Look, there’s no shame in opening up a bag of pre-made pasta, throwing into a pot of boiling water, and letting the stove top do all of the work. The thought of making fresh, in-home pasta can sound extremely overwhelming and not worth the effort, not to mention requires a pasta maker that many don’t have. A-ha! I bring forth to you buckwheat noodles (gluten free) that are ready in under 30 minutes and requires no special equipment than your own hands. Fresh, tasty, and easy! Did I mention how easy this is?
Yes you CAN make buckwheat noodles (gluten free) at home!
Now let’s talk about the process of making these noodles. Before you is a dough ball…
Make sure to flour your surface and the top of the dough while rolling it out. Your dough shouldn’t be sticky at this point but you just want to cover your bases. The horror when you pour blood, sweat and tears into rolling out a dough and then realize it tears. Trust me, I screamed a couple of times during the initial recipe development phase for this pasta. Not cute. Not worth the vocal chord breakage.
The dough should be a dream to work with at this point. I love looking at how it is hanging over the cutting board without ripping. What a beauty! The dough will have a similar feel to how gluten feels, thanks to the psyllium husk powder. That stuff is magic. I buy mine from Trader Joe’s (it’s in the vitamin/protein powder section) and it makes this dough complete heaven. I tried several different times with and without an egg replacer and this is what I found the best success with. If you do not have psyllium powder or are allergic to it, you can always try flax seed meal or chia seed meal, equal substitutions. Just know that it’s psyllium that does the best job.
Be careful with those fingers! Use a sharp knife or if you don’t trust your ability to make a straight line you can always use a pizza cutter. Play with the shapes! Make thin or larger noodles–whatever you want. Once they are cut, sprinkle with more buckwheat flour to ensure it doesn’t stick together once cooked.
I love this photo because I wanted to show you how fresh and easy this pasta is to work with. No dry or cracking dough here! Look at how the buckwheat noodles hang like the sexy beast that it is.
Buckwheat Pasta
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 2 mins
- Total Time: 22 mins
- Yield: Serves 2 large bowls 1x
Description
You don’t need a pasta maker to create gluten free noodles at home! This easy-to-follow recipe only asks for 6 ingredients and cooks up pasta in no time.
Ingredients
- 1 c. buckwheat flour
- 1/2 c. arrowroot powder
- 1/4 tsp. sea salt
- 1 Tbsp. psyllium husk powder + 4 Tbsp. water – allow to thicken for 2 minutes
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil (or any mild-flavored oil)
- 7–8 Tbsp. water
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, arrowroot, and salt until well-combined.
- Add the thickened psyllium powder mix, oil, and start with the first 6 Tbsp. of water. Mix with a wooden spoon until a nice dough forms. You are looking for slightly moist but not sticky at all. If your dough is still too dry, add the remaining tablespoons of water. At some point you are going to have to ditch the wooden spoon and start using your hands so you can feel the consistency and knead the dough. If it’s too sticky add a tablespoon of buckwheat flour until moist but not sticky.
- Bring a pot of 8 cups of water and a generous pinch of sea salt to a boil.
- Divide the dough into two smooth balls. Flour your surface with more buckwheat flour and roll out one dough ball as thin as you can. You will notice this dough is beautiful to work with! It should be like elastic and easy to roll out.
- Using a knife or pizza cutter, create thin strips. Sprinkle with more buckwheat flour to prevent sticking together.
- Pour into the boiling water in two batches and cook for approximately 2 minutes. Drain and serve immediately.
Notes
Do make sure to cook in batches. Once one batch is done, drain and immediately pour into an individual serving bowl.
Best if eaten immediately.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Large bowl of Pasta
- Calories: 261
- Sugar: 1.6g
- Sodium: 242mg
- Fat: 8.9g
- Carbohydrates: 41g
- Fiber: 8g
- Protein: 8g
Once cooked, this Buckwheat Pasta has a nutty, dense flavor to it but it doesn’t stick to your gut the way most pasta does. It pairs perfectly with a light drizzle of olive oil and sea salt. Simplicity makes this pasta perfection but really, top it with whatever you want. Do be careful with leaving in the strainer for too long. It will start to stick to the other noodles. I will make one batch, drain it from the water with a ladle, set it in the strainer and then place into an individual serving bowl immediately. If you find it sticks still, add a small drizzle of oil and lightly separate.
YUM! And so easy. I didn’t have arrowroot flour so used tapioca flour. Pinning this now to make again and again and again. Thank you!!!
Really impressive recipe. I mill my own buckwheat – and working with the ‘graininess’ of buckwheat can sometimes make the dough hard to work with. Your work on getting the right ratio of buckwheat flour to starch was immensely valuable. What I found the biggest benefit though was the addition of the psyllium husk powder. It’s amazing the added elasticity that it gives to the noodles/dough. Most recipes for soba noodles (on the internet) call for some admixture of wheat flour – in order to help bind the ingredients and supply the elasticity. I did just a slight variant of your recipe and I was absolutely flabbergasted at how light and nice the dough was to work with – it was every bit as nice as standard wheat egg-noodles.
