If you're watching this video, you're probably looking to make your own pasta. Not only is homemade pasta absolutely delicious, but it completely elevates your dishes to the next level. There are so many pasta makers on the market today that promise you high-quality machines with several

attachments to help you make different pastas, and they may seem like an incredible value, but I'm here today to tell you that they're not worth your money. There's really two types of true Italian pasta machines that you should be considering, and one of them is an incredible value

that's used in restaurants all over the world. Here's my full review on the Imperia 150 pasta maker. Let's dive in. Okay, let's start with some background. I'm a huge pasta guy. You guys know this. You've seen my videos. I'm constantly

making fettuccine, spaghetti, you name it. I love pasta dishes, so it's only natural for me to make pasta at home. Now, if you haven't done it before, don't be intimidated. It's actually incredibly easy, and if you invest in one

of these machines, it only gets easier from there. If you don't know how to make pasta, there's several videos that you can watch today that will help you get started. Just remember it's about going slow, getting your measurements correct, and really feeling out that dough.

If you don't make it correctly the first time, don't be discouraged. Go for it again because trust me, at the end of the day when you have homemade pasta, it beats anything else. I guarantee it. So, why would you want one of these machines? Well, the machine really makes

life incredibly easy and honestly the Imperia is a true Italian machine that is used in restaurant kitchens all over the world. Now, there's really two types of machines out there. The first one, and probably the most popular, is the Marcato Atlas 150. It's a solid machine and

you've probably seen a lot of video reviews on it. I haven't seen too many reviews on the Imperia 150 and I want to tell you why I chose the Imperia over the Marcato Atlas. The number one reason for me is I've seen the Imperia in

Italian kitchens more often than the Atlas 150. That's just my personal opinion, so I'm kind of more familiar with it. But honestly, either machine is fantastic. Now, neither of them is perfect and they both have their pros and cons, and we'll go over that in a second, but

if you have one of those two machines, you've truly bought into quality that's going to last a lifetime as long as you learn how to take care of it properly and use it. So, with that being said, let's dive into the categories. So, with the Imperia, what

do you get in the box? Well, let's do an unboxing. The entire thing is packaged really, really well. It comes in a very simple kind of retro-looking Italian box, which I think is kind of cool and funny at the same time. And when you first open

it up, you get your instructions manual. You'll see the guide rail, and then you also see the C-clamp that's used to hold the pasta maker securely to your table, which prevents it from walking when you roll your dough. And then, of course, you have the attachment and the Imperia

comes with a fettuccine maker and sort of a spaghetti maker, but we'll talk about that in just a second. The entire machine is well packaged. I don't feel like, you know, it was rattling in the box at all, and I do like that the

manufacturer was kind of considering the environment when they packaged these machines. It's all fitting in one little box. Every footprint of the box is used, and I don't feel like there's empty space. That's a big plus. Okay, now let's talk about build

materials and features. The machine is incredibly well built. The chrome plating looks beautiful. All materials are solid metal. I don't feel like the manufacturer skipped out at all. The guide rails are high quality, and I don't feel like this machine is going to rust. Now, with that

being said, maintaining this machine is a bit tricky. You're never actually supposed to wash it under running water or soap or detergent. You're supposed to just brush out everything. And if you think about it, you should only have maybe some leftover pasta dough or some flour in the machine, which

should be able to be brushed off quite easily. The reason why the manufacturer does not want you to use detergent or water is because this machine's very delicate. Think about it, the gears to make the pasta are very sensitive. You don't want to develop any residue or calcium or even

rust. Is this machine prone to rusting? Of course it is. Every pasta maker out there is, because it's made out of metal. Yes, it's chrome plated, but they can't chrome plate the gears. So keep that in mind. And I actually like the wooden handle, the

