The Best Pasta Makers if You’re Upsetti With Your Store-Bought Spaghetti

At an authentic Italian restaurant, a plate of fresh pasta is undoubtedly what makes or breaks an experience (or a nonna’s heart). But at home, store-bought pasta (while convenient and time-saving), is simply never as good as the real, handmade stuff. While many tend to think that making pasta at home can be a chore, a pasta maker can make it a total breeze.

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

The best pasta makers you can buy in 2023

Best manual: Marcato Atlas 180 pasta maker

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 also 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, if you ask us.

Best electric pasta maker: Philips Avance pasta machine

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 it 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 still 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.

Lifehacker Australia editor Steph even gave the Philips pasta maker a whirl and while her nonna still preferred to do it all by hand (some things never change), she had plenty of tips and tricks for those of you willing to take the plunge.

Best budget: Roccar pasta machine

This pasta maker is made from top quality chrome steel, making it corrosion-resistant to wear over time. It also happens to be well-equipped 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, it does the job more than wel, despite sitting under the $60 price tag.

Best attachment: KitchenAid pasta maker

If you already own a KitchenAid mixer, you can attach one of these three rollers 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 bench top space), you can easily stash these cutters in your kitchen drawer when it’s not in use.

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.

If you’re looking for a further bargain, don’t forget to stop by our coupons page and grab a Bing Lee promo code for discounts across appliances and tech, including up to 30% off kitchenware.

What to look for when buying a pasta maker

So you’ve decided you want to make your own pasta from scratch – awesome.

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 be a tedious and time-consuming task.

With a pasta maker, you simply need to ease the pasta dough through the machine, according to its instructions. There are two types of pasta makers that you can choose between: a manual or an electric one.

A manual pasta maker features a lever that 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 feed the dough through the machine and control the lever, while the other needs to guide the pasta through the opposite end as it comes out in strips. On the plus side, a manual pasta machine often sits on the cheaper spectrum and is best suited to 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 which kind of pasta maker you’d like to grab, 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.

Recipe ideas to try with your new pasta machine

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:

• Two-ingredient cheesy sauce
• Breakfast spaghetti
• Truffle spaghetti
• Pasta skewers
• Pickle spaghetti
• MasterChef star Max Krapivsky’s “Funky” Pasta
• Delicious pasta crackers
• Spaghetti al Limone
• TikTok spaghetti

Bon appetit!