Cooking great pasta made easy

Article by Andrea

First things first: pasta with different structure will give you different results. If you use smooth pasta it will cook uniformly, non smooth pasta like rigatoni, don’t have that quality, but they make the sauce stick.

Take a saucepan and fill it with water and bring it to boil. Its quantity is not a small detail. Pasta needs to be free to move, so a lot of water is necessary: the general rule is 1 liter every 100g. With 500g of pasta you would need 5 liters.

Salt has to be added before adding the pasta, but after the water has started to boil, otherwise it will take longer to reach boiling point. 10 to 1 is the rule here: for every liter of water, 10g of salt. If the sauce contains ingredients with lot of salt, add less.

You’re probably thinking this is the part where you add oil to the water. Wrong and useless: if in the end the pasta comes out of the water all stuck together in one piece, next time use more water and buy some, at least decent quality of pasta.

When the water has diluted the salt, add the pasta. If you’re using spaghetti, refrain from breaking them so they won’t stick out. Broken spaghetti are not spaghetti.

When you add the pasta, the water will stop boiling, so try to make it boil back as quick as possible by turning up the flame and covering the pan. When it’s boiling again, turn down the heat a little bit and uncover the pan. In general, the level of heat should be the highest you can get without making the water boil out of the pan.

Stir the pasta every 2-3 minutes, keep it moving to make sure it won’t stick. The cooking times in the packet usually are for pasta al dente. This means that it will be cooked but it won’t melt in your mouth, you’ll still have to bite it.

Al dente is the ideal result, and for more than one reason: it’s easier to digest than overcooked pasta; pasta keeps cooking until it’s cold, so if it’s too soft right out of the stove, by the time you’re half way eating it, it will be a starchy blob; and last but not least, this is how most of Italians eat it. Once you have a clear idea of what al dente means, still follow the packet instructions, but always taste it before taking it off the heat.

When it’s time, have the colander ready in the sink, and drain the pasta. Get rid of all the water (in some cases you might still need a little bit of it. Add the pasta to the sauce, if it’s in another pan, and let it go for 2-3 minutes, until everything is well mixed.

However, if you’re preparing a pasta salad, or your lunchbox for tomorrow, you’ll need to stop the cooking process by pouring cold water on the colander after the pasta is drained.

Andrea is keen on cooking. Cheese and Pears is his blog about (http://cheeseandpears.com) Italian food. If you think you know more about pasta after reading this article, start with an (http://cheeseandpears.com/pasta-zucchini-prawns-cherry-tomatoes) easy pasta recipe.

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One Response to “Cooking great pasta made easy”

1. Daily News About Spaghetti : A few links about Spaghetti - Sunday, 17 May 2009 14:25 Says:
   May 17th, 2009 at 5:54 pm

   [...] Cooking great pasta made easy [...]

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