The handle is nice and long, and the C-clamp that they provide to hold the maker to your table, it has a nice deep reach that goes into the pasta maker and extends inwards. I feel like it kind of grabs it at a good spot, and then the C-clamp

itself is pretty wide, which can easily adapt to larger or thicker tables, so I really like that they included a decent C-clamp. Now, Imperia does also offer a guide rail, which is also chrome-plated, and this is supposed to kind of help you hold the pasta in place and guide it as

you crank the handle. Now, in theory, it makes sense, but I found that if you don't flour that guide rail pretty well, the pasta sort of, kind of like hangs on it and then gets caught and starts to get pulled. So just be mindful of that sometimes

it does more harm than good. I tend to just kind of hold it with one hand and crank it through to get my pasta, you know, to the desired thickness that I want. You can also use it on the other side of the machine when you are making

your fettuccine or spaghetti, or whatever attachment that you have on there. It works the same way. It guides the dough or the pasta through the machine to be more efficient. It's nice that they included it, especially at this price point, but it does sort of have

its flaws. The manual that comes with the machine is pretty straightforward. The first part of the booklet kind of explains general pasta dough making and maintenance of the machine and how to generally use it, and it includes colored pictures, which is quite nice. It's also written in English

and then it just repeats the instructions over and over again in different languages. It also talks about different attachments that you can buy for this machine if you want to venture out and make things like ravioli, for example. Now, that brings me to my next point, which is the included attachment.

The included attachment basically makes fettuccine and sort of spaghetti. I mean, not really spaghetti, it's more like noodles. If you want the spaghetti attachment, you do have to buy it separately. With that being said, out of the box you can easily make fettuccine. It's the same thing, I

mean, it's just preference. We use this attachment all the time for fettuccine and spaghetti, and it works flawlessly. And I think out of the box you can make fettuccine, spaghetti, and lasagna. Remember, lasagna is just pasta sheets. I mean, that's all it is.

Right, and also keep in mind when you make the pasta sheets, I mean you can hand cut all kinds of pasta shapes. So really, if you buy this machine out of the box, we have several different options to make different pastas for your meals. Okay, so now let's talk about the pros

and cons of each machine. Of course, there's pros and cons to each. No machine's perfect. The pros of the Imperia is obviously the price. I bought this thing at 60 off of Amazon, and I think it usually hovers between 55 and 65, depending on if there's a sale

or not. The Marcato Atlas 150 usually sells at 100. I've seen it go on sale for like 89.99, but usually it's 100 bucks. And then if you want, you know, different finishes or whatever, they have a really cool copper finish one that I think

sells for like 130. I mean it's a great machine but big price difference right and essentially they're the same machine. The next pro is they include the added guide rail whether you like it or not or if you don't think you're going to use it

it's included. It definitely has that retro Italian look to it. I like the wooden handle. It's a solid machine, it's large, has a good C-clamp. I mean everything is there. You're getting quality and the best part is the Imperia

is well known in Italy, so is the Atlas 150. I mean they're both well-known, they're both competitors of one another, and honestly either one is gonna make you amazing pasta and nine times out of ten if you go to an Italian kitchen you'll see one or the other. Probably the

Imperia more often in Italy and probably the Atlas more often in the USA. So something to consider as far as the cons go, the Imperia has two cons maybe three cons that really annoy me. The first one is kind of nitpicking but the Imperia is actually

being imported in by a third company, at least on Amazon I think if I remember correctly. It's being imported in by a company called CuisinaPro or something like that, I forget what the name is. So that's kind of, you know, a little weird. It's not

coming from Imperia. I mean I guess that makes sense, Imperia's an Italian company whereas the Marcato Atlas 150 is being imported in by Marcato, so you know it's kind of a little strange but I get it, you know the companies, companies do that all the time. They'll

have someone else import their product as long as Imperia stands by the product, I'm fine with that. The next con for me, and we're getting a little bit more gradual in the cons, but you know the guide rail that they include, at least with my machine, maybe it had a sharp

edge or something. I got to investigate it a little bit more. The pasta does get caught on there. The first time with this machine I did kind of notice, "Oh man, this is getting kind of snagged on there" and it's pulling the pasta. Once I realized

