OxGord Pasta Maker Machine Review

After testing a range of pasta machines both in our Lab and at home, we were pleasantly surprised to find that essentially all of them do a good job at making fresh pasta. Even with budget models, the dough rolls out evenly, and it's fairly easy to slice it into noodles that cook quickly and taste head and shoulders above store-bought.

The OxGord Pasta Maker Machine is actually the single least-expensive pasta machine we've tried, and we're big fans because of that. It's easy to set up and use to churn out lasagna, spaghetti, or fettuccine on demand. It may not be quite as smooth and effective as a top-of-the-line machine, but it also costs a tiny fraction of the price. If you're a beginner who wants to give fresh pasta a try, the OxGord is a small investment that can take you from newbie to expert.

A hand-cranked tabletop pasta machine takes some arm power to use, but it's also fun. After whipping up pasta dough from just flour, salt, and eggs, you feed it through adjustable rollers that flatten it into progressively thinner sheets. (The OxGord has nine thickness settings, which is actually more than some pricier models offer.) You can then use the sheets as-is for lasagna; hand-cut, roll, and assemble them into stuffed pastas or other shapes; or feed them through one of the two included cutters, with sharp wheels that slice the sheets into wider fettuccine or more narrow spaghetti.

Making fresh pasta is an ideal activity for a small dinner party, a couple who loves to cook, or a parent and culinarily inclined child: We found it a little awkward to feed the dough into the OxGord with one hand while turning the crank with the other, but having a helper made the whole process a lot easier. Fresh pasta cooks faster than dried, which means you'll have plates of fettuccine Alfredo or spaghetti with clams in no time.

The no-frills OxGord isn't without its flaws, however. Our biggest issue is with stability. Like most similar machines, it clamps to the table or countertop, but the metal plate that's supposed to hold it in place is crimped rather than flat. No matter how much we tightened the clamp, the whole thing wobbled quite a bit in operation. The removable crank doesn't lock in place, so the wobbling would knock it out of position frequently, too. We were able to account for this and get everything running smoothly, but it took a little practice. Having a pasta assistant can help with this, too, as a second person can hold the machine in place.

Another problem with this machine is that its cutters didn't do the best job. The dough moved through the cutters smoothly, but their wheels didn't slice all the way through a lot of the time, especially with the spaghetti cutter. It created perforations that we had to pull apart mostly by hand. (We followed the instruction manual's directions in our tests, but we suspect that rolling the dough a notch or two thinner would have helped with more effective cutting.)

No pasta machine is particularly easy to clean, and most can't even get wet, requiring careful brushing and wiping. The OxGord, though, is one of very few tabletop models that is (at least partially) dishwasher-safe. Its rollers and cutters come out of their housing to go right into the top shelf of the dishwasher. This is a big bonus, but unfortunately the housing itself must still be washed by hand. It has a lot of corners and other tight spaces where dough and flour can build up, and we ended up using a toothpick to remove all the traces.

The OxGord Pasta Maker Machine is worth every penny they charge for it—which, in truth, isn't that many pennies. It suffers from some problems, but they're similar to problems we found with pricier models, and they don't interfere too much with making awesome fresh pasta. If you want to give homemade noodles a try but aren't ready to jump in headfirst, this is a perfect place to start.

Competition: Manual vs. Electric 

• KitchenAid 3-Piece Pasta Roller & Cutter Set: The renowned KitchenAid stand mixers can do a lot more than just whip cream and knead dough, thanks to attachments like this one. The design is quite similar to its tabletop cousins, but instead of a hand crank, it uses the mixer's electric motor to turn the rollers and cutters. The KitchenAid machine did great in testing, churning out dough and cutting even noodles with ease. It's just astronomically expensive in comparison to the OxGord, and that doesn't account for the fact that you need to own a mixer to start with.

• Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker Plus: This extruder-style machine is more all-in-one than a tabletop roller or mixer attachment: It mixes and kneads the ingredients into dough automatically and then squeezes the dough through different dies to create shapes that a rolling cutter simply can't. This machine can make spiral fusilli, tube-shaped penne, and lots more in addition to standard flat noodles, but it's very pricey and only comes with four dies, which means you'll have to spend even more on attachments for extra shapes.

Why Trust The Spruce Eats?

Tierney McAfee wrote this review after personally testing the OxGord Pasta Maker Machine at home. It was her first experience with homemade pasta, and she was blown away. She's been writing for The Spruce Eats since 2019, and her work has also appeared in People, NBC News, and HollywoodLife.com.

The Spruce Eats commerce writer Jason Horn updated the story with additional results from Lab testing. He's been writing about food and drinks for nearly 20 years, for publications including Playboy, Serious Eats, and Travel Channel. If he's being honest, he likes making pizza from scratch more than he does pasta, though he loves both.