Top five machines to make better pasta at home

Ronco does it right.

1) For the low, low price of $23.99, you can buy a steel-and-chrome, hand-crank Keilen Pasta Machine from the friendly folks at Sears, who want you to know that there's a softer side.

2) On the other side of the scale, there's the behemoth, $5,700, 8.8 pound Commercial Pasta Machine TR75C , which can make over seventeen pounds of pasta an hour.

3) Hammacher Schlemmer makes high-end products for the person who has everything -- including time high in the skies to study the in-flight magazine. For just $199.95, the company's Automatic Fresh Pasta Maker will do everything for you except cook it.

4) If you want authentic Italian pasta, use an authentic Italian pasta-maker: the Italian Commercial Electric Pasta Machine . Authenticity doesn't come cheap; the machine costs $1,799.99 and has buttons that mimic the colors of the Italian flag.

5) And finally, the infamous Ronco Electric Pasta Maker could well be the best of the bunch. The counter-top version has the power to knead and extrude pasta at an alarmingly slow rate -- but at the bargain price of $82.

While these machines will propel all but the most incompetent cooks pasta point of no return, let's not even think about sauce.