it, I ran it through the machine again, it was fine, but there's a little, you know, annoying, the included guide rail, while it's nice, does have a major con: be careful with yours, it could ruin your pasta. And the final biggest complaint that I have about this

machine is actually the dial knob. The one thing that I don't like about the dial knob is it has this push lever, and then you dial it, you know, with your hand, and it's designed to kind of push in and increment one at a time. I think Imperia made it so you don't

skip settings, you kind of run through the settings, but I prefer the Atlas 150's dial where you have to pull it and then rotate. And the reason for that is, especially when your hands are dirty when you're making the pasta, pushing that lever down and trying to crank it

and the dial is really tiny, especially for my big bare hands, it kind of gets hard to get a good grip. And oftentimes I'm pretty annoyed that I can't dial into the next setting, you know, with the first try. And another complaint that I have about

The dial is, it's really hard to see the numbers. It's all chrome-plated, you know, you really have to get in there and kind of reflect the light off the machine to see which setting you're on. So my personal opinion, that can be a big flaw.

And I think that the Atlas 150's dial is much, much better. So Imperia, work on that, fix your dial, and you basically have a great machine. But that's really it for the pros and cons. I mean, I think either machine's great. The pros at this price point kind of outweigh the cons in my opinion, as long as it's a good reliable machine that cranks out good pasta, I can live with the dial issue. So that's it for the pros and cons. So how do you use the Imperia pasta machine?

Well, you have a dial on the side of it and the dial is actually kind of backwards from what I remember the Atlas was. If I recall correctly, the Atlas started off at zero, which was wide open, and then you dialed it from one, two, three, four, five, and I think it went up to six or seven for the thinnest setting. The Imperia works differently. Six is wide open and then you dial backwards to get your narrow settings. It's not a big deal, obviously, when you dial into settings and you're looking at the

machine, the wide setting six is obviously start, and then you just continue on. It may be weird for some users if it's set up that way, especially if you've used an Atlas, but I've always been around Imperia, so it always made sense to me.

the way that it works is after you've made your dough and here's some b-roll of me making some dough which is the old classic traditional way I didn't use a food processor and I typically don't I like doing it by hand it does get tiring though but yeah after

you've made your dough cut off a piece whatever you think you may need and then you want to try to flatten it out as much as possible by hand and then run your dough through the machine at setting number six which is the widest setting but when

you start off with the highest setting or the widest setting which is six in this case I like to run it three times through the machine and I like to fold the dough in like you're writing a letter or you're folding a letter that you're gonna place in an envelope to try

to get a nice square shape to utilize the entire dough and be a little bit more consistent then I run it through the machine again and then a third time once I feel like the dough is flattened out really well and it's consistent then I increment through the rest of the

settings so I'll go through five run it once or twice you know feel it out four once or twice three and so forth depending on what you're making if you're making fettuccine or spaghetti I recommend level three for fettuccine and

spaghetti I like that thickness for the pasta I feel like it gives a really good texture and I don't know it's just something that I prefer right your mileage may vary you may like your pasta a little bit thinner or maybe you want to go a little bit thicker but I do

I recommend three if this is your first time making, you know, fettuccine or spaghetti, can you skip levels? That's a iffy question. Yes, technically you can, and the machine will compensate, but you do run the risk of ruining your dough and not getting a consistent

thickness throughout your dough when you do finally decide to make your pasta. So, I highly recommend don't skip settings, just do the process, go through the increments. I mean, you don't want to go through this and then skip a setting and then clog the machine

or strip the dough or whatever. You might have went too fast and really stretched it out. The pasta dough has its limitations, but that's basically it. Once you've ran through the dough hook on your other attachment, and it's really easy, the attachment just slides in, slides off for quick assembly and you

can also, like I said, use the guide rail, which also just kind of slides and clips in. But once you've kind of flattened out your pasta sheet, then you would run it through the other attachment, whether you want to make spaghetti or fettuccine or

if you have the ravioli attachment, whatever it may be, you can also fold in or roll your pasta and just cut it with a knife to get longer strands. Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know everything about pasta and I can name all the names.

