A woman and her KitchenAid stand mixer

I had always wanted a KitchenAid stand mixer, but they were just way out of my budget! So when we were putting gifts on our wedding registry, I decided to put the KitchenAid onto the list even though I didn't really expect to get it (because it's so expensive!). I was hopeful and surprisingly enough, my dream came true! Not only did I get the stand mixer, but I also received a bunch of attachments that go along with it. Equipped with my new KitchenAid stand mixer and attachements I feel like I can do anything! That is, anything related to cooking :P.

So far, my in-laws (who are now back in China - :D) and I have been playing a lot with the pasta attachements and the food grinder. We love it, actually I should say they love it since they're the ones who have been using it to do all the noodle and dumpling preparation. It makes things much easier. Now that they have left, I've decided to test my newly acquired skills in noodle making as well as play with the KitchenAid.

In my previous posts on noodle making, my attempts to make noodles from scratch weren't all too successful. Each time I made the noodles, they came out hard even after I cooked them for quite sometime. When my in-laws made the noodles, they seemed to come out perfectly. Not too hard and not too soft.

According to my mother-in-law, the key to making good noodles is in the dough. It should not be too soft but rather, somewhat hard. That being said, what do I mean when I say 'too soft, or somewhat hard'? That's a good question and it takes a wee bit of trial and error to figure it out. For me, 'too soft' means that the dough is as soft as your earlobe. When I made noodles last night, I made two batches of dough using the KitchenAid.

I really like the KitchenAid as it makes the dough for me, but I think it uses more water than I want in order for the dough to form. I used 1 cup of flour and then I added about a total of 3/4 cup of water since the dough wasn't forming. So for my first round of noodles, the dough was as soft as my earlobes after kneading. I used the pasta attachments to roll out the noodles and those worked really nicely. After cooking the noodles, they were actually OK - a wee bit hard but not too bad. Using the pasta rollers were really helpful as I could make the noodles really thin. If I did everything by hand, I think I would end up with the same results as my previous attempts.

The second dough I made was 'harder'. I used about 1.5 cups of flour and added about 3/4 cup of water, possibly a little less than that. I had to 'help' the KitchenAid a bit to form the dough since I didn't want to add more water. The noodles came out good - not as hard as the first batch. I still need some practice but at least I can make better noodles now! Next time I will try using the egg noodle dough recipe from KitchenAid and see if it tastes better! I definitely have to say, I love having the KitchenAid - not only does it make things easier, it's also fun to use!!

Below are pics of the KitchenAid, fresh noodles and the final dish :). Enjoy!