I don’t know if any of you out there are like me, but this quarantine time with my kids has meant in increase in one thing: cooking! It’s allowed me the time with my kids to teach them some valuable life lessons in the kitchen!
This week, I taught them how to make one of my favorite things I had while growing up—homemade noodles! It’s the perfect thing to make with your kids because, well, what kid doesn’t like noodles? And depending upon your children’s ages, they can help with all or some of the prep and cooking process!
(*Because this pasta dough contains raw eggs, we do not recommend that children who might put their hands in their mouth handle the dough. Make sure the whole family washes their hands after making/touching the dough.)
Here’s the recipe, from a good family friend of ours:
Mix: 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon baking powder
Blend: 6 tablespoons water, 1 whole egg and 3 egg yolks (eggs at room temp)
Mix together all of the above and separate out into 2 or 3 balls of dough (add additional flour if dough is sticky in your hands). Roll dough out with rolling pin on a floured surface until it’s pretty thin but still stays intact. Use a pizza cutter to cut noodles out (about the width of your pinky finger). Lay noodles out on drying racks to dry/harden for an hour. Noodles will be stiff, but not crunchy like store bought pasta when they are dry. Once they are dry, you can boil them in a pot of salted water for about 10 minutes. Serve with your kids’ favorite sauce—butter, olive oil, marinara, pesto or just plain! I usually double this recipe and stick some of the hardened/dry noodles into the freezer, so I can pull them out when needed!
Below Ariella kneads some dough with additional flour to it doesn’t stick to her hands.
Liesl rolls out her piece of dough on a floured surface so it’s nice and thin. Keep flipping it over so that both sides don’t stick!
Next, use the pizza cutter to cut out the noodles about as wide as a pinky finger. Use your own discretion if your child is old enough to use a pizza cutter with supervision. Don’t worry if the noodles aren’t completely straight or perfect—they will still taste great! Sometimes it helps to divide the dough into smaller rectangles to cut the noodles straight.
Once you cut out some noodles, place them on your drying rack to dry out!
Repeat this cutting process until all of the dough has been cut into noodles! You can re-roll out the ends and bits that you cut off to make rectangles. Ta-da! Perfectly delicious yummy noodles for the whole family!
