A quick complaint about one of the best reviewed pasta machines on the market
For those who know me, they know that I am a total nerd about cooking equipment. Whenever I need to buy a new kitchen tool, I frequently look to Cook’s Illustrated for their equipment reviews. I have always been happy after buying a piece of equipment that Cook’s Illustrated said was their number one choice. I trust the opinion of Cook’s Illustrated because of their thorough scientific process of testing — something that makes the engineer side of me very happy.
Having just gotten back from a wonderful trip in Italy, where I took a pasta making class, I have been itching to dive deeper into the world of fresh pasta. As expected, I turned to Cook’s Illustrated to get their opinion on the best pasta machine money could buy. Taking the advice of Cook’s Illustrated, I got the Marcato Atlas 150, quoted in their review as “the Ferrari of the pasta machine world.” Having only used my new pasta machine twice, I can see why it was a favorite of the reviewers at Cook’s Illustrated. However, as a beginner pasta maker, I did have some difficulties in the process of making my own fresh pasta. As an engineer and a kitchen equipment nerd, I am always looking at my cooking tools to understand what makes them good or bad and what could be improved to make the product better.
While I am not saying this pasta machine does not deserve to be at the number one spot of Cook’s Illustrated (as well as one of the top choices of 4 out 5 of the first results when you google “best pasta machine”), there were a lot of aspects that I really liked, but based on my limited experience using it, there is definitely some room for improvement in making it more easy to use.
My major complaint is that you need to clamp the machine down if you don’t want to employ a second person to hold everything down while you crank the pasta through. The clamping method may not seem like a big deal for a lot of people, especially because it is a cheap and effective method of holding the pasta machine in place, but that is under the assumption that they have a place in their kitchen to clamp it down. The first time I made pasta with this machine, I failed to find any space along my counter top that had a big enough ledge to get the c-clamp to secure the machine down. I first tried employing my cooking assistant (thanks Mom!) to hold the machine down, but once the sheets of pasta started getting somewhat long, there were just too many hands cluttered around the machine. The next quick fix attempt was to get a fold out table from the closet. While I was able to successfully clamp the pasta machine to the table, the table itself was far from stable and wobbled every time I tried to crank the machine.
It was not until my second attempt at making pasta that I found a small space on my countertop that was just long enough to get the c-clamp to fit. However, I was less that a millimeter away from scratching the wood finish underneath the counter with the nob used to tighten the clamp. All complaints aside, once the pasta machine was properly clamped down, flattening out the sheets of pasta was a much more pleasant experience compared to the first time. That being said, I am still limited to clamping the machine to the corner of the counter, and that causes some of the pasta to hang off the edge. Hanging over the edge did make it more difficult to handle the pasta once it started to get long and thin, and it certainly lead to a greater mess on the floor.
Now that my initial rant is over, it’s time to be productive. While I will probably end up putting together some clunky DIY fix for my clamping problems, I’d like to propose a few simple design ideas that might alleviate this problem for me and everyone else out there who wants to make pasta, but does not have a long enough ledge on their counter to clamp down their machine. A simple fix would be adding suction cups to the bottom of the machine. Those cheap suction cups that you might find stuck to a shower wall or window probably wouldn’t work because there would still be some shaking when you used the hand crank. However, working in research labs, I’ve seen some pretty nice heavy-duty suction cups that do a pretty good job of securing things down to a table. Or, if you don’t want to change the entire base of the pasta machine, you could just make a clamp that attaches to the table with a suction cup and has a metal rod that can be clamped down with a simple screw and fits in the same hole that is used with the c-clamp. You might even be able to get away with a smaller c-clamp that does not need as big of a ledge to grab on to.
There are a couple of other small design features that I could get picky about, but I do want to take a moment to focus of some of the really nice design features that I appreciated. First, I like how easy it was to get started using the machine (minus the clamping issue) and to store it. The pasta machine technically is four pieces: the flat rollers that are adjustable for thickness, the noodle cutter which cuts into strips of fettucine (wider noodles) or taglioni (thin), the crank, and the c-clamp. The noodle cutter is nice because it slides on and off the main piece easily, but due to the angle of the slots it is very sturdy when cutting your noodles. The noodle cutter is also easy to clean because you can take it off. In addition, you can buy additional attachments that allow for different noodle shapes, such as spaghetti (even though they are kind of expensive).
Overall, I am excited to continue my adventure into pasta making and I am going to do what it takes to make it work with my new pasta machine. I just think it is worthwhile to look at how we can continue to improve upon products that people claim are the best. I get that from a manufacturing standpoint, sometimes the cost of fixing small problems that only annoy crazy people like myself doesn’t make financial sense. But that is no reason not to dream of what some products might look like at their very best.