Beetroot Pasta Dough & Heart Shaped Ravioli

Beetroot Pasta Dough & Heart Shaped Ravioli

Level up your pasta dough this Valentine’s Day with pink pasta! Coloring your homemade pasta dough is actually really easy and you don’t need to use food coloring. If you don’t like beets, that’s totally ok! You can’t taste the beetroot in the pasta because there’s not enough to overpower the egg and flour. And that goes for any vegetable you use to color your pasta like spinach for example. You can boil beets in a pot of water for about an hour or until they are soft enough to juice. Or, you can get pure beet concentrate and skip that whole step!

Ingredients:

2 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
2 Large Eggs
3 Tbls Pure Beet Juice Concentrate

Instructions:

1. In a bowl, whisk your eggs with the beet juice.
2. In a large bowl, add the flour and make a well in the middle.
3. Pour the egg and beet mixture into the well and start mixing it into the flour a little at a time with a fork until it roughly comes together.
4. Pour your mixture out onto a surface and bring it together by kneading it for about 10 minutes. You will feel the dough become easier to work with by the end of this process. If the dough is just too stiff to work with, you can add a little bit of water a tablespoon at a time.
5. Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
6. Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces with a sharp knife or pastry knife. Roll out one half of the dough and keep the other half covered.
7. Using a pasta roller (I love my electric Kitchen Aid attachment), roll out your pasta starting from the largest size roller to the thinnest. Use flour on your surfaces to keep it from sticking.
8. When you have your dough to a paper-thin thickness, you can add your filling and cut using a ravioli stamp or cookie cutter and fork to seal the edges.

I filled these FULL with ricotta and grated parmesan cheese mixed together. Fresh ravioli cooks in salted boiling water for about 15 minutes. And then you can top it with your favorite pasta sauce!

If you want to do something other than ravioli for Valentine’s Day, check out this heart-shaped sheet of dough using plain pasta dough and beet pasta dough cut-outs. I made pappardelle by simply folding it over on to itself a few times and then cutting it into thick strips. But I think this would make an awesome lasagna! Or create something completely unique!