Pasta Cooking Time
jefftk.com198 points by bariumbitmap 2 days ago
198 points by bariumbitmap 2 days ago
I don't tend to look at the clock for pasta. I just eyeball it and sample it. You can sort of see the pasta turning whiter from the outside in. Especially with my regular goto brands, I can see when it is done. I fish some out with a fork to verify usually when it's getting close.
And I generally mix it with some sauce and it might sit in there for some minutes. So the cooking process actually continues after you remove it from the water. Cooking a bit longer in the sauce and shorter in the water is going to help the flavor and texture. There's no point in being hyper precise about the cooking time and then letting it sit for five minutes or whatever in the sauce. Nobody ever measures that time. Add pasta water to loosen the sauce if it absorbs too much.
Speaking of pasta water, use less water for boiling paste; not more. Many TV cooks get this completely wrong. They'll dump 100 grams of pasta in a gallon of water. Complete waste of time, energy, and salt (assuming they season the water correctly).
Especially if you plan to use the starchy water for your sauce, you need to use as little water as you can get away with. If you use too much water, there's not going to be a lot of starch in there. If it still looks like clear water by the time your pasta is cooked, you used way too much water. You might as well just use tap water for your sauce. The water should be cloudy not clear. As long as it doesn't cook dry, it's fine. About 2-3x the dry weight should be plenty for most pasta types. Restaurants tend to reuse their pasta water for multiple batches of pasta so they'll use more water. But the water has lots of starch after a few batches.
> Speaking of pasta water, use less water for boiling past[a]…
Or skip the boiling completely: https://www.seriouseats.com/food-lab-no-boil-baked-ziti-reci...
"But who's to say that these two phases, water absorption and protein denaturing, have to occur at the same time? H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of the fantastic blog Ideas in Food asked themselves that very question, and what they found was this: You don't have to complete both processes simultaneously. In fact, if you leave uncooked pasta in lukewarm water for long enough, it'l absorb just as much water as boiled pasta."
I prefer to cook pasta like rice and starting it in cold water brought to a boil and then a simmer: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/cold-water-pasta-method/
This is how I lasagna. Warm water soak to rehydrate (I do use my kettle to speed things up).
I realize baked ziti (your link) and lasagna are basically the same thing, but it felt worth calling out. It makes for a much faster prep stage. I do the prep work after my family leaves for the day in the morning, then dinner is just preheating and popping it in the oven
Sounds like a way to trade preparation time for energy expenditure, if it lets you minimize the amount of water you need to boil.
You'll probably need some extra water just to ensure even heating, but if the pasta is already rehydrated, then you no longer have to include a safety margin for water to be absorbed.
It would be interesting to let it absorb water at ambient temperature, then let koji do the job with the proteins.
If you do that aren't you just eating uncooked flour and egg?
It cooks in the liquid from the surrounding ingredients. You can do this with a sufficiently wet enough Lasagna quite easily.
Indeed we regularly eat "oven pasta", the raw pasta goes in to a sauce into the oven. 30-40 mins and it is al dente (with crispy cheese on top).
Ah ok I missed that your link was for ziti. I thought you were talking about spaghetti or other non-baked pastas where you typically just pour sauce over.
With long pasta it's not hard, with a tiny bit of experience and attention, to learn how it physically behaves when it's either done or close to it. It's about as easy to learn (experientially) how much it changes minute by minute at that point.
I will stir it to see how it behaves, as soon as I catch it behaving like pasta which is may be al dente I will sample it, if it's still a bit too hard, I can more or less tell if it's going to be one or two minutes. I'm aiming for almost-too-hard al dente to compensate for any further cooking.
Stop even a bit early if you'll be finishing the pasta in the sauce.
I think attempting to formalise cooking techniques is a funny sort of thing... The people trying to do it are clearly into cooking, but if you really enjoy cooking, you're probably better off learning these things intuitively and spending your time learning other skills to expand your general cooking ability.
> I think attempting to formalise cooking techniques is a funny sort of thing... The people trying to do it are clearly into cooking, but if you really enjoy cooking, you're probably better off learning these things intuitively and spending your time learning other skills to expand your general cooking ability.
Some people like to create rules and systems for things, some people like to grow their intuition. Everyone can cook how they want.
There is too much variation in ingredients for any sort of formal rules.
If you strive for excellence, pasta cooking time is the least of your concerns, selection and knowledge of ingredients is. It gets internalized and feels just like intuition.
If you don't, generally just put pasta into boiling water and wait for T-1m where T is what's written on the package. It will be good enough.
I hear your point on formalization, but I do find that understanding the science behind various techniques has helped my ability to Freeform in the kitchen significantly.
While it's an interesting article, I don't think there's much science going on. There's one variable barely controlled for, compared to the dozen or so variables which weren't controlled.
> use less water
I agree, but want to note that this requires more actively stirring the pasta. The reason for the suggestion of lots of water is it allows the pasta to move freely on its own, meaning it stirs itself with the motion of the boiling water.
Stirring the pasta is important to make it cook more evenly and to help it release starch into the water.
The water will indeed cool down when you put the pasta in. Using a lid can help with this though and bring it back to boiling quicker. I usually don't bother with this. And the pasta will still absorb water if it's close to boiling instead of boiling. And since I check visually and by tasting whether it is done it's not that big of a deal. Stirring is part of that. I do that in any case to make sure things don't stick to the bottom.
