RAINBOW PASTA

Today I will be talking all about naturally colored, fresh homemade pasta! This is such a fun little wholesome activity you could do with your children or with your friends.

I will only give you the basic, most known pasta dough ratios and you can take it from there, make it your own! Whether you want to use natural homemade coloring agents or just some classic store bought ones, the result will be fun to look at and so satisfying to eat!

I will admit, I am the most proud of my challah pasta shape. I can assure you it’s not a great business idea taking in consideration that it took me about 2 whole hours to braid 20 tiny 6 strand challah shaped pasta pieces, they are too adorable to even eat!

Therefore, if you want to keep your children busy for a while, get them to braid some pasta, haha!

The pasta shapes you could do with these are endless, from marbled pappardelle, to orecchiette or even braided pasta. This is more of a no recipe recipe, so have fun with it!

INGREDIENTS

THE BASIC PASTA RECIPE RATIOS (1 batch makes about 1 large serving of pasta, so multiply that to your liking)

• 100 grams 00 flour ( can be substituted with all purpose flour), plus more for dusting
• 1 whole egg (or 50 grams liquid)

You will most likely need a scale for this, it is the easier way to go!

If you want to read more about the 00 flour or ways to convert the weight of it into cups, I found this article to be very helpful CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE .

FOR THE NATURAL COLORING AGENTS

You will not need a large amount of the following ingredients to get that liquid pigment out of it – you will only need about 50 grams of liquid (including the egg if using any) for one batch of pasta you are making, so keep that in mind!

• carrots, bell peppers or turmeric – for orange
• herbs, spinach, pumpkin seed oil – for green
• beets – for red/pink
• more yolks, turmeric – for yellow
• lemon juice for the oxidizing liquids – just squeeze a tiny drop in each juice if you know it will oxidize

INSTRUCTIONS

If you are using store bought food coloring agents, skip these instructions!

FOR THE NATURAL COLORING AGENTS:

Step 1

Peel the vegetables if necessary and wash all of them.

Step 2

Pop each group of vegetables that is meant to give you one color in the blender with a little bit of water at a time, start small and gradually add it to the blender, you will want to extract as much pigmented liquid as possible so do not water it down.

You essentially want to juice the veggies so if you have a juicer, use that!

Step 3

If you are using a juicer, skip this step. If you are using a blender, strain your liquid through a fine mesh sieve or through a cheesecloth. You can use the leftover pulp for other recipes, like vegetarian burgers, falafel, maybe even add it to smoothies.

In the images shown below I used:

• carrots for the orange pasta
• peas, dill and pumpkin oil for the green pasta
• beetroot for the deep burgundy pasta
• yolks for the yellow pasta (the yolks will oxidize the next day turning the dough to an almost green color)

carrots for the orange pasta

peas, dill and pumpkin oil for the green pasta

beetroot for the deep burgundy pasta

yolks for the yellow pasta

• quick disclaimer: the yolks will oxidize the next day turning the dough into a darker color

FOR THE PASTA DOUGH

If you are using store bough food coloring agents, make a batch of pasta dough, divide it into smaller pieces and color each one of them individually.

If you are using the homemade pigmented liquids, you will most likely need to make each separate batch of colored dough individually, that is what I did.

I measured 100 grams of flour for each batch and added 50 grams liquid (1 yolk plus 25 grams of liquid or 1 egg white plus 25 grams of liquid, I really played with the ratios of egg mixture to colored liquid mixture).

Step 1

Pour the flour on the working surface and create a well in the middle of it with using a fork.

Step 2

Next, drop your liquid in the well. This is where you experiment with the weight of the liquid. I added 1/2 egg in each one of the 6 batches of pasta I made and mixed that with the colorful liquid (or with an extra egg yolk).

Step 3

Using a fork, start mixing the flour with the liquids until the flour is fully hydrated (incorporated). Add more flour along the way if needed!

Step 4

Knead the dough for a little bit until it looks smooth and there are no more dry flour spots in it. Knead it for a few minuted, you do want some structure for a perfect al dente pasta, but do not go crazy on it, you don’t want as much gluten development as you would in bread!

Step 5

Tightly wrap each individual colored pasta dough in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Make sure you do not skip the wrapping part, this will prevent the dough from drying out and forming crusty lumps on the surface.

Step 6

The most fun part, shaping the pasta! Make sure you keep the leftover dough covered while shaping the pasta so it would not form a crust. Lightly dust flour on the dough and working surface as you go.

Braid it, thinly roll it and cut into it, layer the colors, marble the dough, have fun with it!

CHALLAH PASTA

For a step by step braiding tutorial click HERE and scroll down to the video!

PAPPARDELLE

Step 7

If you are planning on making the challah shape, I suggest you boil it right away. I noticed that the ones that I dried out were very hard to boil due to their thickness.

The rest of the shapes can easily be left to dry at room temperature.

Boil the pasta until al dente and pop it all in the sauce. The boiling time will depend on the shape and thickness of the pasta, I usually just try one pasta from time to time to see where it is at and if I should still let it boil.