I'd like to be able to make ziti & penne. This reminds me I have a good recipe for bow tie pasta with Italian sausage in a cream cheese sauce that's very easy and very good. Maybe I'll post it.
I use the hand-crank machine that you never wash (because it might cause rust)...you just dust it off. I posted it here. When I make sausage ravioli I make regular-sized ones, but I have a recipe for a 3 cheese ravioli that I punch out in small rounds...just the perfect ratio of pasta and cheese. Pics here.
The pasta roller and cutters for a Kitchenaid mixer are the same; you never put them in water. Simply wait for the pasta to harden then brush it off the attachments.
That's interesting. I wonder if the universal concern is rust, or maybe washing out the lubricant, or both..
Probably both. The attachments have stickers that warn not to immerse them in water or any liquid. Also states to lubricate with mineral oil after every 50 uses.
That's interesting, I don't think mine came with any such instructions. I'll have to research...not that anything but the basic roller might see 50 uses. I once made the mistake of submerging the lid of my salad spinner in soapy water, and it soon seized up. Fortunately, the cover plate was held together with screws, so I could get to the gears and put a little veggie oil on them. Now I just rinse it off.
While I was diddling around trying to decide whether to buy the refurb Kitchenaid Pasta Press (extruder) it sold out. So I bought one at a slightly discounted price from Amazon using some handy rewards $$. I used the device today to make rigatoni and here are my thoughts: - Well made (in Italy) but overpriced for what it is - Easy to make pasta, but cleanup was a nightmare... very tedious and time-consuming - Came with 6 extruder dies for different pasta shapes; I used the rigatoni disc Making the pasta was easy, just fed walnut sized balls of pasta dough into the extruder and waited for the noodles to exit the device. The pasta was ... pasta. Nothing special but it was fresh and good. I waited until an hour or so after dinner to clean the press so that the dough would be dry and would flake off more easily. I disassembled it and used the included cleaning tool, plus a couple of toothpicks and a vegetable brush to get all the gunk out of the mechanism, auger, and the rigatoni die. It was tedious and irksome to clean. Thankfully, Amazon has a generous return policy which I will make use of. If this thing was a lot cheaper I'd keep it, but it was too much money to waste on something I'll never use again.
I have some attachments that this description fits...mostly the really thin (angel hair) noodles. As you said, these are not daily/weekly/monthly use items.
They should have made the dies out of material that can be immersed and soaked to clean. In fact, the entire setup should be made of materials that won't rust or degrade. I hate returning something I used, but I made sure I cleaned everything back to "factory fresh". I'm sure it will be on the Warehouse Deals page for $10 off in a week. I just won't pay $200 for another closet decoration. Some things are worth the investment; this definitely is not.
I wonder if part of the water issue is the out-of-reach gears that are lubricated. I think I've mentioned that when you get the attachments (the noodle dies) for the machine, you have to run a batch of throw-away-dough through before using it to make food in order to clean out the manufacturing burrs and grease. I'm sure this is universal for the Kitchen Aid and the manual machines. It's a little odd to have something like this be so industrial...they're only cutting dough. Mine feel like they weight a ton. I've not encountered anything like it before. These need to ship with an air compressor. I let mine dry out then take them to the garage. I top off my tires and clean out pasta attachments, all at the same time.
Yes, it is necessary to run a batch of "practice dough" through all the attachments. We discussed earlier in this thread, when you were waiting to receive your semolina. All in all, I think most of the pasta gadgets are novelty items; not something I'd use very often. Dry store-bought pasta is good and cheap so I'm not inclined to spend hours cleaning up mixer attachments for homemade.
Generally agreed...with the exception of ravioli and the homemade fillings, which requires nothing but the rollers.
Oh, I don't think the rollers or the cutters are difficult to clean, but that extruder mess was unreal. I'll still play with the rollers/cutters occasionally.