When you head out to an authentic Italian restaurant, a plate of fresh pasta is undoubtedly what makes or breaks an experience (or a nonna’s heart). While store-bought pasta is both convenient and time saving, it’s simply not as good as the fresh, handmade stuff. Many tend to think that making pasta at home can be a chore, but with the aid of a pasta maker, it’s a sure breeze.

So you’ve decided you want to make your own pasta from scratch – great. Back in the day, so long as you knew how to make the dough, it was all a matter of rolling it out with a pin and slicing it into thin strips. Of course, cutting them into individual strips with a knife or using a wooden chitarra can a tedious and time-consuming task.

With a pasta maker, you simply need to ease the pasta dough into the machine according to its instructions. There’s actually two types of pasta makers: a manual and electric one.

A manual pasta maker features a lever you need to hand crank around and around to process the pasta. It’s often a two person job since you’ll need one person to focus on feeding the dough through the machine and controlling the lever, while the other needs to guide the pasta through the opposite end. On the plus side, a manual pasta maker often sits on the cheaper spectrum and is best suited for thin sheets of dough or long flat noodles.

An electric pasta maker on the other hand is ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to give their triceps a workout while cooking and doesn’t have a buddy to help them out. It’s often easier to operate and some can even mix the dough for you. However, you will have to work to the speed of the machine. Clean-up can also be quite tiresome afterwards.

Now that you have an idea about what kind of pasta maker you’d like to grab for your home, we have a few other things to mention before you skip straight to checkout.

The first thing to keep in mind when choosing a pasta maker is to find out what kind of material it’s made from. There are many machines out there that are made from aluminium, but what you should be looking for is one made out of stainless steel. Not only will it be less likely to rust during the cleaning process, but the heaviness of the steel will ensure better stability while in use. There’s nothing worse than vigorously using the hand crank, accidentally knocking your machine off the kitchen counter and having it land on your toes. Ouch.

The next thing you’ll want to pay attention to is how many and what kind of cutter or die attachments you’ll get with your new pasta maker. If you’re a simple spaghetti gal or a fettuccine lover, you’ll find that most makers come equipped with cutters for those shapes of pasta. But if you want a penne or linguine, you might need to consider a different machine or check out whether they come with additional attachments you can buy.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the best pasta makers you can grab for your household.

This Italian-made, hand cranked pasta maker is perfect for lasagne, fettuccini or tagliolini. By using its adjustment dial, you can control the thickness and roll the dough into even strips with ease. There’s a whopping 10 different thickness settings, from a delicate 0.6mm to a thick 48mm.

However, if you like the look of this one, but you’re not a big fan of cranking it yourself, you can buy a separate pasta drive motor that will do the work for you. Bellisima.

Where to buy Marcato Atlas 180 pasta maker

This is by far the easiest pasta maker you’ll ever use. Not only do you not have to knead the dough yourself, but it’ll spit out for you completely hands-free. This fully automated Philips pasta maker is best suited to those of us who can be a little lazy when it comes to meal prep, but want to enjoy the goodness of fresh food.

After using its included measuring cups to add the ingredients into this machine, all you have to do is choose a program and bam, fresh pasta in 10 minutes flat. It even comes with a mini recipe book so you can decide how to best serve your pasta once it’s come out.

Our editor Steph even gave the Philips pasta maker a whirl and while her nonna preferred to do it all by hand, she still had plenty of tips and tricks for those of you willing to take the plunge.

Where to buy Philips Pasta Maker

This pasta maker is made from top quality chrome steel, making it corrosion-resistant to wear over time. It also happens to be well-prepared for handling big batches of dough.

It features various cutter attachments that cater more towards thinner types of pasta, such as fettuccine or vermicelli noodles. That’s right, folks. You can even create noodles with your pasta maker, because why not?

While it doesn’t feature all of the bells and whistles that other pasta makers have, for it’s under $60 price tag, it does the job more than well.

Where to buy Roccar pasta maker

If you already own a KitchenAid mixer, you can attach one of these three roller and cutters to transform it into a pasta maker and recreate the taste of Italy on the fly.

Rather than buy a whole new machine you’re not sure you can commit to (that could also be competing for precious benchtop space), you can easily stash these cutters in your kitchen drawers when you’re done using them.

Its design is solid and durable but also maintains the sleek, stylish look that KitchenAid is popular for. Plus, you can even buy additional attachments separately (like a ravioli one) if you want to diversify pasta night.

Where to buy KitchenAid pasta maker

Now that you’ve sorted out your pasta, it’s time to suss out what sauce or recipe you’re going to pair it with. We have tons of recommendations ready, so if you’re looking for some inspiration, check out these suggestions below:

Isabella Noyes is an E-Commerce Writer at Pedestrian Group, working across PEDESTRIAN.TV, VICE Australia, Refinery29 Australia, Business Insider Australia, Gizmodo Australia, Lifehacker Australia and Kotaku Australia.

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