How to make fresh pasta?
The taste and texture of fresh pasta is significantly better than dried and ready to use tortellini you can buy in shops.
Making homemade pasta dough is quite easy, needs only 3 ingredients, the flour, eggs and salt but honestly time-consuming, repetitive tasks if you do not have pasta machine. If you’re new to making fresh pasta, I’ve made a pretty short guiding video that you can reference when it comes to dough basics, you can follow below how to knead, roll out and form the fresh tortellini. Once you’ve made your pasta dough, you can cook it right away, dry it, or freeze it for later.
Method
Tortellini is generally made with either round pasta wrappers or square pasta wrappers. In either case, make sure to roll your dough as thin as possible, and then proceed with cutting the shapes. Traditionally, tortellini are filled with minced and toasted beef or pork loin, typically mixed with prosciutto and Parmesan cheese. The pasta is served in a simple, sticky beef broth known as ‘tortellini en brodo’. But you can prepare tortellini with any filling from ricotta and Parmesan with a dash of nutmeg, fresh herbs, spinach, mushroom or sausage. No matter what ingredients you use to stuff your pasta, it should be the texture of a dry paste (and precooked if you use minced meats).
Keep in mind don’t overstuff your pasta, because overstuffing leads to dumplings that burst in the cooking pot. Keep the pasta coveredduring rolling process not to drying out, surprisingly quickly dries out if left uncovered, which makes it difficult to work with and will lost attractive outlooks. After stuffing just leave to rest the tortellini and after 10-15 minutes start to cook. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add a tablespoon or two of salt or just cook in boiling soup. Lower the tortellini into the water a few at a time with a slotted spoon. Stir the pot occasionally and gingerly to prevent the tortellini from sticking to the pot or each other or opening. Cook until all the tortellini have bobbed to the surface of the water, about 5-10 minutes depends on the sizes, just check for doneness the best here also the al-dente. When you do cook it, remember that homemade pasta cooks much more quickly than the dried pasta you buy in stores. Once you decide on freezing for later, store it up to 3 months.
