3-Ingredient Homemade Orecchiette Pasta
Follow these steps at home to learn to make fresh homemade orecchiette pasta noodles! This recipe combines semolina flour, warm water and salt (no egg). If you love making your own pasta dough, preparing beautiful homemade orecchiette is a little time-consuming, but 100% worth the effort. Recipe yields 4 servings of pasta, and the orecchiette are ready to cook within 50 minutes.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 2 cups semolina flour you can also use a blend of all-purpose and semolina, but I prefer 100% semolina
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ - ¾ cup warm water
Instructions
- We are going old school here, meaning I will teach you how to do this by hand on the counter. Just know you can also do this with a food processor or even blender.
- Form a mound of flour on your surface, mix in salt. Nor create a well in the center of your pasta.
- Pou ½ cup water into the well, gradually mixing in the flour from the sides of the well until it is forming mostly incorporated.
- Now start to knead the dough. If it feels a little dry, add in more water. Add the water sparingly though. Knead and check.
- You want the dough to not be sticky, but also not too dry. It is happy medium that sometimes is only learned after a little trial and error. You will see what my dough looked like from the video in post.
- Once you have kneaded the dough for about 5-7 minutes, cover with saran wrap and allow it to sit for at least 20 minutes.
- Now, cut off about a 10th of your dough and roll into a snake that is about ½-inch thick. Keep the rest of the dough covered while you work with this section.
- Sprinkle your surface with semolina.
- Start cutting the snake into ½-inch pieces.
- Here is where you will learn the rhythm of this pasta. Start with the one piece and a butter knife of bench knife. Scrape the knife over top of the pasta pulling it towards you.
- It should curl as you pull it towards you and flatten to a thin layer, curled.
- Take your thumb or finger and press the curl the opposite way over your finger. It will form a little cone with the edges curled over.
- Continue this method- yes, it will take awhile, until all the pasta is formed.
- Sprinkle the tops with a little more semolina.
- Cook the pasta right away in salted boiling water- it takes about 2-3 minutes to cook.
- Or let the pasta dry on a cooling rack until it is completely dry.
- Store in an airtight container for up to 2 months.
- Now, sit back and enjoy. You deserve it!
Notes
Find your own rhythm for making orecchiette. I heard this several times when I was learning to make orecchiette, but I didn't know what that meant until I started making it on my own. I made two batches before I found a rhythm that worked for me.
There are different tools that you can use to form your orecchiette pasta. Some use a butter knife or a spackling knife. I found that my bench knife was the technique that worked for me, but you can try different tools until you find one you like.
Orecchiette only uses two ingredients. It's the perfect vegan pasta since there are no eggs in this pasta.
This is a "slow food." What I mean is that making homemade vegan pasta is a slow process since you will be forming a lot of little ears one at a time. It will take a little bit of time to form the orecchiette so enjoy the process. Invite friends over to make it with you, don't be stressed, and don't be rushed.
Make sure you let your dough rest for about 15-20 minutes before shaping.