Anyway, that's just my process. There is no wrong or right here. And you brought up a fair point of the pasta cooling down the water. My mode with this is that a lot of Italian nonnas wouldn't have a lot of fancy kitchen equipment anyway. Like fancy timers or even a clock. A lot of Italian recipes is primarily about good ingredients and celebrating those. Not about tools, techniques, or Michelin star nonsense. So, I try not to overthink it. If it tastes good, I'm happy.
Large amounts of water also ensure the rolling boil is retained (ie the pasta doesn't cool the water much on insertion). I generally consider that rather more important for, say, a ravioli than plain pasta though
Most pasta labels specify what seems like a ridiculous water to pasta ratio. Something like 4-6 quarts of water for a pound of pasta. Does anyone know if there's a good reason for this? I never use that much.
It’s what you’d use in a restaurant where you are cooking pasta in the water all day and therefore built up a lot of starch in the water. At least according to Kenji Lopez.
I guess that means you don’t want the first pasta order of the day.
There should be a spaghetti cooker that works like a rice cooker. I put in the precise amount of water and then when it's all absorbed it signals me that it is done.
I've been cooking variations on this lazy Instant Pot spaghetti recipe for a few years now. I expect Italians would be horrified but it's extremely low effort and very tasty! https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/instant-pot-spaghetti/
I substitute the can of sauce for a 28oz can of tomatoes, and cook some onion and garlic in with mince instead of adding onion and garlic powder.
Instant Pot pasta is fun when you nail it but it’s so difficult to get right because the cook times vary so much with the quantity of food being cooked. If you’re like me and you vary the number of servings you cook all the time then the Instant Pot is pretty bad for this.
You do not really need a cooker with fancy sensors to achieve perfectly reproducible cooking.
If you use a microwave oven for cooking, then for rice, pasta or any other kind of cereal-based ingredient, e.g. maize meal or semolina, you just need to determine once the correct amount of added water (e.g. for rice or maize meal I use water that is 4 times their weight, while cooking in a covered glass vessel), of microwave power and of cooking time in your oven.
Then you can cook forever always using those parameters and the result will be just right every time.
After cooking many pasta dishes over the years, I’ve gotten good enough that I know when it’s done just by feeling it through the stirrer handle. One can even distinguish between al dente vs done.
You do not cook pasta by cooking time.
“La pasta vuole compagnia” Pasta needs company! Never leave it alone, keep stiring once in a while and keep testing them.
Best to drain it before you think it's "good" or al dente cause paste keeps cooking after beeing drained due to the heat and moisture/vapor.
Also, most good pasta dishes get their final cooking in a large pan in the sauce with some cooking water. So usually you drain em when they are still a bit hard in the inside and finish the cooking in the pan.
Italian nonas are rollin in the grave. Good HN article nontheless
Cooking time can be a good indicator. If it says 10 minutes you can start to check it out by 8 and decide from there.
> You do not cook pasta by cooking time
I learned this the hard way moving to an altitude where water boils around 200°F. Just threw out the timers and started obsessively tasting. Flip side is I make fresh pasta more often because the active work of kneading and shaping is more interesting than standing around eating uncooked pasta.
That would be really unfortunate if you were trying to make a pour over coffee at 205°F.
I see plenty of "glove box"-type lab equipment which has an airtight enclosure (often rated to some degree of vacuum), and gloves which allow handling of things inside. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to DIY such an enclosure, but pressurise it to 1 ATM instead? E.g. a small air compressor and a relief valve set to ~15psi or so?
I am thinking that you would put a kettle of water inside, pressurise the container, and then boil the kettle (would need a power or gas line installed) and make the coffee using the handling gloves. Then depressurise the container and retrieve the beverage.
I'm no engineer so I would be interested to know if this would set me down a path of "you'll accidentally maim yourself", but I wouldn't think you'd need anything fancy or hazardous in terms of materials or engineering, given most human-made structures exist at 1atm.
Would probably need to be careful to let the coffee sit for a few minutes to avoid flash-boiling it though, unless you're adding cold milk.
Well, Italian *nonnas rarely used more than one pan for cooking, and it was very common to just put pasta without the sauce in the plate, and a generous spoonful of sauce on top. This is what you used to find in restaurants, too.
The cooking water in the large pan is a rather new thing. Or maybe it's something just from my region :)
Can't speak for all italian regions as there are many differences; but this "spooning some sauce over naked pasta" right on the plate always struck me as positively un-italian. I would always expect the pasta and sauce to be mixed in the kitchen, and the pasta to be completely coated in sauce when the plate reached my table. Maybe it's something italian-american ?
It might be a potato culture thing as it was historically common when pasta showed up on shelves in Sweden that the older generation just went with the instructions separately, cooking pre-peeled potatoes loses so much of it's flavor so if boiled, it's done so separately, getting a new ingredient you probably do it as you've always done.
Many years ago I dated someone from an Italian family and they taught me to literally throw a strand of the pasta against the wall and watch how it sticks/bounces to test the doneness. To this day I think it’s a bit ridiculous but it does have some logic to it. Would be easier to just… bite into the pasta to test.
True facts. Make a pan sauce while your pasta is cooking then throw it straight inwith some of the starchy water to thicken things up.
