How to make beetroot pasta
Making your own pasta can be very full filling and not to mention delicious. Making a beetroot pasta is even more fun!
Beetroot pasta
How good does this look? The cooked beetroot was on sale so I had a bit of an overdose to handle. My friend Esmee suggested we create a red beetroot pasta while we were cooking and voila, here it is. It’s not too difficult to give pasta all sorts of pretty colors or add some herbs in. It’s not necessarily the best way to increase your vegetable intake but it does add a bit to your daily amount… 🙂 Flavor wise it is not really tasting like beetroot so that was somewhat disappointing but I love the result anyway.
Super easy
To make the beetroot pasta you need cooked beetroot which you puree. This is then incorporated into the semolina en the flour. You add a small egg to it and knead. I like to knead it first in the machine to get it going, but I always finish by hand. I use a Kitchen Aid machine and am not always super impressed by the kneading skills of the machine. So I get it started in the machine and knead it for a few minutes by hand. Just to make the dough more flexible.
Let the dough rest for at least half an hour in the fridge before taking it out and getting it through the pasta machine. I made spaghetti here, but obviously you can use the beetroot pasta to create ravioli, tagliatelli or whatever other pasta shape you want.
Like I said, the taste is not very beetroot but that also means it is more flexible in terms of adding flavors to it. Keep in mind that cooking fresh pasta takes only a fraction of the time it takes dried pasta, so keep an eye on it and take it out on time. Usually 2-3 minutes is enough for cooking the pasta. Depending on the thickness of the spaghetti of course.
If you love beetroot, be sure to check out the below recipes too!
Beetroot pasta
Equipment
- Pasta machine
Ingredients
- 200 gr cooked beetroot pureed
- 200 gr semolina
- 50 gr flour
- 1 small egg
- 1/2 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together and knead well. You can do this with the machine or by hand. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.
- Remove from the fridge and break into pieces. Knead again to soften a bit. Press them with your hand until flat enough to put through the machine. Continue until it is thin enough. Place on a flour covered surface.
- Once you've done all pieces replace for the spaghetti attachment and turn into spaghetti. You can dry them on a rack or twist into knots. Be sure to cover liberally with flour to prevent sticking.Cook for about three minutes or until al dente
Nutrition Information
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
This is gorgeous! Love the idea of it — gotta try it. Terrific idea — thanks.
I used a jar of beetroot as it’s all I had but I had a lot of problems…although I drained it well and dried on paper towels it made the dough very sticky so I needed to add a lot more flour than stated in the recipe.
Eventually I did get a workable dough. I only pressed 6/9 with my pasta machine beyond that it just tore. It took a long time to dry out becoming quite brittle afterwards.  I found 3 mins cooking was too long and it turned gulpy and lost all its colour, just over one minute was okay. I used most in lasagne but again found the colour bled out during cooking. Colour of pre-cooked pasta is beautiful and I couldn’t taste the beetroot. Strongly recommend against using a jar of pickled beetroot for this unless it’s just for precooked show.Â
Thanks for letting me know Sally. I have to say I have never used beet in a jar as that’s not readily available here, but good to know that it is not a good idea to use for the dough!