How to make Fresh Pasta 101~with Chef Frank

hi I'm chef Frank this is proto cooks and today is pasta 101 we're gonna walk you through making the dough rolling it out and cooking it with a little bit of specialty equipment not a ton of specialty equipment hmm love in a bowl this video is meant to be kind of a pasta 101 just a basic egg pasta with easy ingredients that everyone has in their house and not a lot of equipment either it's meant to say hey you can make pasta your house you don't need fancy equipment I have some equipment to make pasta but when you're home you don't need a ton of fancy equipment okay let me talk about the things I have in front of me the ingredients and the tools and then we'll get into making the dough I have some kosher salt simple kosher salt 6 large eggs and I usually do one egg per person I'm gonna make a large batch so 6 eggs one egg per person flour this is a technique okay so we're gonna talk about that technique of making pasta it's about the amount of flour that I think I need I don't really know how much this is is probably like you know uh five six cups of flour I have a dough scraper this is a cheap piece of plastic that you buy at a bakery supply store I probably cost less than a dollar so and it's great to have around when you're using dough or you want to pick something up off a table a rolling pin that rolls with bearings you can use the European style that has no bearings but I find it easier when I'm rolling pasta by hand to use this one a knife okay just a nice sharp knife for cutting the pasta we're not going to do crazy shapes today we're probably do like a fettuccine but you'll see how easy that is believe it or not I'm gonna bring out a cutting board later just to cut the pasta because I don't want to cut directly on my table and you'll see making pasta isn't all that difficult let's make the dough so here we are at the table and we're gonna make our dough one piece of equipment I forgot to say was a fork so I'm pretty sure most people have Forks in their lives okay so this is a grandma style dough and all I'm gonna do is take my flour I'm not gonna use all of it I might need to use more later and that's fine and I'm gonna make a well or a volcano okay and I make this well or volcano big enough to fit six eggs inside okay you don't want to make a small volcano you'll make a big volcano because you're gonna crack six eggs directly into this so you take your eggs you want so you want this volcano to hold all the eggs my end dough needs to be fairly dry I don't want it to be sticky I want this to be a nice dough see if there's a fish shell make sure you get the shell if you can't grab it with your fingers she'll usually attract shell okay I want this to be like I was saying I want this to be fairly dry I don't want it to be a very wet dough because then it's hard to roll out okay so there we go we have all of our eggs in there big pinch of salt right we want this dough to be seasoned and that's kosher salt and all we have to do is break our eggs up and start to whisk and this point I'm just trying to whisk my eggs so they're broken up and they're whisked really well and this technique this granny style technique is just to show you you don't need any special equipment I have a fork I have a table and I have my hands and my ingredients okay so the idea with this is that you don't need a mixer right people say I can't make pasta cuz I don't have a mixer you don't need a mixer this is the way it's been done by grannies forever okay so you can see that I'm starting to bring in my flour and it started to tighten these eggs up and that's the idea is I want to get this dough started so I can start touching it without getting my hands all wet okay so that's the ideas just to get it so that it starts to hold together right and start working my flour in okay so what's great about this technique too is not only do you not need a mixer the dough kind of tells you when it's had enough flour so if this dough was really dry I would move any excess flour over and I wouldn't use it I could save it for bench flour for later on or I could toss it out or you know feed it to the birds but for the most part you'll see that you know it's not necessarily precise but the dough kind of takes how much flour it needs needs get it dad jokes these are the jokes so I'm gonna get rid of my my fork now I don't need my fork anymore put that aside and now I have my bench scraper and I just kind of chopped this in this is in standard way of doing it but I like to chop my flour in a little just to get it nice and dry so that when I finally start to knead this I just don't want to be wet all over my hands okay I don't want a sticky dough I might need more flour in this and that's fine but for the most part you just want to start bringing it together and get your flour in there okay start bringing it together into a nice solid mass turn it over on each other this is still the preliminary point it's not really there yet okay I'm gonna need more flour so I'm just gonna put a little on top I can see that it's already it's kind of like already a little wet cuz you see it's like sticking to my hands and I don't want it to stick to my hands and that's the idea is like your pasta dough is good when it's not you're kneading it and it's not sticking to your hands so what's good about this too is that you can just rub things off and the dough comes off get a little flour in your hands right and then you just start leaving and getting that flour in there and I really do want so you can even tell right now that it's a fairly soft dough because when I when I push down if I clean my heel on my hand off when I push down it gets that it sticks to the heel of my hands and I don't want that I want it to be dry when I really push down on it okay so here's my kneading technique okay I fold towards myself and push away give it a turn fold towards myself push it away and I'm using my bodyweight not necessary my arm so I lean into the dough fold towards myself push away fold towards myself and push away and I lean into the dough with my