I die inside every time somebody dumps a jar of Ragu into a drained pot of overcooked spaghetti. Hell, there are ways to dress up jar sauce in a one-pot fashion that only take a few minutes more but a lot of people simply aren't interested. Conversely I'm sure there's stuff that I do that others cringe at - my guitar-playing buddy probably feels the same way every time I drag my digital rig onto stage instead of real amp and pedalboard.
It's like white people tacos vs food-truck tacos. It used to be gauche but has now become its own standard. You can like white people tacos and food truck tacos.
Try dumping the pasta into the strainer, then putting a layer of olive oil across the bottom of the dry pan like youre about to shallow fry something. Then shallow fry the canned sauce in teh olive oil. It should splatter and hiss. Then dump the pasta in.
Is it legit? No. Is it good and easy? Yup.
> I die inside every time somebody dumps a jar of Ragu into a drained pot of overcooked spaghetti.
I can give you even worse than that. It was common in the 00s in Britain, maybe still is, to serve pasta as a bowl of plain, dry boiled spaghetti with sauce poured on top.
As a brit growing up at a similar time I assumed that was an American thing - you saw it all the time on TV and adverts, but seems crazy to actually serve it like that. It was always served by my parents already coated in sauce.
Looking back, I suspect it was more that the contrast of the sauce and spaghetti colours made it "pop" more onscreen. Though it's possibly unsurprising that could feed /back/ into how people thought it "should" be served.
This was my experience growing up in Britain in the 90s. Fortunately one of my housemates at university worked in kitchens made a point of showing me how much tastier it was when the pasta was properly coated with the sauce.
I actually don't mind that. It allows me to choose the pasta-sauce ratio in every bite. The taste difference from when pasta is soaked in sauce is negligible IME.
Plus, I freeze my sauce separately from the pasta. Freezing pasta and then reheating it makes it mushy. Whereas I can always reheat the sauce and cook fresh pasta in minutes. Which also allows me to use a different type of pasta every time.
> It was common in the 00s in Britain, maybe still is, to serve pasta as a bowl of plain, dry boiled spaghetti with sauce poured on top.
Friends (the US show) had a scene where a supposed CHEF did this when cooking for her parents, in the mid-late 90s.
Don't know why this was downvoted.
My best pasta comes from when I start testing it roughly 9 minutes in. Pasta softness depends on water softness, salinity, even ambient air pressure (though I am decidedly a low-lying person). Also pasta shape, and even quantity of pasta in the container (unless you have one of those huge boilers used in restaurants).
The instructions on the box tend to overcook my pasta well beyond al-dente.
Also, to all pasta lovers: please try trafilata al bronzo pasta from places like La Molisana, De Cecco, Garofalo, Rummo, and more.
Isn't De Cecco pretty mid? It's found in every supermarket in the UK for example
It’s a high quality mass market brand. I have tried a large number of more expensive brands, but none have beat De Cecco for me in terms of consistency and quality.
De Cecco is great for a big brand. The best way to know if a dry pasta is good is by the color. The more pale (i.e. less yellow) the better. This is because a more costly, slower drying method preserves the original color better.
Fair point. Ergo the other brands. I am partial to La Molisana and Garofalo, the latter mainly because I can get 1 kg packets of penne and spaghetti.
Eye-talians probably downvoting this LOL. Confused by a bit of basic Italian
it's nonna* though ;)
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet: I've been wondering how much acidity affects pasta cooking time.
We've noticed that dry pasta almost always takes significantly longer to cook than the packaging suggests. I don't think we are overcooking, but I suppose that could be true. It could also just be bad instructions on the packages, but I think there is something more.
We are at a slight altitude (2000 ft/ 600m) which has some effect, but cooking times are sometimes 50% longer than claimed, and I'm doubtful the 4F / 2.2C boiling difference would have this large an effect.
We also have quite acidic well water. I know that this affects cooking times for dry beans, but I haven't seen much about the effect on pasta. Has anyone looked into this? My quick attempt at searching didn't turn up much.
(author)
That could actually be a lot of what I'm seeing! I live in Somerville (just outside Boston) with MWRA water, which is kept at a pH of 9.0 to 9.5 to reduce lead leeching from old pipes. Reading a bit, it seems like that could indeed cut a couple minutes off the cooking time.
Note that a pH of 9-9.5 would make it alkaline, not acidic. However, from my reading, both acidic and alkaline water appear to speed up cooking.
I'm in the UK, basically at sea level, and I also find that pasta always takes longer to cook than the packet instructions. They'll say anywhere from 5-8 minutes usually, and I've never had it be done in less than 12.
I used to have a small burner, and would throw a lot of (cold) dry pasta into not so much boiling water. The water would just stop boiling from being cooled down from the pasta, and take 5-6 minutes to come to a boil again. Perhaps something similar?
I can't answer on the acidic water question but as someone at 7000 ft; I have been told that ~3000 ft is when you need to make adjustments in some foods.
Even at ~15F / ~7C lower it only takes a few min more for pasta for me usually, I can always just use the max on the package and then test from there.
ETA: That is with a silicone boil over lid at full rolling boil, which may impact the time also.
One of those wild things about being from Illinois is I don't even think I know anyone who knows their altitude, much less how to adjust cooking instructions because of it!
