Pasta Maker Buying Guide

Choosing a Pasta Maker

Pasta is simply a mixture of flour and water. Sometimes containing spices, cheese or colouring from vegetables such as spinach.

A pasta maker enables you to make pasta from these basic ingredients at home.

You’ll need to consider whether you want a manual hand-cranked pasta maker, or an automatic, electric one.

A manual one is much cheaper and arguably more satisfying to use. An electric one is faster, easier to use (too easy for the purists!) and can have attachments that enable you to make noodles, spaghetti, etc. The pasta won’t taste any better than with a hand cranked one, but it will be produced much quicker and easier and probably make a wider variety of pasta types.

You’ll want a clamp for any hand-cranked pasta maker, so that it will be stable.

With both manual and automatic types, it is desirable to have a machine which produces various thicknesses and types. 

The cheaper pasta machines are made of chrome plated steel, whilst the better ones are made from stainless steel.

An alternative is to invest in pasta making attachments for your existing food processor.