How to Properly Dry Pasta?

Matt__34377

Hey guys n gals,

So I am trying to extend my pasta's shelf life by dehydrating it. The pasta in question is semolina and water based cavatelli. Last night I tried drying it in our home dehydrator (Salton brand) at 95F for around 7hrs. Unfortunately it wasn't finished before I went to bed, so I just left it out overnight on the rack on the kitchen counter. It seemed pretty stiff, so I tried a test batch. Even after 15 mins of cooking there was what looked like a white raw dough seam running through the middle. I was thinking this may have occurred because the pasta was not actually dried all the way through. Any help would be massively appreciated. Thanks so much!!

wolfiegirl

I've made a whole lot of dried pasta and never, ever used a dehydrator. Simply put, all you have to do is air dry it and you're done. Place the fresh pasta on a sheet tray that has been sprinkled with semolina (don't over do it...just enough so that the pasta doesn't stick to the tray!). Put the tray aside where it won't be disturbed and walk away. Depending on the pasta, it could take anywhere from four hours to overnight. No biggie. If you want to keep the pasta in a 'fresh' state, and you're planning on eating it the same day, follow the same procedure except pop it in the fridge. Long term, you can freeze the sheet pan and once the pasta is frozen solid, place them in a freezer or vac bag and store them in the freezer. For long pasta, like fettuccine, a pasta 'dryer' (simply a device you can hang the pasta upon) works very well to dry the long strands. As for the white raw dough thing, it seems like you may not have rolled the dough out evenly, leaving a very thick core that would take far longer to dry/cook than the outside edges. Hard to say especially since you used a dehydrator. Fresh pasta (even after being dried) should take a 3 or 4 minutes to cook. After 15 minutes of cooking, you might have killed the stuff! Keep in mind homemade or store-bought fresh pasta takes very little time to cook as compared to the dried products typically sold in grocery stores. But don't despair. Learning curve.....keep after it. I made a whole lot of pasta-shaped bricks before I finally started to get it right.

Buon appetito!!