Pasta Grannies: Italian grannies making pasta
Older Italian women show how they make pasta by hand, following the recipes of their villages, and talk about their lives along the way.
What it is
Pasta Grannies is a project by British writer Vicky Bennison. She travels around Italy finding older women who have made pasta their whole lives from the recipes of their home villages, and films them at work. It started as a YouTube channel; the Instagram account brings the same women to short clips: dough, rolling pin, hands, and plenty of conversation.
Why we picked it
The real value of Pasta Grannies is that it records recipes that never made it into cookbooks. They live in memory and in the hands: how much flour, how thin the sheet, how to pinch an edge shut. Orecchiette, pici, ravioli with local fillings, rare regional shapes. Every clip shows how to make pasta by hand with no machine and no gadgets. A metre-long rolling pin and a wooden board turn out to be all you need.
But people don't watch only for the recipes. The grannies joke, bicker, remember being young and talk about who taught them to cook, so each video doubles as a small portrait of a person and a place. Bennison's work has travelled well beyond social media: her first book, "Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook", won a James Beard Award and has been translated into several languages.
Where to start
- The orecchiette and pici videos: simple shapes you can realistically copy at home.
- Clips featuring rare regional pasta you'll hardly ever see in restaurants.
- The women's own stories, which are often better than the recipe.
- The books "Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook" and "Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking".
- The Pasta Grannies YouTube channel for longer, more detailed videos.
Who it's for
Home cooks who want to learn handmade pasta without a machine, fans of Italian food and small-town travel, and anyone who enjoys warm stories about ordinary people. Ideal for a slow evening.
Quick answers
Who is behind Pasta Grannies? Vicky Bennison, a British writer who collects Italian grandmothers' recipes and makes videos about them.
Do you need a pasta machine? No. In the videos the dough is rolled out by hand with a long rolling pin and shaped with fingers and simple tools.
Is there a Pasta Grannies cookbook? Yes: "Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook", a James Beard Award winner, and "Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking".
