Gear Heads | The Best Pasta Tools for Homemade Pasta with Chef Tiffani Faison

[Music] hello everybody welcome to a special edition of gear heads we are here in boston's historic fenway neighborhood at a new italian american spot called orfano from famed chef and restaurateur tiffany faizon welcome guys it's so nice to have you here thank you so much for having us great to be here gearheads in the house all right will you tell us a little bit about arfana arfano was our newest restaurant took a bunch of classics and thought about them pulled them apart put them back together and built a room that feels kind of old-school but a lot of new schools gorgeous in here a lot of beautiful ladies in this room one of the trademarks of italian american cuisine are the incredible pasta dishes chef tiffany has agreed to take us into the kitchen and give us a first hand run down on all the special pasta gear that she and her staff use to turn out beautiful pasta dishes night after night you guys ready to get into it all right come on into the kitchen so this is the arfano kitchen specifically this is our pasta boiler so it looks a little bit like a fryer in terms of just general shape and dropping in and that's water we throw a good amount of salt in it to taste like the ocean and then this is our gas component to it so we cook we hit it all the way up on the gas so that it's constantly boiling and then this is a water bead so we have to make sure that we're careful that the water doesn't evaporate too low so we can't pick up tosses especially when your chef is asking where is the pasta you're like oh the water yeah it's something to keep on top of so essentially these are all of their own colanders cylinders of colanders this is a meat pork it's not typical to use this we use it in my kitchen um when we're twirling pasta to plate pasta and make sure it's done really nicely i do it when i sort of put in extruded pasta and i'll make sure that it's not stuck together and you were saying you like this over time i do i don't love tongues in a kitchen i see tongs being twirled and in people's back pockets and i see food being treated really poorly in hands with tongs i just think it sometimes we get bad habits so people use seafood scissors at home these are kitchen shears we all have them here they're like little scissors they're very sharp they're super powerful um so this is what i use to break down lobster this and like a beater knife essentially a beater knife you said so not your favorite no not your favorite exactly you want something that is a knife you don't really care about like it's okay sharp it's not super sharp this is done we use this for tasks that are just need something a little bit more blunt and a little less finesse i'm sure that i'm if i ever end up in hell it's going to be like every lobster i've ever broken down like waiting for me you have a high body count oh i bought a cow i know you hate me um so claws off first and then take the tails off i'll save the bodies honestly when we're cooking lobster in the restaurant one of the things that we'll do is we'll take the claws and the tails off of the body first leave this raw because we use this for stocks and sauces i go right down the belly of this guy and you like those little tiny ones because you can get into smaller places yeah with these guys i this is when my beater knife comes in so ah oh my god you okay there oh yeah feed that baby so that works better for you than using a nutcracker or something that people use at home it does for me but that's an experience it's a lot of reps all right so this is our past extruder it's an arc boleno you can see that the pasta mixes in here it's about a 25-minute mix so all of the the semolina and the ap the eggs have been mixing already so now it's ready to be extruded and there's a pasta dye we have several different dyes that we can use this specifically is our bucatini dye it's kind of zen right it's zen unless you don't have time and then it's really infuriating like one of those things that you just love doing until you have to do it really quickly and then it will as it slowly goes there's no yelling at the pasta you can't brush the pasta all right tiffany this is quite the pasta operation you have here thank you it's been a lot of fun showing you guys how we make pasta here at orfano any chance you guys want to take me to the atk kitchen we can make some lobster poster there thought you'd never ask let's head back to atk and we'll set you up with some pasta gear right there awesome all right we are back here at atk tiffany we had a fabulous time in your kitchen yesterday looking at all of your gorgeous equipment that extruder i have extruder on me extruder possum boiler envy yeah we have an arsenal of pasta equipment you really do now we have our awesome kit for the home pasta maker here yeah each of these is our winning product tested against others in the similar category this is our favorite pasta roller it's good for home cooks pasta fork for stirring the pasta in the pot and serving it seafood scissors for breaking down uh lobsters or shrimp or crabs or anything and our favorite colander alrighty so our ruler will save for later we can measure our strands make sure we're all really consistent and then i have a little damp towel over the pasta this is just to make sure it doesn't get a skin should look like a baby's foot should look like nice and round you'll know about that soon i have not used a roller like this in a very long time so this might be kind of comical so like riding a bicycle we'll find out they often fall off a bicycle so let's see how that is all right so the first thing we want to do is just take the piece of pasta that's manageable again this is probably about five ounces and roll it into