How to Clean Pasta Maker

Store-bought pasta is great, but there’s something about homemade pasta that just makes the entire meal taste better. The thought of making your own pasta can be very intimidating, but there is one device that can make it all easier.

That handy device is known as a pasta maker. These devices were once reserved for the kitchens of Italian restaurants, but small alterations to their design have made pasta makers commonplace in many households in the US.

This means that many Americans can have fresh pasta ready at their fingertips. Pasta makers are fairly easy to use, and a guaranteed way to take your dish to the next level.

That being said, there is one thing that can put people off of using their pasta maker, and that is the thought of cleaning it. Machines are notoriously difficult to clean, and your pasta maker is no different.

These devices can be intimidating to use, and even more, intimidating to clean.  That’s why we’re here to help with this handy guide full of all the information you need to know about cleaning your pasta maker.

So if your pasta maker needs a clean, follow this guide and the process will be easy. 

What is a pasta maker?

Before we go any further, we must establish exactly what a pasta maker is. There are lots of different types of pasta makers about, but they all have one purpose: to make pasta.

As we have already mentioned, traditionally pasta machines were reserved for Italian restaurants, and this used to be one of the only places where you could get fresh pasta. But a pasta maker allows you to produce fresh pasta whenever you want. 

But it is important to remember that a pasta maker does not make the pasta for you. Despite it being an essential component in the process of making pasta, you will still have to do a lot of the work yourself. The pasta maker will not produce the pasta dough for you, this is something that you must master yourself.

Once you have produced the dough for the pasta, this is when the pasta maker comes in handy. The pasta maker will roll your pasta dough flat into thin sheets. Once the pasta maker rolls the dough flat, it then also has a cutting function which can be used to slice the flat pasta into smaller pieces ready to be cooked. 

There are a variety of different pasta makers produced by different companies. However, all of these pasta makers can be placed into two categories: manual and electric.

Manual pasta makers are usually powered using a hand crank which moves the different parts and rolls the dough through the machine. Whereas electric pasta makers simply require you to press a button and the machine does all the work.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you should clean your pasta maker. 

How to clean your Pasta Maker

The thought of having to clean a pasta maker is enough to put lots of people off of using it. In lots of cases, it is one of those devices that you buy because it seems fun but it often spends most of its life sitting on the shelf or locked in a cupboard.

This is a shame because pasta makers can produce pasta that will blow store-bought pasta out of the water, and cleaning them isn’t actually that difficult. So let’s take a look at how you should do this. 

Before you do anything else, you should check the instruction manual of your pasta maker. This is especially important if the pasta maker that you want to clean is an electric one.

In some cases, the instruction manual will also have cleaning instructions for the device, however, more often than not they do not.

If you spent a lot of money on an electric pasta maker and you are nervous about cleaning it, we would also recommend searching the manufacturer’s website to see if they have any cleaning instructions available. 

Failing that, it is really easy to clean the pasta maker. While you should always check with the manufacturer first if possible, most pasta makers will be cleaned in the exact same way. The first thing you need to do is to remove any detachable parts from the machine.

In some cases, these will be dishwasher-friendly, but if you are not certain you should not place them in the dishwasher. Instead, you should give the detachable parts a soft wash using soap, water, and a dishcloth to avoid any damage. Once you have washed them, you should dry the components thoroughly with a clean cloth. 

Next, you should clean the roller of the pasta maker. To do this, we recommend taking a scrap piece of dough, or clay, and rolling it through the pasta maker.

You should repeat this up to 5 times to ensure that the dough/clay has picked up any leftover pieces of pasta stuck in the roller. If your pasta maker has different thickness settings you should do this on every thickness level. 

Finally, you should clean the rollers and cutters, we recommend using a brush to do this. Using the brush, you should run it over both the rollers and the cutters to remove any residue left on these components.

If you can see any pasta residue anywhere else on the pasta maker, we would recommend using your brush to clean these areas too. Once you have done that, your pasta maker is clean and ready to use again in the future. 

Summary 

In short, cleaning a pasta maker is a process that puts a lot of people off of doing it.

However as you can tell from this guide, the process is actually very easy to complete and doesn’t take long to do.

So you shouldn’t let the thought of cleaning your pasta maker put you off using it.