Homemade noodles vs store bought

I don't make my own, but I have had homemade and absolutely yes there is a difference.

And if you have the time, then yes it's worth it

if your master it then yes, big difference. (i have not and likely never will)

for your average home cook, store bought is just fine. more than just fine.

I've made my own once. It was fun for me and my wife and they tasted awesome. Used for spaghetti, then used leftovers for making San Francisco style garlic noodles the next day. The garlic noodles were amazing.

All of that greatness, but for some reason we just haven't found the time to do it again. Maybe it's time.

They're easy to make and there is a huge difference in quality and in cooking time.

My wife can't eat gluten and I've found gluten free pasta tastes fine when it's first cooked but is dry and chalky after it cools down. Heating it back up helps a little but it's still off for leftovers. Bummer for me because I love cold spaghetti and meat sauce.

I bought a pasta maker someone linked on here when it was on sale for $200. One of the best things I bought. It takes about 2 minutes to measure out the flour, eggs and salt. You can start your pasta water boiling at the beginning, too.

For the pasta itself, all you have to do is dump the flour into the machine. Then start a 3 minute mix and slowly add in the eggs. After 3 minutes it goes in reverse and starts kicking out fresh pasta. The machine came with 4 shape attachments and you can buy more. Go straight into the boiling water and it's cooked in 2-3 minutes.

Timewise it doesn't take any longer than waiting for a pot to boil and adding in dry pasta to boil another 8-10 minutes. The only downside is you can't do other prep as easily while you're making the pasta. Clean up isn't too bad. I generally take it apart real quick and let the dough dry out overnight. Then it's easy to scrape off and either rinse with soapy water or run it through the dishwasher.

I've only made pasta with gluten once so far and it was pretty good. But I haven't spent the time to find the "right" flour mixture for that.