Orange Noodles (colored with carrots!)
Noodles are great, but they’re even better when they’re colorful. These carrot noodles have a very mild carrot flavor when cooked, so if you wanted to highlight it in a light broth, it’ll be there, but if you wanted to add heavier seasonings, the carrot flavor won’t interfere. Homemade noodles are time-consuming, but much of that time is resting time. You’ll be rewarded with fresh noodles that you can dry if you want, and a pretty and tasty meal.
Ingredients
- Carrots: I used two large orange carrots, you could try this with other carrot colors too! You can use 4-5 baby carrots per large carrot or however much makes the same weight.
- Water: Room temperature, refrain from adding too much! How much you use depends on the size of your carrots and how much water they absorbed/you added while boiling and pureeing. Err on the side of drier dough.
- Flour: All-purpose is what I used; if you wanted to make these more like pasta you could use semolina/durum wheat flour but I haven’t tried that.
Making Dough
1. Start with finely pureed carrots. Strain the puree if you don’t want little specks of carrot in the finished product.
2. Mix the flour with the carrot puree until you get dough crumbles and there’s no more flour. Add small splashes of water as needed (I added about 20g to get to this stage).
3. Knead/squish the dough crumbles together until they form a ball. The dough ball will be VERY hard—resist the urge to add water unless it absolutely is not coming together. After everything is incorporated, let the dough rest covered for around 20 minutes.
4. The rested dough should feel more pliable, but still quite hard. If the dough isn’t coming together, add a literal splash of water at a time as you go. Knead it until it is mostly smooth and there are no chunks of dried flour. You may need to rest it again before kneading (you might need to rest too!).
If your dough is too wet, you will have a hard time making the noodles later and it just takes some patience for the flour to hydrate.
You can also turn these into wonton/dumpling/ravioli wrappers!
Storage
Dough and fresh noodles can be stored in the fridge, covered, for up to two days. Dried noodles can be stored for 6 months in a cool, dry place.
Orange Noodles (colored with carrots!)
Course: MainDifficulty: Medium30
1-oz fresh noodle nests30
minutes40
minutes300
kcalIngredients
2 large carrots (160g)
water, as needed (at least ¼ cup)
600g flour (5 cups)
Directions
- Wash the carrots and peel if desired. Chop them into large segments if you have large carrots (if using baby carrots, no need to chop). Boil the carrots for 5-10 minutes, or until you can poke a fork all the way through easily.
- Put the cooked carrots in a blender or powerful food processor and puree until smooth, adding water little by little as needed. You can optionally strain the mixture before pouring it into the flour if you don’t want little specks of carrot in your noodles. I had about 270g of liquid/carrot puree before mixing.
- Using a stand mixer or spatula, stir together the flour and liquid until they form little crumbles. Add more liquid as needed, but just until there is no dry flour. Don’t add too much! It will look dry.
- By hand now, knead until the dough crumbles come together into a very shaggy dough. Again, add more water as needed but the dough should feel very dry, almost like it won’t come together. After a craggy ball forms, cover the dough and let it rest for 20 minutes.
- Continue kneading the dough until it becomes smooth. You may need to rest for another 20 minutes and come back to it. Let rest for a final 15 minutes or until relaxed.
- Cut off a piece of dough and roll it out to about ¼ inch thick. Dust it with cornstarch or flour, and run it through your pasta roller on the thickest setting.
- Dust the flattened sheet with more cornstarch/flour as needed, and run through progressively thinner settings of the pasta machine. Once the noodles are thin to your liking, cut them by hand or with a pasta cutter.
- Boil fresh noodles for1-2 minutes depending on how thick they are. Taste them to check if they’re done; I like them with some chewiness.
- If drying them, hang on a drying rack or coil into nests and let dry in a clean place. Boil the dried noodles like you would with any other dried noodle.
Notes
- This recipe makes A LOT of noodles so if you don’t want any leftovers/dried noodles, scale it down. 30 1-oz fresh nests probably serves 15 people in a typical meal.
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