From Scratch Gluten Free Spaghetti Tutorial with Best Ever Turkey Meatballs and Tomato Sauce

Monday, July 29, 2013

Rev up this family favorite with DIY spaghetti and from scratch oven-baked turkey meatballs and tomato sauce! There's even a spaghetti making tutorial to get you started!
From Scratch Spaghetti Tutorial with Best Ever Turkey Meatballs and Tomato Sauce
Feeds 2 hungry adults & 1 hungry toddler

My idea of culinary nirvana would be vats of overflowing homemade pasta, perfectly al dente with cauldrons of rich, full-bodied sauces and fresh mozzarella shavings. Give me a private veranda in Tuscany with the sun setting and a glass of Chianti and the stage would be set for indulgence and bliss.

I spent $45 on  a round trip ticket to Italy (back in 2008 when intercontinental flights were still cheap here in Europe) and the entire flight over, I fantasized about a scene similar to what I've just described. I hoped to meet some extravagant Italian millionaire who would lavish me and my friends with good food and good wine at his countryside villa. Of course, that never happened. Instead, my friends and I roamed Milan for two days, too cheap (and too poor!) to afford a hotel, so we slept with about two dozen other backpackers just a few feet from the Duomo. Our actual bed was the stoop outside of a Gucci store. I mean, when in Milan ...

While I didn't have vats of pasta, I did indulge once or twice on fresh pasta and pizza and gelatto while we were there. Of course, you know, shop-bought dry pasta can't touch the fresh stuff with a ten foot pole. For years after roughing it in Milan, I craved the soft, buttery pasta of Italy and sought to learn how to make it on my own. Now, I'm going to show you how and share my favorite spaghetti recipe with you. 



A serving dish of DIY spaghetti, turkey meatballs and tomato sauce from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

Ingredients:

For the DIY spaghetti:
1 egg
1 egg yolk, reserve the whites
140g gluten free bread or strong flour
pinch of salt

For the turkey meatballs:
1 egg white
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp Italian herb mix (rosemary, oregano, bail, red pepper flakes, salt)
lemon pepper
sea salt
pinch of baking powder

For the tomato sauce:
portion of zesty tomato sauce
2 tbsp oregano


Instructions:

From Scratch Spaghetti Tutorial with Best Ever Turkey Meatballs and Tomato Sauce
 

How to make homemade spaghetti tutorial from www.anyonita-nibbles.com
Please forgive the wonky pasta in these photos! Trying to keep the pasta straight while taking pictures with the other hand isn't the easiest!

Pasta flour, egg and salt for homemade pasta dough from www.anyonita-nibbles.com


Mise en place, mise en place! There's not much to set up for pasta, but you having it already ready makes for easy days in kitchen. The same goes for the turkey meatballs, but we'll come to that. So we have our flour, egg plus one additional egg yolk and some salt. You won't use that much, just a pinch.

Fine breadcrumb mixture for making pasta dough from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

Flour, egg + yolk and salt all go into your food processor with the knife blade attachment. Pulse, pulse, pulse until your mix resembles a good pack of Panko. 


A ball of pasta dough, waiting to be refridgerated from www.anyonita-nibbles.com


Tip the breadcrumb like mix onto a lightly floured work surface and scrunch into a ball. 
Badabing! Wrap in clingfilm/Saran wrap  and pop back into the bowl you had the flour in and refrigerate for an hour.

After an hour, halve the dough and use the palm of your hands to flatten it on a lightly floured surface. Roll it out so that it's an even shape with a rolling pin. I've found that this helps keep the pasta dough the same width when passing it through the machine. 


The first time through the pasta machine from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

With your machine set to the widest setting, begin feeding dough through and turning the crank handle.

How pasta should look before you change the setting on the pasta machine from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

Pass the dough through about 8 times before decreasing the setting by one. That is what your dough should resemble by the time you're reading to move on to the next setting. 


Pasta dough that is all stretched and ready to be made into spaghetti from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

Keep doing this: passing through about 8 times and decreasing the setting until you've got a nice, ribbony thin strand of pasta. You might not get through all the settings on your machine. I usually stop at the penultimate setting. As you can see, the pasta is thin enough, so I just stopped.

Repeat this exact process with the other half of the dough, leaving the first portion of the dough laid out on your counter until you're ready to pass it through the spaghetti attachment.


Flouring the dough before passing it through the spaghetti attachment from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

When both halves of the dough are sufficiently stretched, add the spaghetti attachment to your machine. Lightly flour both sides of the stretch dough and pass through the spaghetti attachment. Note, there won't be different width settings, so just feed it through. You'll want to position a wide plate beneath to catch the noodles. You'll also want a pair of kitchen scissors to hand so that you can snip the noodles to your desired length. (With all that going on, I hope you understand I wasn't able to take very many photos! Ha)
Passing hte pasta through the spaghetti attachment from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

But that's what your spaghetti should be looking like at this stage.


A plate of DIY spaghetti noodles from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

 And there's your completed plate of spaghetti noodles. Drape the plate with a clean dishcloth and let the pasta rest. Meanwhile, make the meatballs! 

Ingredients for the best ever turkey meatbals moist and juicy from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

Remember that mise en place? You definitely want to do that with the meatballs since it's a two-handed job. You're going to love how moist and juicy these meatballs are. And they've remained healthy since they'll be baked and not fried! Preheat your oven to 200C/400F.

1. Put all of your dry ingredients in the bottom of a large bowl.
2. Add the turkey mince and the egg whites. 
3. Mix well.

A row of turkey meatballs waiting to be baked from www.anyonita-nibbles.com

4. Shape into balls and line on a baking tray. (I prefer to use seasoned stoneware because it keeps meatballs better than a traditional cookie sheet.) You can make 9 balls the size of those or half it and make 18. We've tried both ways and they're equally good.
5. Lightly spray the tops of the meatballs with no-calorie cooking spray.
6. Bake about 20 minutes or until cooked through. 
7. While the meatballs are baking, get on with making the easy peasy zesty tomato sauce per the instructions as stated in this linguine recipe. Don't forget to add in some oregano this time! 
8. When the sauce is bubbling away and the meatballs are nearly finished, boil a large pot with water. Salt it and add the noodles. Cook about 2 minutes and drain. 
9. When the meatballs have finished cooking, pop them into the pot with the sauce. Pour over the sauce and the meatballs.
10. Top with cheese and a bit of lemon zest.


All homemade dinner: spaghetti, meatballs and sauce from www.anyonita-nibbles.com
Irresistible spaghetti dish. Not your mom's spaghetti dinner from www.anyonita-nibbles.com
 

1 comment:

  1. Oh this is making me hungry!! I've been to Paris, but I'd love to go to Italy for the food. What an experience, sleeping in front of Gucci, lol! The pictures of making the pasta look amazing. I've made sauce and meatballs from scratch, but this is making me want to try making the spaghetti from scratch too.

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