Anyhow, thanks for the recipe! It’s the best that I’ve found (so far) for home-made soba noodles! Also, those who are interested – my slight variant of the recipe used a 50-50 mix of cornstarch and tapioca starch to supply the starch (I would have used 100% tapioca starch, but I was running low), I added a little more than 1 tbsp of psyllium husk powder, I added a few pinches of xanthan gum, and I used toasted sesame oil instead of olive oil.
I was a little surprised that my noodles didn’t end up looking quite as dark as yours … however, that may have been, in part, because I was too impatient to toast my buckwheat before milling it. All the same, they still ‘looked’ and tasted like the genuine article.
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I didn’t have arrowroot powder so I substituted cornstarch (half as much, 1/4 cup) and it worked perfectly. These noodles taste AMAZING and really do have a nice texture and taste and are so easy! We ate them with mushroom stroganoff and we decided the whole dish would become a staple. Thanks so much for coming up with this recipe!
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Wonderful, thank you for letting me know <3
We eat buckwheat 2-3 day a week, but it never occurred to me to make buckwheat pasta… thanks for the idea.
You say it’s best eaten immediately … but (regardless) … how is it leftover? (I’d like to make a pasta salad with it and take it to a friend’s house after spending the day at work – I’d have to put it in tupperware and keep it in the office fridge.) Would the noodles just disintegrate?
OR (alternatively), maybe I could at least bring to my friend’s place the dough already made and just roll it out, cut it, boil it – then throw it in with the rest of salad ingredients. (Might save at least *some* prep time at my friend’s place by making the dough ahead of time ..?) Problems/concerns/other ideas?
★★★★★
We absolutely love eating (and making) your buckwheat pasta! Thank You for this recepie.
We sometimes substitute part of the plain olive oil with some infused olive oils for a garlicky twist or chilli kick.
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Hi, just wondering if this dough can be used to make a parcel pasta like ravioli. Thanks 🙂
HI Cara,
I have been looking for a good buckwheat noodle recipe for a long time and these “hit the spot”:)
Wondering if the buckwheat noodles could be rolled out using a hand cranked pasta machine
Thanks in advance, Mary-Anne
I just used or kitchen aid attachments for pasta roller and cutter and it worked pretty well once I found the right speed. Buckwheat needs to be done slower than a typical noodle. Folding it over on itself and rolling again about 4 or 5 times really strengthened it.
I have tried this recipe recently and couldn’t believe how easy it was.
The dough worked wonderfully as I was expecting it to fall apart.
The psyllium as an egg replacement is a briliant idea . I also like to make buckwheat pancakes and tried these with a little psyllium husk and it added an additional smoothness to it.
I have a champion juicer with a grain mill attachment which I use to make the buckwheat flour which is way less than buying it already made and fresher .
I tried recipe for a second time and put the dough through a pasta mahine and it worked beautifully !! Just need to make sure the dough isn’t too sticky
THANKS Cara for a great Recipe
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Hey Cara,
very useful recipe and great photos! thanks!
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LOVED these noodles!! Went gluten free/sugar free/grain free/low carb last August to combat migraines, and it totally worked. Granted these are higher carb than I’ve been eating, but totally worth it. Thanks for the recipe! We tossed them with some sesame oil, leek, ginger, garlic, pork, cabbage, and zucchini.
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I used an egg instead and tried to adjust everything to get the right consistency but as I cut the noddles and gently laid them in a bowl before cooking them, they were already starting to rip. Then after cooked, they were quite chewy and looked almost uncooked in the middle, although I cooked them for a little longer than 2 minutes. Do you know where I went wrong?? At least they taste good!
I’m sorry to hear this Christine! This is out of my jurisdiction though, since I don’t create recipes with eggs. It’s a total different science without them and that is what I am familiar with. I wish I could be more help…
If I eat eggs, can I just add an egg instead of the psyllium husk powder? Or is the husk powder necessary to give the “gluteny” elasticity?
Here is the tricky part, Andrea. I create my recipes to be egg free so if you wanted to add them in, that is an experiment all in itself. Yes, the psyllium adds the elasticity that the egg would but because there is more liquid in an egg, you’d have to adjust the recipe. Good luck!
I made them with eggs and they were great 🙂
I just added all the ingredients (except water and psyllium), mixed it up and then added water as needed to get the right consistantly for dough.
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Awesome! Love hearing that it worked great with eggs.
Thank you for sharing the fruit of your efforts! Quick question: Can this dough work with a pasta machine?
I haven’t tried it in a pasta machine (it was created for those who don’t have one) and since I don’t have one either, I can’t answer for sure. However, I’m assuming it should work. Let me know how it goes!
