This is our new toy – a chitarra pasta cutter. This pasta cutting tool comes from Abruzzo, Italy. The device has strings on both sides, one side cuts thicker noodles and the second side cuts has thin noodles. Since this is our first attempt, I decided to use the thicker side. I started with the pasta that I prepared in the previous post for fresh pasta dough.

We cut this sheet of pasta into three wide strips that we put on the chitarra. It’s actually really simple to roll the pasta and gently push it through the wires. One thing to make sure is that the pasta dough has been floured on both sides to keep it from sticking together.

Once you lay it out, as shown above, take your rolling pin and gently roll it so the wires cut it into strips. You have to use a little force and sometime just use your fingers to get it to go all the way through.

As you can see, my sheet of dough was longer than the chitarra. I just gently pulled the sheet towards me and kept rolling. The pasta just sort of folded over itself under the wires. The slot under the wires is slanted so once you’ve cut it, just tilt the chitarra and the pasta will fall out to the side.

Now that the pasta is cut, most people recommended to let it dry for a little while. Some say you can cook it immediately, but most of the things I ready suggested letting it dry and that this helps keep it from sticking to itself while it’s cooking. We don’t have a drying rack so we took a baking sheet and propped it up on the stove. Then we laid the pasta strips on the baking sheet and let them dry from about an hour. We’re putting this into a pasta and lentil dish for New Years Eve.

Update – Since this was originally posted, we’ve purchased a pasta roller with a cutter attachment. Even though the roller has the cutter attachments, we still keep coming back to the chitarra. The pasta cut from the chitarra has a great size and we just think the chitarra is so easy and fun to use.