Well, the highest point in Illinois is only just over 1000 feet, so it isn't really necessary to adjust any cooking for elevation anywhere in the state.
People who live in mountain areas are used to changing elevation quickly, and you really notice the difference. They will know their altitudes.
Pasta is a bit like toast. It's undercooked for most of the time and only ready for a tiniest fraction of the time. The rest of the time it's overdone.
Although I heard a reason for the toast thing the other day. As it slowly toasts it gets a tiny bit darker. Once darker it doesn't reflect as much energy, hence absorbs it and result is exponential roasting levels.
This is one of the reasons to finish it in the sauce. It spends slightly longer ready when finished in the sauce.
Overdone toast, no such thing; the blacker the better. [Dirty looks from SO.]
Measuring pasta with calipers is prime HN material, thank you for posting this!
Cue shaming Americans for liking their pasta more done than al dente, as though it’s some moral failing. I will eat my pasta exactly as done as I like it, thank you very much.
This whole thread is full of some serious pasta snobs. I always find it funny how upset people get with others who don't want to do whatever task is being discussed in the purest form. I use a timer for my pasta so I can do other things while it cooks, and it isn't that big a difference to me.
This always seems to happen for whatever reason with any food-or-drink-related topic. Articles about coffee will attract the coffee snob, dripping with disdain for drip coffee (consuming which is apparently the moral equivalent of downing urine); articles about stovetop cooking will attract the cast-iron aficionado who will tell you how easy it is to have a perfectly-seasoned pan if you just follow this seven-step process before and after every meal, etc.
I feel like this Onion article captures the vibe: https://theonion.com/man-on-internet-almost-falls-into-world...
This falls into the oft-visited category of "my technique is the only correct technique because it satisfies my completely subjective opinion", which I hate. Alton Brown is another chef that does this and it pisses me off to no end.
Shaming is one extreme but surely there is some aspect of tradition. Personally I am a little snobbish with pasta because I have seen a lot of people with just no respect for pasta as a culinary experience. E.g. it's just carbs to shovel crap on, without appreciating other aspects of what make pasta good. Same with any food really. Also I don't understand why some people are super attached to "overcooked" pasta. Growing up I ate overcooked pasta and then, later, learnt to like it al dente. Maybe yall are yet to have a really spectacular pasta that changes the game for you?
Shaming? A bit too sensitive take so early in the morning, don't you think?
There are better and worse ways to do things, any things. Pasta preparation was perfected by Italians and its not a trivial process everybody groks in 2 mins. I strongly suggest visiting Italy and tasting how real pasta should taste, an experience rarely seen outside of the country, regardless how 'italian' given restaurant tries to look like (exactly same with ie south asian curries who are in the west usually a far cry from original food).
If you prefer doing things in non-ideal way and thus have inferior tasting experience that's your own choice. Don't expect applause for that, not in international forums full of people who know better.
And getting overly defensive when people suggest better approaches... not the best form, is it. Do you consider such approach a best one to general criticism, rather than ie some introspection and pinch of critical thinking?
> I strongly suggest visiting Italy and tasting how real pasta should taste,
Been there, done that. I understand. I still cook my pasta beyond al dente.
> getting overly defensive
Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.
(I'm italian) Some international pasta brands (e.g. Barilla) have different cooking times depending on the country/market. I moved from Italy to Germany and noticed the +1 minute in many types of pasta, so I always compensate. I find the cooking time precise and useful, I don't get why people want to reinvent the wheel. When I worked in a restaurant, we would pre-cook the pasta in the morning, store it and then cook the last few minutes when the order came in (this is actually very common also in good restaurants). Barilla/DeCecco sell restaurant targeted packages and they also report the cooking time split with the precooking. Results are basically the same
> I generally find the numbers printed on pasta boxes for cooking time far too high: I'll set the timer for a minute below their low-end "al dente" time
Interesting! I generally add three minutes to the recommended cooking time, otherwise the pasta still feels stiff. There's no accounting for taste, is there?
How hard is your water and how high above sea level do you live?
How does water hardness affect it? Mine is on the harder end, I've been wondering if that is giving me trouble.
Hard water will boil at a higher temperature, but it's only a degree or two.
Plus, pasta start cooking at 80 ºC. No need to keep the water boiling like crazy :)
Boiling like crazy or not, it's still just 100C if it's boiling at all isn't it?
I guess at a really low boil there could be cooler parts of the water.
Very soft. Elevation is nearly sea-level.
Well, objectively very soft water cooks things a tiny bit slower than harder water, but being close to sea level should cook things a little faster. It probably is down to either taste or the labeling on your pasta.
For people who enjoyed this post, I highly recommend J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s “The Food Lab”, which is a kind of science approach to home cooking. He also has a very good YouTube channel.
Also: all the Alton Brown Good Eats books, and On Food and Cooking (McGee).
Much of cooking is physics and chemistry. "The science of YUM"
Oh those are on my wishlist. I can also recommend Cooking for Geeks (Potter) as a lighter introduction.
Interesting. I live at low altitudes and I almost always have to cook noodles longer than the instructions on the box. Now I only use Italian pasta like DeCecco or Rummo.
