hey i’m katie and welcome back to tasty’s hack or hassle on this show tasty producers try to make a recipe testing a bunch of hacks in a row that have been collected by our friend amy now i am not an expert i am not an italian grandma so please don’t come for me but i do love to make pasta in my spare time so today we’re just going to test out these hacks and see which ones are helpful and just like which ones are a total hassle [Music] so today i’m going to be making a classic spaghetti and meatballs much like the one we have here it’s got spaghetti it has a rich tomato sauce and on top we’ve got some cute little meatballs and we’re gonna be making fresh pasta by hand all right so let’s get into this the first thing we’re gonna do is add some salt to flour and i’m doing this in the bowl because our first hack is to make a well in a bowl so normally you would turn this out onto your surface and then you would make a well which is going to take your wet ingredients but we’re doing it in a bowl and this is actually a hack that i’ve done before because often my wells collapse and it becomes really messy this hack we’re just gonna make it in the bowl and this way it can’t collapse outside of itself and six egg yolks and then we’re gonna add a tablespoon of olive oil so first i’m just gonna combine all the egg yolks and get those all broken up and this makes for like a smoother less clumpy dough you’ve gotten this pretty well incorporated it’s starting to get real chunky boy now so i’m gonna put this out onto the counter now there’s no pretty way to do this oh you know what is a pretty way to do this this is not a hack but you can use a bench scraper sometimes not all of the flour is gonna incorporate into your eggs and your oil so what’s not coming together like that didn’t naturally cling to this we’re just gonna get rid of it rejection so the next hack is a kneading hack so the traditional kneading is you go away from yourself and you bring it back but we’re gonna do the heart method is the hack and this is actually from a tasty 101 so you make a heart shape you go like this and then you go like this i think this hack it just depends on like what you would like to do i like that it’s a heart like it’s romantic i would say that i prefer the traditional method which is this way so basically i’m gonna just keep kneading this until the gluten is really developed and when you press your finger into the dough it springs back so we’re just gonna wrap this in plastic we’ll just let this sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes to an hour pasta recipes can vary some are very dry some are really sticky so i flour my surface i’m gonna cut him into eights so that we don’t have too long of sheets and then the dough that you’re not working with just make sure you keep that covered because you don’t want your pasta dough to dry out so we just want to make sure we get this nice and thin because if you send it through the pasta roller when it’s too thick it’ll break so now we’ve got a pasta roller i have a cool electric one and we’re just having this on setting the first setting which is one and you don’t want to pull your pasta like it just let it come out on its own we’re gonna fold it into a square like this and we’ll just feed it through again and this is gonna help get a better shape so now we’re gonna go up to two so as you go higher it gets thinner and now we’ll go to three or four and we’re gonna go to five is the thinnest that will roll it okay and we’ve got our sheet you want it so that you can see your fingers through it it’s nice and translucent and i’m just gonna repeat this with our remaining dough and then we’ll move on to cutting this into spaghetti now it’s time to cut it i have added a spaghetti cutter attachment extruder what do you call it i don’t know it cut spaghetti we’re gonna turn on our machine this is my favorite part some guys might fall down that are not the same length you don’t have to be a hero trying to catch them i don’t know why it makes me so happy now here’s our next hack we could put this on a drying rack but since we’re gonna eat our pasta relatively quickly we don’t really need to do that so the hack is you dust up some flour on these guys we’re gonna do this before we set it down because we don’t want them to stick together and you can set them down here and then just nest them and i actually like to add a little bit more flour in here and then you twirl cute they’re like little eggness i highly recommend this hack because you don’t really need to buy the drying rack unless you’re going to be drying your pasta overnight but if you’re gonna eat it that night you really don’t need that extra gadget we’re gonna set these guys aside and let them sit for 30 minutes while we work on the sauce i feel like this is a metaphor for my life like you know when i start off on something it’s not so great but it can get better i can get better so now we’re moving on to the sauce i’m actually gonna be using jar sauce and you’re gonna find out why but the first thing we need to do is prep some garlic for this sauce and we have like way too many garlic hacks to try but i also love garlic so i’m excited basically you break up your garlic if you can see they all still have the little peels on them so the first one we’re gonna try is you take your garlic cloves and you shake them between two metal bowls so let’s see very musical let’s see was that enough some of it’s still on but for the most part these guys are pretty good that’s a pretty good hack there’s another version of this hack where it’s in a tupperware container so let’s see if that actually works faster one two three oh okay we have one that’s done the other four are not as good so this one maybe it’s because this top is rubber the next one we saw on tick tock you cut off the base well in the video it doesn’t come apart like this all right we’re gonna try that again i am now equipped with a serrated knife hopefully these teeth are gonna help us out okay i’m gonna just say no it’s a hassle the whole bottom is supposed to cut off and then you’re supposed to just press down and then magically all of the peel comes off but it’s very much has all its clothes on so to protect my hands for this one we don’t know if it works obviously that last one didn’t i’m gonna use gloves and a paring knife and the idea is that you just stick this knife in and then you keep going in a circle this one’s kind of dangerous so just cue disclaimer right here here we go so they’re going in at an angle and they’re kind of like pulling it towards them and then it magically comes out that did not happen for me okay as things are coming out it’s easier to do but what i am still noticing is that it’s not actually like how you shake it in the bowl and then you have all of the the peel gone that’s still there like in the video this person is rapidly doing it it looks effortless and they’re very good at it maybe i’m just not good but there were a lot of comments that said this didn’t work i kind of i’m on the side with the comments