a pastry bag primarily for piping fillings into pastas: ravioli, shells, tortilleni, etc. That being said, once I have one, I'm sure I'd use it around the holidays for decorating cakes & cookies. Does anyone have any recommendations and advice? Should I buy a nice reusable bag or disposable ones? Are the reusables easy to clean? Intuitively, they look like they'd be a mess.
On the rare occasion that I need a piping bag, I just use a freezer bag with the corner trimmed off. I think I have a set of piping tips around here somewhere but I can guarantee they have never been used. I'd say just read some reviews on Amazon.
From years of experience, the reusable bags bags are good once you get used to the feel of it but they’re also a pain in the tail to keep clean and free from discoloring or taking on a color. To a pastry chef, his or her pastry bag and tips are extremely personal but for the casual user, not so much. My best suggestion is to use a freezer bag as Beth suggested or get a box of disposables and if you‘re feeling artistic, some inexpensive tips.
@Beth Gallagher @Bobby Cole Thanks, folks. I was just in Walmart and they sell a 4 pak of disposable plastic bags, complete with plastic tip, @ $3.97. Maybe I'll try a Ziploc freezer bag. I'm not doing fancy work, but when I see vids of cooks piping the filling onto sheets of pasta or into shells rather then trying to scrape it off of the spoon and not leave trails (which get in the way of sealing the edges), it caught my eye. Here's a sample of my decorating skills sans bag: I gave kids yet another reason to not be able to sleep on Christmas Eve.
I just realized that I have two of these with all the dies & tips (multiples of many of them): I also picked up one of these at Goodwill: I just looked. I can use the Mirro piping tips in the Wear-Ever cookie gun. Problem solved! And this should give me a lot more control that using a bag. Yay, 1950s technology to the rescue!!!
Nah, I use them to bake cookies not only at Christmas, but at other holidays and events throughout the year. (I modified an Orange Cookie recipe to make Lime Cookies for our chili cook offs.) The short, wide presses do well in the dishwasher (although you're not supposed to wash them there.) I've not used the gun yet, but see that the tube comes off, so a quick bottle brush through it should clean it out. I gotta think I'll find it to be less frustrating than using a plastic bag. Mebbe.
Just to close the loop on this... The cookie press is ideal for filling pasta! I made a batch of large ravioli with mushroom/spinach stuffing, and a batch of small ravioli with a 3 cheese stuffing. The cookie press was easy to control, getting out just the right amount exactly where I wanted it. The press has an adjustment for Thin/Medium/Thick cookies, meaning the volume-per-squeeze of the handle is adjustable. Put it on Thick and use the large eclair filling tip for large ravioli and for stuffing shells, put it on Thin and use the small icing fitting for smaller ravioli and tortellini. These are easy to clean. Everything breaks down. The long tube you stuff with dough (or ravioli filling) disconnects from the gun so you can run a bottle brush all the through it from end to end. I've cleaned these out between cookie dough batches before, and those are butter-based (greasy & slick.) Cleaning in between ravioli fillings was a snap...the stuff pretty much rinsed out, and I hit it with soap to sanitize and remove residual flavors. When I did my final batch, I just shoved it in the dishwasher.