Yeah, I think usually the recommended time is an underestimate for me, but it depends strongly on the brand and type of pasta. I usually treat the recommended time as a ballpark of when to think about monitoring it closely if I'm busy prepping other things. Usually the first time I cook a given type of a given brand I'll watch it more closely and then try to remember what seemed best.
I have been following Barilla's passive cooking recommendations[0] for years to great effect. You boil the pasta for a short amount of time and then turn off the stove and put the lid on. Takes a tiny amount longer than leaving the stove on the entire time but reduces energy use.
If the advertised cooking times make your pasta mushy, the problem might be the quality of your pasta..
I check by sampling a piece. If you chew on it and it sticks to your teeth then it's not done yet and can cook a bit longer. No need to make a science out of it. :)
Anyone know the name of that microscope? It doesnt look like it passes the light thru the way Im used to seeing [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscope#/media/File:Ukraini...
The term for these types of microscopes, at least in the industries I've worked in, is an inspection microscope. They're normally lower power than a typical binocular scope like you would see in a biology lab, but work on opaque materials. Inspection scope probably isn't the technical name, but even the vendors have them listed as such.
The cheap USB ones work pretty well for home use, just get one that either has a monitor or can hook up to a monitor, the eyepieces tend to suck. For top of the line professional ones, Mantis makes the best ones I've ever used. I think they are in the 2k+USD range though, I definitely don't have one at home.
In the UK pasta instructions tend to be 9-11mins. 15mins is nuts, especially for the small cheap pasts he's using here. "More for your dollar". Yum!
maybe because the US water is not hot enough at 100 degrees
Nearly all the population in the UK lives below 500m.
In the US, there are major cities that are at 1500m elevation (like Denver CO). Water in Denver boils at ~94C. For most of the UK it's more like 98->100C
It depends on the type and shape of pasta. Whole wheat pasta takes longer than white flour pasta. 7 min for whole wheat sphagetti, 9 min for rotini.
13-15 min for that rigatoni definitely sounds excessive.
The "throw it at the wall, and see if it sticks" test is about right!
15min is certainly needed for some shapes in Boulder, even the loss of a few degrees seems to matter a lot.
Yup, for my altitude (825m) the 12 minute cook times are about spot on. And I do prefer my noodles to be more al dente. I don't even mind if they have a little crunch.
The cooking time is proportional to the thickness.
General advice on pasta:
* a quality dry pasta (dececco e.g) will have ~14 grams of protein per 100 grams dry weight, this is really essential
* bronze die cut will help soak up more sauces
* you do not need the full volume of water the box says, but start your timer once the water has returned to a boil
* once it has gotten to a boil, keep it boiling, but it doesn't need to be a raging boil, that'll tear apart the pasta, especially a stuffed one
* heavily salt your water, but it does not need to be "salty like the ocean"
* set your timer for a minute less than the cooking time on the box, check for doneness, then give it another minute if needed
* if you're finishing in a sauce, take the pasta out a minute before it is done. Remember to reserve one cup of the starchy cooking water before draining your pasta entirely
* do not put oil in your cooking water, it will NOT help it not stick. Just stir after you put it in, and then again a minute or two in
* if you're struggling to tell if it's "done", take a bite of a single piece, and look at the cross section a bit of "white" in the middle means that hasn't hydrated fully. Maybe you like a bit of "toothsome"ness ('al dente'), maybe you don't
> * if you're finishing in a sauce, take the pasta out a minute before it is done.
ie, 2-3 minutes before the box time, possibly more, depending on what finishing means for your case.
> * do not put oil in your cooking water, it will NOT help it not stick.
It will not hurt, and may help. Oil will stop the super starchy water, if you followed the reduce the water volume step as suggested, from boiling over - as it will help reduce the surface tension. This is real, and particularly important for some types of noodles and dumplings.
> Remember to reserve one cup of the starchy cooking water before draining your pasta entirely
At least- again, depending on what sauce you're putting it in, and how underdone you took it out. Particularly if you'll have leftovers (as any good homecook often will!), the 'al dente' pasta will absorb all your water, and you'll need to add some before you put it in the fridge, or it will be super dry when you reheat it.
> it does not need to be "salty like the ocean"
despite what Nigella might tell you, it should be no where near ocean water. (just to reinforce this, because I'm not sure if people just think it is a thing to say, or they just have no idea how salty the sea is)
> or they just have no idea how salty the sea is
Well sea saltiness levels vary wildly, and although the Mediterranean is much too salty, I'd say salty like the North Sea seems about right to me.
The north sea is 34 grams per litre. The Mediterranean is 38. For my pasta I use 10, and that's on the high end.
If you make pasta frequently, you can just reserve the pasta water on the stove and cook more pasta in it the next day. I usually just leave it out with a cover on, it's fine for a day, probably two.
For whole grain pastas I find this really helps get a more satisfying flavor and consistency.
Sometimes I'd put the whole pot in the fridge after it cooled to room temperature and it'd keep for a bit so I could use it for brown rice, or for more pasta later.
Finally, you can also use that water to water your plants because it has a ton of healthy nutrients in it, but you have to be really careful cause of the salt so I always water it down heavily and don't apply it as frequently as I have a pasta water that I'm going to drain.
