1.) Get out your flour, spinach, olive oil, egg, and a little glass of water.
2.) Finely chop your spinach, then dump your flour on top. Create a divot in the flour so that it looks like a volcano. Crack an egg into the hole, then carefully whisk up the egg with a fork or small whisk. Once the egg is whisked, start combining all the ingredients with your hands.
3.) Add in the olive oil, and water as needed. Keep kneading with your hands until you have a dough that holds together firmly, but is not too wet.
4.) Flour your entire surface, along with your rolling pin. Roll out your dough as thin as possible, without it becoming too fragile. The dough should not be more than 1/8 of an inch thick.
5.) Next cut your dough into strips. You can choose the size and shape of your pasta, it won’t effect the cooking time.
6.) Leave the pasta to dry for at least 15-30 minutes. You can always store them overnight in the fridge. When you are ready to cook, bring lightly salted water to a boil and drop in the pasta. Stir constantly for no more than three minutes.
7.) Take your pasta out after 1-3 minutes. This pasta cooks extremely fast, so you need to be watching the clock. And yes, due to the extra flour on the pasta, it won’t look super normal!
8.) Dress the pasta with whatever you like. I chose some salt, pepper, tomatoes, olive oil, and nutritional yeast.
Homemade Spinach Pasta (Prep Time: 15 minutes, Total Time: 50 minutes, Serves: 2)
If any Italian pasta makers saw this recipe, they’d probably be appalled; though not super visually pleasing, this recipe works fine and sneaks veggies into pasta! I definitely could stand to improve my dough rolling and cutting skills, (Apparently I can’t cut in straight lines.) but it’s all the same once it’s in my belly! This recipe is pretty easy seeing as the ingredients all become one big mush of dough anyways, but it does get very messy so have a sink nearby. Since adding spinach to the dough seemed to work, you could easily add in other herbs or seasonings into the dough. I kept it simple with the sauce, but I imagine marinara or some trusty butter and parmesan would pair nicely as well.
Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped spinach
1 egg
2 tbsp olive oil
water
Directions
1.) Wash your spinach, then finely chop it on your cutting board.
2.) Mound your flour on top of your spinach, then create a concavity in the flour so that it resembles a volcano. Crack the egg into the concavity. Next, carefully whisk the egg with a small fork or whisk, being careful not to spill any egg down the sides.
3.) With your hands, begin mashing the dough, spinach and egg together. In my opinion there’s no right way to do this, you just have to dive in. Add in your olive oil when your mixture seems to be getting dry. Keep kneading the dough, and add in tablespoons of water if you feel like your dough is too crumbly.
4.) Once you have a nice ball of dough that holds fairly firmly together, flour a surface and a rolling pin. (Flour your surface well! This dough will stick if you don’t.) Next begin to roll out the dough until it reaches below 1/8 of an inch. (The thinner the better.)
5.) Once your dough is rolled out, cut the pasta into strips of your preferred size. Let the dough dry for at least 15-30 minutes. When you are ready to remove your pasta from your surface, do so with a metal spatula so that you don’t pull off any sticky dough.
6.) Bring some salted water to a boil and drop your pasta in. Stir the pasta constantly for 1-3 minutes. I would lean towards 2 minutes, you don’t want your pasta to be mushy otherwise it will fall apart. The pasta will look a little weird compared to packaged pasta, but it will taste very fresh!
7.) Top your pasta with whatever you like and enjoy!
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