bodyweight if you are shorter than I am about 510 you might need a stool for this and that's okay but I roll towards myself push roll towards myself and push if you find that it's starting to stick to you get your bed your dough scraper get any excess flour I like to scrape it off of my surface I'm going to work this in because it's usable so work this into my dough roll towards myself and push I'm leaning my body weight into it rather than using my arms now that doesn't mean you're not going to get tired this needs to get needed for about five to seven minutes so you might get a little tired and that's okay you know gather up everything with your dough try and get all those little pieces I can already tell you that I'm gonna need just a little more flour at this point I'm just dusting it rather than dumping because I just want this to be a nice smooth kind of on dough that's a little on the drier side okay we're not all the way there the dough is still very soft it's a little ruddy still but you can start to see that it's getting springy I push into it and it bounces back you can see it bounces back now when I teach this in school my students always get frustrated I keep on telling them no you need more flour no you need more flour because I know that later on down the road it's gonna be harder for them to roll this out if they don't get it to the right texture now okay so here we are so I wanted to make sure that you guys realize this - is that this is a technique right there's no specific recipe here right this is how you make pasta the basics of making pasta pasta 101 right this is granny style pasta we will do more videos where we have more complicated versions of this but right now we just want to show you how anyone without equipment without any really specialized expensive equipment can make pasta dough and roll it out and make delicious homemade pasta for the people that you love okay so I think I'm there I'm not too worried if this is super smooth looking but I can feel the spring in the bounce so if you look at the dough it bounces back see how it bounces back okay so what I'm gonna do now is I have some plastic wrap here I'm gonna wrap this and let it sit for about a half-hour the dough is rested for about a half hour it got a little softer I'm gonna roll it out into a nice big flat sheet if I try and roll all of this out now it's gonna be exhausting so what I'll do is I'll take the dough out of the plastic and I'll take about 1/3 of it okay I just use my dough cutter I try not to rip it I try and cut it leave this and this is important leave your dough wrapped you don't want this to dry out and get what I call alligator skin or what anyone would call the hell are your skin okay at this point don't work the dough anymore don't ball it up or anything just leave it in the shape that it is I have something here called bench flour it's just some of my leftover flour from earlier and this is gonna go on my bench which is my table in order to keep this from sticking okay so just a little bit of a dusting of my bench flour on top okay I have a rolling pin don't have a rolling pin what do you do I'll have a rolling pin chef well going by one right because it's a good thing to have in your kitchen but if you can't afford one everyone has wine bottles nowadays right so use a wine bottle okay just be careful don't put too much pressure on okay yeah definitely drink the wine first okay so now all I'm gonna do is start rolling okay and all I want this to do to all I want this to be is a nice flat sheet you see I just went over the edge try not to go over the edge because it crimps it down so I'm just gonna keep on turning it I'm just trying to trying to get like a rectangular shape a nice big rectangular shape if you see things are sticking a little more flour right dust it nice keep everything floured up and I'm just gonna keep rolling and turning rolling and turning until you get a nice thin sheet of pasta there is a technique well people will let it hang over the edge and that's fine that gives you a little gravity to assist you but I'm not too interested in that I'm just gonna get I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible today I'm not gonna get into too many advanced techniques I'm just doing it as simply as I can ok so I just keep turning my pasta and keep rolling it you can see my sheet keeps on getting bigger and I'm just making sure to look that I'm trying to get an even roll right so I'm just rolling over it it's springing back a little which is okay you know if it's gonna spring back and we're just gonna keep on rolling until I have the thickness that I want and that's fairly thin I'm gonna do kind of a fettuccine this is the way the grannies used to do it although they probably have a broomstick use an old broomstick to do this right keep rolling so you see my little piece of pasta went and got really big on me okay if I had if I had poked a hole in this I would just leave it alone and I just cut around my hole later I'm not too worried if I poke a hole in it but you know you just want to cut around it it's not going to make the pasta taste bad just try not to poke any holes in it we are going to be maybe an eighth of an inch at the end of this okay so it's a little bit of a workout yes you know if you had a pasta machine this would be definitely be easier but I think we're there okay so what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to push this aside just roll it or fold it into like a rectangle get my cutting board so I have my sheet of dough I'm gonna give it a little extra flour on top I put I moved it from my table to my cutting board I'm gonna give it one last little kind of stretch here on my board one last little stretch just to get it as thin as possible okay oopsie I tore a hole not a big deal just leave it okay so I have a ton of flour or not a ton of flour but I have a fair amount of flour here and now we're gonna make our fettuccine or a popper I take my pasta dough and I fold look at this it couldn't be any easier than this I fold it I make sure there's flour on the inside