I still have to look it up in a book and you know figure out how to make it. But my point is, it's incredibly versatile. So, that's basically how you would use the machine. Also, initially when you first use this machine, you do have to clean it

and by cleaning it I mean you have to run some dough, not a lot, just a little bit through the machine initially to kind of clean up the gears. Flour your dough really, really well, run it through the first side of the machine that flattens the dough and makes the pasta

sheets and then go ahead and run it through the spaghetti and the fettuccine side and that just kind of takes off any of the manufacturing grease, kind of lubes up the gears, gets the flour in there and helps you get a smoother experience overall, but that's basically

how you would use the machine. So as always guys, if you guys are enjoying this video right now, please check out some of my other videos. I have a whole series on cookware, for example, cast iron versus carbon steel versus stainless steel, and I have several videos on how

to use a stainless steel skillet properly with common mistakes and troubleshooting, and then I also do have recommendations for a very budget-friendly three-ply stainless steel skillet. Also, if you guys are getting ready for the holidays, I also have a video on a stainless steel

roasting pan. So if you're enjoying this video, check out my full series here and don't forget to subscribe. Okay, so how does this machine perform well? I've included some B-roll of me making some pasta dough. My wife makes the best spaghetti meatballs, I mean seriously, she

really, really has it dialed in. We get our fresh basil and parsley from our garden, we make our own sauce, she sears the meatballs in our cast iron Dutch oven beautifully, and then she uses the fond, the sticky bits, the leftover sticky

beds to make an incredible sauce and with our homemade pasta, right with our homemade spaghetti, it's fantastic. Now, I do want to leave you guys with a note: when you buy pasta from the store, the dried out pasta usually you have to cook the pasta for

around six minutes or seven minutes or so. You have homemade pasta, it's usually two to three minutes, maybe three minutes and a half at most. Keep that in mind, don't overcook your pasta. Set a timer and then just kind of taste one and make sure you are

comfortable with, you know, how cooked it is. So what are my final thoughts on the Imperia pasta maker, guys? Seriously, if you haven't made pasta at home, it's really easy. It's a little bit intimidating at first, but it's just like anything else, right?

The first time you make it, you're kind of learning. The second time you make it, you've caught some additional mistakes, but by the third time, you have a flow going and you know what you're doing. Now, I love this machine. I don't think I

could not have a pasta maker at home. We make pasta quite often and it's an incredible investment. The reason why I think those cheaper machines that you might see on Amazon that usually include several attachments, like for example, you can find a machine that has the

fettuccine, the spaghetti attachment, right? Looks great, looks chrome plate and all that, and they even include a ravioli attachment. You're probably thinking, for 40 bucks, this is incredible, let me give it a try. It's not the best quality, it doesn't have the best materials. I

guarantee you that ravioli machine is not going to do good ravioli at all and I would question how long it's going to last right for 40. It may seem like a good investment but just add another 20, get the Imperia and

if you prefer the Atlas 150, that's a great machine too. Add another 20 or 30 or even 40 and grab that machine. Honestly, those two brands are the two brands that are used in restaurant kitchens all over the world so I would trust them but I mean other than

that, that's basically it for my video. If you guys want me to do a video on how to make pasta, let me know in the comments below. I can make a quick video where I show you guys the basic steps and we can go over the common mistakes that people

make and then just some general rule of thumb like how to store the pasta, how long you can store it for and you know when you should use it before it spoils. Let me know in the comments below and I can definitely make that video for you guys in the next you

know, couple of weeks or so. That's it for me. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Hope you guys found it informative and I'll catch you guys on the next video. Thank you everyone. [Music] Hey everybody, how'd you guys like that last video? Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you did

please like, subscribe and hit that notification bell so you get notified on my next video and if you can please share with your family and friends. I would really appreciate it. Here's some more content that I think you guys are really going to enjoy. Check them out. As always guys, thanks for

watching and I'll catch you guys on the next one, take care.

Imperia Vs Marcato Atlas 150 Pasta Maker Machine | Full Review

Scripts