255. Homemade Egg Noodles, Easy

Years ago, I bought my own pasta maker and had a lot of fun turning out batches of homemade spaghetti and noodles. Most pasta recipes require kneading a very stiff dough for a significant amount of time; it is amazingly hard work if done by hand. In addition to the kneading process, rolling out the dough is also quite a job... it  takes at least ten minutes and a lot of energy to get it thin enough.

Homemade egg noodles, however, are more user-friendly than the pasta mentioned above and can easily be  made without a machine. The dough is more tender and mixes with little effort; the kneading and rolling process takes less time and also requires much less elbow-grease.

Deciding what to do with the end product, a sheet of  noodle dough, is a lot of fun. It can be cut to make narrow or wide strips, squares for filling or even cut into shapes. I love to hang cut pasta strips to dry...they looks beautiful, in a rustic sort of way, and connect me with people all over the world who also make pasta by hand.

 Egg noodles plump up as they cook; their taste and texture surpass the commercial products.

Homemade Egg Noodles

1 C flour

1 1/2 tsp olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

Water

Stir flour with oil, salt, and eggs. Add 2 T water to make a stiff dough. (More water might be necessary; add by tsp.). Turn dough out on a well- floured surface and knead for a minute (20 times), until smooth. Place in a plastic bag and allow to rest for 20 minutes. Roll dough on a floured surface into a 20"x14" rectangle. Fold dough in half, 10x14 and fold again  to 5x14 rectangle. Cut folded dough into crosswise into 1/2 " strips or size desired.

Unfold strips and place on a drying rack or on paper towels. (You may lay them across a wooden spoon, supported in such a way that the noodles hang down freely). Dry noodles for an hour or overnight. Store dry noodles in a air-tight container or use immediately.

To cook, bring a large pot of water to a boil and drop desired amount of noodles into it. Stir gently to separate noodles. Bring back to the boiling point and cook 3-5 minutes until tender, but not  mushy. Drain and serve with sauce or butter or add to your favorite soup.*

*(Soup pictured above is a lemon grass-flavored chicken broth with baby spinach and green onion. The noodles were cooked in water, drained and added to the broth).