Homemade Beet Pasta

Directions

1. Blend the beets and water together using an immersion blender or regular blender. Blend until smooth.
2. Pile the flour and salt on a clean counter. Mix together, and then make a well in the center and pour the beet purée into the well.
3. Use a fork and start gradually adding the flour to the beet purée by whisking the fork through the purée and picking up a small amount of the flour at the edges of the purée.
4. Continue to pick up flour with the fork until a cohesive dough forms, then knead the dough until all the flour is incorporated into a ball. Note the mixture is supposed to be quite dry. Continue to knead. This takes a lot of strength and patience, about 10 - 15 minutes. Once the dough is smooth, wrap it in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
5. Once the dough has rested, remove it from the fridge and divide it into 4 pieces. The dough can now be rolled out by hand or with a pasta roller.
6. If using a rolling pin, roll and push the dough out as thin as it can go without ripping*. Lift and dust the dough with flour as needed. It's rolled well enough when you lift the dough and see the outline of your hand behind the dough.
7. Once the dough is rolled out, lightly dust with more flour. Then roll the dough up into a cylinder and cut it into strips with a sharp knife.
8. Unravel the noodles and toss them in more flour and leave them in a nest on your counter as you continue to roll and cut the remaining dough. At this point, you can either dry on a pasta drying rack, or freeze the noodles for storage if you are making the noodles in advance.
9. When you are ready to cook the noodles, add them to a large pot of salted, boiling water to cook for 2 minutes. Cook in batches if needed to avoid overcrowding the pot. If your noodles are thicker, test one to check for doneness before removing them from the water, you may need to cook them for an extra 30 seconds - 1 minute.
10. Remove the noodles from the water and toss with desired sauce*. Enjoy!

Notes

• * If you are struggling to roll the dough, use less flour on the counter and let the slightly sticky surface of the counter help to pull the dough out as you roll over it.
• * To let this pasta really shine, we made a simple sauce by adding vegan butter to a pan with a couple of cloves of minced garlic. Once the garlic was cooked slightly, we added the cooked pasta and garnished it with fresh black pepper, sea salt, and some sliced fresh basil.

Storage

• It's best to use the fresh pasta dough within 12 hours of making it.
• The fresh-cut noodles should be cooked the day they are made. Otherwise, they can be dried completely on a pasta drying rack and stored in airtight containers at room temperature for up to 5 days, or frozen and stored in the freezer for up to 1 month.
• Cook the frozen pasta the same as you would for fresh - for 2 minutes in salted, boiling water.