>if you're struggling to tell if it's "done", take a bite of a single piece, and look at the cross section a bit of "white" in the middle means that hasn't hydrated fully. Maybe you like a bit of "toothsome"ness ('al dente'), maybe you don't
coupla quibbles, one of which you may not be guilty of:
toothsome means delicious, not any sort of mouthfeel (though I agree, it would be a great word for al dente, which means "to the teeth")
the bit of white in the middle is raw, and not al dente. al dente is the "rubbery snap" of biting a noodle and not the "concrete snap" of a raw interior. somehow (like all across NYC) there are so many chefs who think al dente means uncooked center. it does not. handmade egg noodle pasta (which has no dry interior) and extruded hard durum wheat pasta both can both be served al dente.
> you do not need the full volume of water the box says, but start your timer once the water has returned to a boil
I never do that, I start the timer as soon as I put the pasta in the water, and usually the cooking times on Italian brands are spot-on. If I have to finish the cooking in a pan (depending on the sauce) I take out 1m or 1m30s, and it's "al dente".
> * do not put oil in your cooking water, it will NOT help it not stick.
Using oil has never been about preventing it from sticking, despite so many people repeating this myth. Anyone can plainly see that the oil floats on top of the water and never touches the pasta.
The only purpose of the oil is to prevent foaming so it doesn’t boil over.
Wait does that work?
Yes, generally. The mistake most people make with a boiling pot of water is they start the heat on high, and when the water gets to a boil they keep it on high. You really need to turn it down to medium or lower to just maintain the boil. If it stays on high, the violent agitation breaks down the pasta and releases a lot of starch.
If you turn the heat down to a reasonable level, then yes, the oil will do a lot to help prevent boil over.
Based on the article, this seems like a recipe for overcooking pasta.
As someone who makes pasta 3 times a week, the comment sums up my experience with cooking better than the article. I don't really ever have issues with pasta getting too soft in my alla gricia, cacio e pepe or aglio e olio.
why would it be a recipe for overcooking pasta when it doesn't even mention cooking time but "check regularly and taste" ?
that's basically what I do
with French quality brands, it's between 9-11 min for dry pasta, when I make my own ravioli, it's more 2-3min
But what the OP wrote was not "check regularly and taste". They proposed a single timer-based check at one minute less than the time on the box.
That strategy relies on the box being off by at most one minute, so the results from the article seem highly relevant.
Bravo. * set your timer for a minute less than the cooking time on the box, check for doneness, then give it another minute if needed
Please eat the pasta al dente. Overcooked pasta is really awful, trust me
No need to trust you. I tried it myself. Food preferences are subjective and I prefer overcooked pasta to al dente...
I'm Italian and I don't like pasta al dente. Obviously neither overcooked, but I like it cooked. In fact it's a drama that since some years they started making pasta which remains al dente: I usually cook it at least 5 minutes longer than what is written and it is still slightly al dente: very disappointing.
> * heavily salt your water, but it does not need to be "salty like the ocean"
Speaking of, wonder if using seawater for cooking would have good results. Pasta or otherwise!
How much salt also depends on how much pasta water you want to use for your sauce and how much cheese you intend to put in. With more cheese you'll need more starch and then you need to avoid over salting the water.
For the type of rigatoni (smaller) in the article and my local brands it varies between 11 and 15m recommended cooking time depending on brand, and from experience the recommended time is when its ready to be put in a sauce, so not fully cooked. My favorite but more expensive brand says 14m, I usually set a timer to 13 and then try it until its ready to be cooked in the sauce.
Pasta water being strachy is a good myth. It only happens in restaurants where they reuse the water all day long for many servings of pasta.
That water's _starchier_ but it's not a myth. Here's Kenji on it: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
(I get what you're saying, spiritually, your pasta water from your giant pot of one box of pasta isn't gonna do much to thicken your sauce. But it's not a myth, just a matter of degree)
If you cook it in a lot less water, and add a quarter teaspoon of corn starch, you can get the same effect. Play with the ratios to taste.
I prefer to use semolina, since that's the same flour the pasta is made of. I find corn starch can add an "off" flavor.
... if you use less water than the amount prescribed on the box it'll be proportionally starchier. It isn't a myth, you can literally see the starch in the water ...
You can see and feel that it's starchy! It has a starchy texture and is cloudy.
I'm not sure if anyone else runs into this, but I feel cursed by bad pasta.
Every time I boil it, I inevitably get pasta that is under-cooked in the center while mushy on the outside. I've had some times where I've had to boil it for several minutes more than recommended just to get the inside to cook fully.
And even a few minutes in, the pasta seems to split apart into pieces.
I've tried 'quieter' more simmer-y boils, I've tried cranking it up as far as it goes, I've tried salt, I've tried different stoves, nothing has seemed to help.
Maybe it's just low-quality noodles, I don't know.
I think you might enjoy a really thin noodle, like angel hair. The thinner the noodle, the less contrast you will get between the outside and the inside.
(On the other hand, I really like pasta with very different texture on the inside and outside, and so strongly prefer thicker shapes. Angel hair is one of my least favorite s.)
IMO the longer the pasta you're choosing needs to be cooked, the more the effect will be pronounced. Look into thin fast cooking pasta.
My 2c: try using much more water. When you throw the pasta in, i bet the boiling stops cold for a while. Try cooking only one or two pieces at a time. If you see better results with the smaller batch, you were not using enough water.
