Boiled pasta from dried noodles is pretty tasty. Is fresh pasta really all that much better?
Nope. Not in my opinion. Dried is just as good.
Huge difference.
Somewhere in the middle.
(Hey, had to balance it out SOMEHOW! :D)
Fresh pasta has much more flavour than dry pasta. I find I can taste the egginess, the doughiness of it, whereas with dry pasta a lot more is needed to liven up the flavour. I can happily eat home-made pasta with butter or a little grated cheese, but not so for dry pasta.
I love the fresh cheese-filled pastas that are now available at the local supermarket. My dad (first generation Sicilian)(don’t call him Italian) is delighted to have these things, too. He says that it’s not as good as his Aunt Mary’s ravioli, but then nothing is. I use any number of sauces on this pasta.
I am NOT going to make my own pasta. I’ll buy fresh pasta, but I won’t make it.
However, fresh pasta can’t be eaten el dente.
Have you never eaten at an Italian place? If you’ve ever ordered ravioli, tortellini or some fettuccinis you’ve had fresh pasta.
It’s different than dried semolina pasta. I think the claims that it’s “all that” are bullshit, it’s just different. Certainly there’s a lot of cheap crappy dried pasta available at the megamart and fresh pasta is generally high quality but high quality dried pasta is just as delicious, the biggest difference is in texture.
Well, you could always make your own. It is really, really easy to do:
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 2 tablespoons water
Mix all the above together with your hands until it is a nice soft ball of dough - toss a bit of flour on a flat hard surface (so it doesn’t stick), get your rolling pin out, roll as thin as you can…then slice into strips and throw into boiling water.
Because it is about as fresh as it gets, it cooks very quickly - one or two minutes might be enough.
Easy and quick to do.
What happens if you try? Is the universe fatally undermined in a vast explosion of noodleocrity ?
Edit: I hate fresh noodles. It’s like eating rubber bands. Dry is best
No, not “shouldn’t” - “can’t” - it’s already soft, and boiling it doesn’t make it any harder.
I suppose you could fry it…
Personally, the one time I’ve tried fresh from a store, I thought it was INFERIOR to dry stuff.
But then, I tend to like what I’m used to, and I also like slathering my pasta with rich sauces. Trying to make the noodles the star of the show is a bit of an odd concept to me, now that I think about it.
Yes, I’m sure I remember some TV chefs saying that good quality dried pasta is the preferred choice, apart from in things like ravioli. Fresh pasta (edit: the stuff you buy ready made) is seen as more of a convenience than being supposed to taste better.
Totally true, but as others have pointed out, you can get great/crap examples of both. IMO, the best fresh pasta will always beat the best dried pasta.
They are two different things; one is not superior to the other (like, for example, fresh garlic is pretty much always better than garlic powder.)
Some sauces/dishes work best with dried pasta, some work best with fresh.
They are both good.
Part of it depends on how you eat it. If you’re piling it up with sauces, vegetables, cheese, etc., it won’t be so noticeable. If you’re eating it with just a little sauce, or olive oil and garlic, etc., it’s easier to tell the difference. IMO, it’s not worth the effort to make fresh pasta at home.
I guess I’ll have to get my Ronco Pasta Machine off the shelf and try it again. I’ve not used it for a few years. 
mark me down as ‘depends’
I can and have made my own pasta, and I frequently buy both dried and fresh pasta.
Both dried and storebought fresh can be very good, but I will toot my own horn here and say right off the bat that the most amazing pasta I have ever had, and am working on emulating was home made ravioli where the pasta was made that day and had leaves of basil and thyme rolled into the layers, the filling was fresh home made cows milk soft cheese, fresh garden spinach and pine nuts, and a very delicate white sauce that was a basic bechamel with parmesan and fresh blue crab meat from crabs fished that morning. There was some form of sherry in the sauce as well, but I cant afford the cost of a bottle just for making a sauce, and I dont drink sherry sigh
I have got the pasta down, and I make cheese fairly well, but I havent gone crabbing here in CT, and I am getting a couple aerogardens to grow fresh herbs and leafy greens …
Remember too that pasta has *always *been dried. It’s not some modern manufacturered convenient alternative like garlic powder is for fresh garlic. As others have said, there’s good and bad examples of fresh and dried, but when you eat dried pasta you’re not getting anything less than the authentic experience.
Well it turns out that you are dead right. Just like pasta shapes, the more delicate the pasta the better suited it is to a delicate sauce. Dry pasta and big bold pasta shapes are suited to just the sauces you favour.