We just got back from a fabulous trip to Europe, including northern Italy. In the town of Tirano we were served a pasta dish called pizzoccheri, made with buckwheat, it was so delicious I’ve been on a mission to try to replicate and share with my family. The dish had some Savoy cabbage, some bits of white potato and white cheese sauce, that was not heavy or too rich. Can’t wait to try your pasta recipe so that maybe I can make this delicious dish. Thank you!
I tried this recipe this afternoon. Indeed super easy. Since I’m only making for myself, I halved all the ingredients. Turned out great. I was impressed how nice the dough came out. Will definitely try this again. I also used 1/2 the dough and will try to use it tomorrow to see if it works. I was wondering about the pysllium husk. I am wondering if I could substitute with Metamucil instead! Also I wonder what would happen if I bake this! I used some Korean kimchi broth as my base.
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Metamucil usually contains flavoring or some sort of sugar. The most cost effective psyllium husk I have found is from Puritan’s Pride (sort of a theological oxymoron).
This is a fantastic recipe, thank you! My daughter made wheat pasta at school, and wanted to make it at home. It was so wonderful to be able to make buckwheat pasta alongside her, and to all enjoy fresh pasta together as a family. I will also pass this recipe on the kitchen-garden teacher, for children who can’t eat gluten. So easy, and excellent results. 🙂
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Thank you, Cara, for experimenting, testing and sharing this recipe ? I hope to try it soon.
I have a couple of questions:
1. Have you tried freezing any uncooked pasta or is there a longer storage option?
2. Once cooked, would leftover noodles last a day or two stored in the frig?
I haven’t tried either options but I can see that the noodles would be good just for another day or two in the fridge, though they are really best if used the day of. About freezing the uncooked pasta, hmmmm…that would be worth trying. If it works out, let me know!
Can you add an egg instead of the psyllium husk?
Made this recipe. Great gluten free option!
I am on an anti-candida diet which does not include arrowroot or any starches. can you predict the outcome if I just leave it out and do not replace it with any other thickener?
thanks for your input,
ruth
Hi Ruth! It will not work if you omit the starch, sorry 🙁
That’s incredible! I’m trying to make quinoa bread, buckwheat bread etc and your recipe are a huge inspiration.
May I ask you why do you use psyllium husk powder?
Thanks
Claudia
Great question, Claudia (sorry for the delayed response–I was out of town when I posted this recipe and this comment slipped my view, so sorry!) I use the psyllium husk powder for a couple of reasons:
It provides a nice elasticity to the pasta that gives it structure and bend-ability the way an egg does.
It also does the job that xanthan gum does.
Hope that helps!
hello that fantastic recipe ;! I wanted to know how many grams are 1c ??
That is something you will have to look up on the internet to convert, Angelica 🙂 I am not well-versed with metric measurements, sorry!
My first experience with buckwheat noodles was at a Chinese restaurant in Toronto. It was served piping hot in a clear broth with lots of steamy greens and fresh red chiles. When I found them in a store I gleefully bought two packs (at a steep price) only to find out that they did not remotely come close to those dreamy nutty noodles I remember. They cooked out to be a tasteless gooey mass and I swore I would never cook them again, much to the delight of the Chinese restaurant. These may be the noodles I am looking for.
Darn those restaurants for providing tasty food that cannot be replicated!! Hopefully this is similar and when you make them, I will demand a bowl of noodles and broth 🙂
These pictures of these noodles are absolutely beautiful and inviting! I want to make them right now I’m so intrigued by these!
Thank you Robyn! Making homemade pasta never seemed so easy AND without gluten. Kinda wacky huh? xo
oh my goodness!!! amazing and love this!
Thank you Alice! xo
Great shot with noodles in your hand!
Thank you Richa–it’s my favorite too 😉
Would chia or flax eggs work in place of the physullum husk?
Very nice, Cara! I have made my own pasta a few times and I was really amazed how easy it was! I have issues with buckwheat, but I can’t wait to share your recipe with others who can enjoy it. 🙂
xo,
Shirley
Do you use a pasta maker Shirley? Curious to hear about your experiences!
Do you think I can replace the arrowroot powder with cornstarch ?
This recipe looks incredible !
Absolutely! Any starch will do 🙂
I’m telling you Christine, it’s so easy to make and the dough is a dream to work with!
So if I’m just cooking for me, instead of making a full batch and saving, I’d be better off making a 1/2 batch and just doing the cooking part once? Right?
Yup, you got it lady! Maybe err on the side of using a tad bit more than 2 tsp. of psyllium just for good measure 🙂
I have successfully froze half the dough to process later, I just wrap it well in saran wrap or put it in an airtight container. I have used the pasta roller/cutter attachment to my kitchen aid which works well. I even took your psyllium husk substitution for eggs to my batter almond bread recipe (which uses a lot of eggs comparatively) and used it for half the eggs… makes the almond bread springier, lighter and have a more bready texture than all those eggs do in a batter bread.
wow, that looks super easy and good – I love pasta, so I’ll have to try this, thank you:)
Definitely easy Christine, hope you like it! xo