This is very cool as a science experiment, but if you're interested in getting the best results (for you) you should just taste as you cook. We're born with high-fidelity chemical and tactile sensors - use them!
Hopefully tptacek shows up... this is sort of offtopic but made me remember some comments of his from years ago here on HN. Something about the "rehydrating" step not having to be the same as the "cooking" step. I feel like he said you could end up with some pretty interesting and terrific pasta by _soaking_ it for a while (not cooking it), and then cooking it for a much shorter time later.
Does this ring a bell for anyone? I've been wanting to try it, but I can't remember the details exactly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948177
There's so much superstition and ritual around food preparation (especially coffee). Tested processes are extremely rare.
Added to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights!
(I mention this so people can know the list exists, and hopefully email us more nominations when they see an unusually great and interesting comment.)
I don't eat a lot of pasta these days, but I did spend a couple months getting decent at Cacio e Pepe, and one caveat I've picked up in the last 10 years is that some pasta dishes (the Roman ones in particular) really want you to finish cooking in the sauce, so the pasta takes up some of the flavor of the sauce while it finishes rehydrating.
The rehydration thing is still a killer trick --- especially for Mac and Cheese.
This post disappeared from the front page, what happened? https://hnrankings.info/45424704/
Probably caught by the flamewar detector (too many comments compared to upvotes).
It's funny because Americans love to overcook their pasta, even when it's 'Al dente'. Italians serve pasta so it nearly crunches in the very center of the noodle.
There was a similar post in the past but had to do with getting the perfect hard boiled egg.
This is awesome. Measurement and experiment for a very quotidian thing is a great vibe.
You can feel when it's done by stirring it. It's not rocket science. After 10-20 times cooking pasta this method can be second nature
This is crazy. I cook my pasta for 9 minutes max. Often 8. Because by the time you’ve taken it off the stove, drained it and added it to your sauce any longer and it will be mush.
But this guy is starting at 9 minutes. I worry for American food.
I find it highly depends on the maker of the pasta, and the variety in use. 9 minutes followed by immediately serving is actually quite conservative for some brands. It also depends on the cooking method and how long you intend to finish them in the sauce (or just cook them in the sauce - heresy, I know, but it fucking works).
> I worry for American food.
Gastronomic bigotry helps nobody, and just paints you as a dick. Hold off on it for your own sake.
Important to note that these are only valid for close to sea level.
Another advice for cooking pasta:
The water does not need to be boiling the whole time.
You can boil the pasta just 2 minutes, turn off the stove, close the lid and leave the pasta in the water for the rest of the time until reaching the desired cooking time, plus around one more minute.
The result will be the same and you would have saved round 80% of the energy.
This math doesn't account for the time it takes to get the water to a boil. Probably closer to 40% savings. Still, quite good!
When you are cooking you should be using a lid. So you bring the water to the boil at full heat and then turn your stove down to keep the water surface just shivering. With the lid on this will be more than hot enough. People talk about “a furious boil” and a “gentle boil” but if the water is boiling it’s boiling.
I don't do this, but I'm impatient so I start with scalding hot tap water. Not sure if there is any energy saving (or waste) there, since it takes at least 30 sec for hot tap water to reach max temp.
If you have lead in your pipes, the hot water will have more lead dissolved in it and boiling isn't going to remove it. You can use try filling your pot one rapid boil tea kettle at a time, or try an induction hob.
If you have lead in your pipes you have bigger problems, and I'm not sure how you boil the water for pasta will change that
The potential for energy saving is if your hot water service is significantly more energy efficient than your stove top. The most extreme would be if you had a heat pump hot water service and a gas flame stove top.
Also important for efficiency and speed is to use the least amount of water possible.
LOL... I love how anal engineering types (like myself) can be at times.. going down rabbit holes like this and definitely appreciate it. Pasta is a hard thing and I tend to not rely on timers at all beyond around 8m... I just start testing a piece every 30-40s or so until I'm happy.
This will also vary by final application, if I'm going to rinse/cool to stop cooking, etc... if it's going into a bake after being made (mac and cheese, casserole/hot-dish, etc). It will just depend on a lot of factors beyond how done it is in the pot.
Edit: also, altitude, pureness, salinity, etc of the water will also change things dramatically.
Confused since I had no idea pasta packaging had cooking instructions. I'd never think to look for instructions and certainly wouldn't follow them. Cooking pasta has to be one of the most "covered" things in anyone's "training data", no?
Different pasta shapes take very different amounts of time to cook, and the time estimates on the box are helpful for figuring out when to start tasting.
Also something I discovered recently: making home-made pasta is REALLY EASY, and quite delicious. For basic ravioli you need about 30min from going from raw ingredients (a bit of flour, one or two eggs, some salt) to a ravioli
Don't forget that altitude is also a factor.
Man, if you can shop at Market Basket, you must now the real Pasta cooking time is Wednesday :)
Nice article BTW.
Who needs a timer? When the pasta is about done, just pull a piece out and eat it.
Reminds me of nailing jelly to a wall
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There’s an American fear of “not enough”. I think the overboiled pasta is informed by a fear of undercooked food, but also just this general not-enoughness. It’s the same fear that makes someone buy a truck that can hold the biggest load they can imagine needing, rather than accepting they might need to make two trips or rent a bigger truck every few years (or never) and get a truck half the size.