I'm gonna cut this in half okay I'll line them up and now I'm gonna cut this into my pasta is it perfect is it you know like measured perfectly or whatever no but it's our first time making pasta with this and it's very easy to do look how simple this is okay so we cut cut cut I'm gonna move this aside I have a little tray here I'm gonna put my finished pasta on I flour my tray and then you just give this a shake and look at that pasta look at it fettuccine give it a shake put it on my tray look at that fettuccine now I try not to stack this too much this is what I'm gonna cook I'll cook the rest of this later on but I try not to stack it on its itself too much because then it sticks okay so I have this and this is what we're gonna bring over to the stove and show you how to cook we're over the stove and we're gonna cook the pasta I have a pot of water general rule is four to six quarts per pound of pasta you want the pasta to be able to move freely in the water so don't crowd your pasta water because then that's when things start to stick people put oil in the water you know they break their pasta if you have enough water in there your pasta won't stick you want to make sure you stir it too but we'll get to have a minute my water is at a full rolling boil I'm gonna just turn it up a little more I have everything I need now I have salt I have my strainer I have a spoon and I have the pasta today we're just gonna put a little butter on just because this is a technique video not really like you know fancy recipe my water's boiling I'm gonna season my water see salty so there's a lot of salt there I'm gonna pour a lot of that salt in there how do I know it's C salty I have a spoon I give it a stir and I taste my water yeah it tastes like salt water I'm just gonna put a little more in there but you want to make sure that your water is C salty that is going to season your pasta you have to do this okay unless you have a problem with salt it shouldn't really be a problem you should season your water C salty okay I take my pasta and because it's fresh it's only gonna take two to three minutes to cook okay I put it into my water I have a nice strainer this was probably $3 in Chinatown in Manhattan and I just give it a good stir so nothing sticks together okay and I will let this cook right it doesn't it's not done when it floats okay certain pastas are done when they float but for the most part we want this pasta to cook for two to three minutes just to simmer away full rolling boil the faster this comes to a boil the better you can see it's coming to a nice rolling boil right now I'll just lower it just a little give it a stir this tool is like I said three to four dollars and it's probably one of the most handy things you can get this one's cheap and it's kind of falling apart you can see it's a little Wiggly but we call these in the restaurants tree spiders you can get a restaurant supply stores and get them they are great they're just great to have whenever I fry I use these whenever I make pasta use these and the reason I use this for pasta is that I'm not going to dump out all this water right say I want to make a couple of batches of pasta this makes it easier I don't have to carry it over to the stove and dump all my water out there's also another reason for that right pasta water is like liquid gold right when you're finishing your pasta what if it's too dry and the sauce is too dry and a little pasta water to it and it will help your pasta kind of the sauce be finished and silky okay so right now my pasta has come to a full rolling boil it's been cooking for a few minutes I think I'm gonna give it another minute before I take it out I have a bowl here with some butter and it's just unsalted butter my pastas gonna be salted we're gonna toss this and that'll be our sauce for the day you can coat this with whatever sauce you want again this is a technique video so we just show you the techniques in doing this properly so for our purposes today we're just gonna put butter on it and we're gonna eat it like this but you could put any sauce you want on it we'll do later videos with different sauces and different shapes of pasta and stuff like that so if you don't have this tool grab yourself a pair of tongs right and you can reach in there and fish it out end of the day if you don't have either of these you need to drain the water out usually I just get a measuring cup take some of the water save the water and then I'll drain it out in the colander in the sink okay so my pastas done I'm gonna shut my water off and I'm gonna scoop it out okay I don't mind if there's a little water on my pasta still that's fine a little bit of that that cooking water is a good thing okay let's go plate it up and give it a taste we have our finished pasta we cooked it we tossed it in some butter there's a little bit of pasta water in there I would normally do this in the pan with the sauce but just for our purposes here today I'm gonna plate her up right into the bowl a little bit of that butter and pasta water on top and that's our pasta it's really not that hard you don't necessarily need everything in the the chef's kitchen to do it it's fairly simple and people have been doing it for ages without having any special equipment let's give it a taste hmm it's had some great chew it's it's it's it's light even though it's a little thicker than I'd like it and it's delicious again fresh pasta it's something that's easy to make something that if you take a little time to practice you can get really good at it I hope you enjoyed this video I'm chef Frank this is proto cooks if you did enjoy it give us a thumbs up like subscribe and like I said we'll have more pasta videos coming out this was basically meant to be a simple basic pasta 101 how to cook it how to roll it and how to make the dough I hope you enjoyed

Channel: ProtoCooks with Chef Frank

Views: 55,827

Rating: 4.9743824 out of 5

Keywords: #pasta, #chefdaddy, #cheffrankproto, #pasta101, #culinlarytechnique, #freshpasta

Id: VScOE3S-jxE

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020