something that kind of maybe looks a little bit like a rectangle this gets smaller there's a knob on the side so this is about this is a nine which is the smallest that it gets we don't want it quite that thin so we're going to give ourselves lots of room to play so we're going to work this through several times so this dial is bringing those two rollers closer or further together starting widest yep so this is this roller is great it's a little guy um but it's mighty it's got what you want is really great wheels that have good friction together and this is great it's also you want something that's to really attach to your counter and not move around it feels pretty secure and it feels secure all right let's pick up a little speed so as we do this we're going to just move those wheels together a little bit how do you feel about the dial a couple of the ones we tested the dial was really janky it was hard to like settle it at the right ah gotcha settings no this definitely settles at the right setting that's helpful okay so we're here textured thickness is about what i want right so if we want 12 inches which is kind of what we're looking at it's kind of dead it's close to the middle yeah so we're good to go so we'll just take this in the middle then okay so now we have our beautiful oh my gosh look at all this interesting you cut it by hand because we have a cutter here yeah that attachment will cut it i don't know i like a hand cut pasta so you can really personalize the size you can who's next i'll go you know this is our favorite rolling pin we tested a ton of them and we love this dowel shape it doesn't have the handles that get in your way when you're trying to roll a big shape it's a great feel the force it's also you know a weapon if you have a home intruder i sleep with a rolling pin like that i mean this thing's pretty easy to use it uh it cranks smoothly i will say if you're gonna if you're thinking about starting to make pasta start here start with this guy this is like 50 bucks i think yeah it's a lower commitment it's a lower buy-in it's old-school and so you'll get a lot of reps of knowing how to actually roll pasta out before you're buying an extruder you know if you're going to start something new like don't buy all the most expensive gear just like make sure you like it make sure it's something you're going to give your time and attention to before you give your wallet to it look at you beautiful my job is not safe this is bad news for me yeah these are a little thicker than yours but yeah i'll take a job yeah so next lobsters all right let's break them down lobster all right so we have our lobsters we have our seafood scissors i'm very excited to use these this is not something i'm familiar with using so i'm psyched to give it a try these rip right through these are no jokes like sometimes when you're using scissors you really have to like give it some push and they like flick to the side and keep that no these just rip right through that tail wow yeah right that's a joke color me and pressed they don't hurt your hands no you need to get in there the blade is nice and curved so i don't typically use those in restaurant kitchens but i'm starting to change my mind which allows me to just i mean look at that i'm cutting right through the claw super easy i'm gonna put these in my bag on the way out security well easy peasy just broke down those lobsters all right let's go boil our pasta so we have boiling water you want this at a really rolling boil like no compromise right you at orfano showed us a meat fork i this is our look you brought your meat to the party yeah because i want to try this i'm really excited about it i like this this is a new thing for me you're into it yeah yeah yeah control there when a little el dante you probably pull it yeah like how you just grab the boiling pasta you're fine yeah is it ready yes okay awesome here we go going over to the sink i'm into that colander yeah it's nice right it is okay so one of the things we love about this colander it's made of stainless steel which does not heat up quickly so these handles even after you just poured that hot water through you can pick them up with your bare hands awesome and it can go right in there and rest in the pot and stay nice and warm very cool so this is what i'm gonna start to use my meat for you know pasta once it comes out of the water has a propensity to stick so i'm going to really overload this pan we've got a professional here it's not looking so professional looks really delicious is what it does oh my god so this is a great meat fork it has a really nice like kind of grip on it which i don't mind doesn't always have that which just really makes it easier to twirl which is nice yeah we tested a bunch of different styles and that was the one we landed on is just being a really good shape a nice maneuverable feeling to it it is super maneuverable and now extra chunks of lobster all of the lobster exactly that's it guys that is our lobster fettuccine that looks absolutely unbelievable all right guys lunch okay it's insane there's always like half a moment that i'm like oh oh my god this is incredible thank you so much for coming you guys thanks for having me in the atk kitchen this is awesome and all the cool pasta tools that you showed me i don't know i might grab a couple for myself for more information on the products that we showed you check out the links below and make sure to ask us your pasta questions in the comments hit that subscribe button [Music]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 76,717

Keywords: pasta maker, pasta machine, how to make pasta, pasta maker review, pasta, tiffani faison, boston, restaurants, top chef

Id: 9-AM86_V3X4

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020