> I think the overboiled pasta is informed by a fear of undercooked food
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence.
"Mahkit Baskit" (as we say it) is a discount grocery store. Even though it's clean, there are often lots of mistakes that happen with low-wage, untrained labor. IE, one of the few times I went there, the bosc and d'anjou pears were all mixed together because they are green. (But they are obviously different in taste and shape if you are smarter than ChatGPT, and have stickers on them to make it obvious to whoever's stocking the shelfs.)
So it's no surprise the directions on pasta are wrong!
Meh, connoisseurs would probably say my pasta is overcooked; I don't care. I've tried it other ways and I don't like what's supposedly best.
I'm Canadian and I don't think this is an American thing at all. Certainly my lifestyle is nothing like stereotypical US lifestyle.
Also: there's a certain kind of machismo associated with liking steak rare, which is hard to reconcile with overcooking other things habitually.
It's also because Americans love "mac n cheese" and food like that, so basically that have a taste for overcooked, mushy stuff, where basically 99% of the taste is in the (overflavored) sauce they'll pour on top
Herein we find a fundamental flaw in the way society today treats gluten-based grains, bread, pasta, rice, etc.
Pasta that is not married to its sauce has not done its job. The point of putting a bunch of wheat-based filler into a food is that the flavors of the sauce and other liquids are absorbed and adopted by that bread/pasta/sponge type stuff. Then when you reach the end of the sauce, you still have pasta that is infused with its very essence.
I die a little inside, every time someone slaps some breadsticks on my plate and not enough sauce to soak up. The whole point of a breadstick is wiping that stuff up and sponging it out of the dish!
I die a little inside, every time I see a frozen "TV dinner" that has a little sauce on top of dried-out rice. You mean I am supposed to heat this up and it will magically be delicious?
I've been ordering rice bowls from a fun "healthy foods" restaurant in the college area. They dump a bunch of cooked Jasmine rice into a bowl and then whisper a curry sauce over the top. I gave up after 3 extra sauce orders didn't cover all the rice. And you can't "resuscitate" a dish by applying sauce afterwards: that is what the cooking in the pot is for. Marry the sauce to the rice or dump it in the rubbish.
One time, America's Test Kitchen published a photo of how to rescue old stale bread by dumping pasta sauce over it, while it's frozen. I told them, that's the dumbest thing I ever saw.
The whole reason for leavening bread is so that it becomes like a sponge! For God's sake, the whole reason for inventing the sandwich, the pita, and the Cornish pasty were to save the hands while the sauces absorbed into the bread! That you actually had good-tasting bread in the end, or for a tin miner, bread you could toss in the rubbish!
At this stage, I am convinced that 95% of "gluten intolerance/sensitivity/allergy" is induced by people who are improperly eating all these grains, just dry, just no sauces or liquids inside it. It's fundamentally stupid and ignorance of cuisine, and it's all based on industrial-scale food production and cost-cutting even in the nicest kitchens.
"I boiled some water, put in the pasta, and starting at 9min I removed a piece every 15s until I got to 14:30:"
When you remove pasta, you Cool down the water. So its not the same reault as actual 15 minutes cooking
There is a dry pasta I use that, long story short, comes without a listed cooking time, whose correct cooking time I have experimentally determined to be ~18 minutes (though remarkably flexible, good at a much wider range than "normal"). I like it quite a lot (even though it seems to have the teflon-die surface rather than the bronze-die surface).
I think greater pasta thickness is underexplored, and the teflon-vs-bronze die thing as the highest determinant of pasta quality, while not nothing, is slightly-overstated r*dditry.
Bronze-die pasta has an obvious and substantial textural difference from teflon-die pasta. The stickiness of the bronze requires more force from the extruder, but results in a rougher surface on the pasta, because it literally sticks to the die.
Bronze-cut pasta holds sauce much better, especially for thinner sauces. It also makes your pasta water more starchy, since it loses more material during cooking. These things seem very obvious to me via my observations as a cook who uses both from time to time (but mostly the bronze stuff).
Both properties can be very useful (the first to everyone, the second just to those who use their pasta water in the sauce step).
It's good to question our assumptions from time to time, but there's no reason to just deny something like this with absolutely nothing to back it up.
> and the teflon-vs-bronze die thing ....is slightly-overstated r*dditry
So, there's this thing that I heard, but I never found confirmation, maybe someone here can help.
Apparently bronze by itself can't be used as a cooking utensil since it loses material too easily.
When they use bronze for extruding and such, they have to coat it in teflon to have a legal bypass.
But it all remains kinda brittle, and now you are eating teflon and bronze!
I simplified it all, but I am not a material expert nor a law expert, so could anyone debunk or confirm?
This sounded interesting, so I went and read a few articles. It seems, dies come in 5 categories: bronze, brass, steel, teflon coated (various bases) and plastic [0].
The bronze (and even brass) are uncoated and don't seem to lose material, on the contrary, they seem to get a patina with use. From what I read, bronze pasta is extruded at lower speed and temperature to account for the material (and the desired texture of the pasta). From an engineering point of view, this article give more insight [1].
[0] https://flavor365.com/pasta-die-materials-the-ultimate-guide...
[1] https://pastasty.com/the-engineering-of-extrusion-how-bronze...
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