so we’re gonna say hassle so i’m just gonna mince up this garlic and we’ll move on to the next hack so now we’re gonna be making our sauce which is our next hack we’re gonna upgrade this jarred sauce so the first thing we’ll do is heat up some olive oil and then we will saute our four cloves of garlic you just wanna cook it so it gets a little tender and you can start to smell and it’s fragrant i would wear garlic as a perfume is that weird probably we’re going to now add balsamic vinegar so this is going to deglaze the pan but it’s also going to add like a brightness more acidity and some sweetness so now we will add our jarred pasta this is about 20 ounces a half a cup of heavy cream which i like this idea it’s just gonna add some richness to our sauce i think it’s pretty common that people will do this with a jar of sauce so far i really like this hack i feel like it’s a good time saving hack so the next thing we have to do is bring this up to a simmer so while this is simmering we’re gonna move on to making meatballs okay so first what we’re gonna do is add some beef and some pork it’s not glamorous folks and then a little tip for my friend matt add some ricotta this just adds a lot of moisture and then we’ll add some milk get your bread crumbs in there parmesan of course and the eggs are just gonna help bind all of this together and then we’re just gonna get in there with our hands and squish it all together so our next hack is gonna involve this an egg carton i’m as afraid as you are and it’s gonna go in the oven so we’re all afraid you cannot forget seasoning so let me just add that in real fast we’re going to add some salt here and some pepper so this hack is an alton brown hack when you cook these in the oven a lot of fat drains off them and grease and it like pools at the bottom and so the carton is supposed to absorb all of that grease and make you know make less greasy meatballs so i’m just going to use this ice cream scoop here this just make sure all your meatballs are around the same size we just set it in and that’s what we’re doing i don’t know if this hack is a hassle or a good hit but we’ll know as soon as it cooks let’s go bake these at 4 25 for 20 minutes and see if this hack works [Music] so you guys may notice we’re outside and that’s for safety reasons just in case this carton catches fire for any reason in this oven outside look how still it’s just like by itself all right so our oven is preheated to 425 i’m gonna put our bad boys in there we’re gonna wait 20 minutes all right everybody i have let these cool a little bit so that i can handle them we’re gonna try to take these out i’m a little nervous that they’re gonna stick to the cardboard my nervousness was right they are sticking okay well wow okay so the tops got very crispy but the bottoms are a little soggy i don’t know if this really works very well because even if i take them out while they’re piping hot this base is still not crispy it’s kind of soggy and you really want an all-around crisp on your meatballs hassle okay so we’re near the end and i’ve got some boiling water here so one of the hacks is to salt your water after it’s been boiling it takes longer if the salt is in there for it to boil and also i guess in stainless steel pans it can hit on the bottom of it and cause like a discoloration the next hack is to avoid iodized salt a lot of table salt is iodized salt but we’re using kosher iodized salt has a more metallic taste than kosher salt so that’s why just avoid it so that your pasta doesn’t get like a metallicy taste so then the next one is to salt this until it’s like seawater so we’ll see if this makes our pasta a lot more flavorful at the end and i think it’s a good technique okay our sauce is simmering our water is boiling let’s cook our pasta fresh pasta cooks really quickly in about like two to three minutes depending on the thickness of it the next hack is says to stir the pasta for two minutes to keep it from sticking together fresh pasta is really delicate so stirring this for two minutes a seems like a waste of time but b like also you could like damage your pasta the next hack to test if our pasta is done i feel like i’ve only seen this in movies but we’re gonna try it is to throw a piece of the pasta at the wall and then if it sticks then it’s done ah stop okay i think someone just wanted to throw pasta at a wall okay so this is done according to that it’s been about a minute and a half and i don’t want to overdo it so the next hack is to strain this using the colander like this i don’t know if this is easier okay here we go oh steam pasta facial do not rent your pasta i don’t think this is a hack this is just life advice don’t rinse your pasta i actually like that hack that wasn’t actually that bad most people would tell you not to do this hack but annie is forcing me to do it to keep your pasta from sticking to itself you’re gonna add olive oil so why this hack exists i guess is to keep the pasta from sticking to itself but what actually happens is it stops the sauce from adhering to the pasta we’ll see how much it affects the taste so this next hack is again i think more of a technique it’s put your pasta in the sauce instead of your sauce in the pasta and this way the pasta actually like cooks a little bit more with the sauce and really melds together on the heat you’ll cook it till it’s al dente even just a little bit before it’s al dente so that it can cook another minute in this sauce we made it to the end we did all the hacks now we get to eat all right this is my pasta next to our previous example and honestly they look pretty close but now i’ve got to taste this to see if it’s any good so we salted that water to be as salty as the ocean and i’m not getting like a hit of salt pasta is really flavorful the noodles taste really yummy i am however getting that like jar of sauce even though we added the cream it definitely made that sauce taste richer so adding the oil it definitely seems like a little bit more oily which is also maybe what i’m getting in the sauce itself is having that olive oil then with the pasta sauce i don’t think you need to do it especially if you’re putting your pasta right into the sauce after you drain it you don’t need to add olive oil a lot of the hacks were fun or more techniques but they were good the meatballs though are the most disappointing to me they just don’t look good they don’t look appetizing they’re not crispy all around so my favorite hacks from today were one doing the well in the bowl that was great just had no accidents which i usually do two upgrading the jar of sauce i actually think it’s a really good hack just to save time adding that cream it just made that sauce really rich and yummy and three i actually really liked putting the colander over the pot and straining it that way it was really quick and easy and i actually think it worked really well thank you guys for watching i’m gonna go eat the rest of this pasta and i’ll see you later [Music] Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ADV3xY-SU
