This is how you cook the perfect pasta
Last week I shared three easy pasta dishes with you. And usually it’s the sauce or the filling that makes your pasta or makes it fail miserably. While perfect pasta is actually all about cooking the pasta perfectly. You would think that the most clumsy home cook could boil a simple spaghetti, but nothing could be further from the truth. Pasta consists of just three ingredients: eggs, water, and flour. During the cooking process, gluten from the pasta ends up in the water. The moment you use too little water, your strands turn into a gigantic sticky mess and believe me: you don’t want that. How do you prevent that? With these six tips, you too will cook a pasta that Italy would be proud of.
1. Let it swim
Pasta should always be cooked in plenty of water. Aim for a ratio of 1:10, so 100 grams of pasta per liter of water. Pasta absorbs a lot of water; letting the pasta swim in plenty of water prevents the strands from sticking together. First of all, pasta absorbs a lot of water, about one and a half to two times its own weight, and furthermore, plenty of water helps prevent sticking.
2. Use salt
Do you always drizzle olive oil over that steaming pot of boiling water? WRONG. You simply rinse that olive oil off when the pasta is cooked al dente. Use salt instead of olive oil. It gives your pasta just a bit more flavor.
3. Cooking water
Never throw away the cooking water from your pasta. Besides the fact that it is a natural binder for your pasta sauce, it also adds flavor to your pasta topping.
4. Rinsing
Never rinse your pasta with cold water. That’s a huge classic mistake made in many kitchens. The starch that forms around the pasta ensures that the sauce is ‘absorbed’ and adds even more flavor to your pasta dish.
5. Stirring
Stir immediately in the pot after you’ve added the pasta. This way, the starch spreads in the water and doesn’t stick and cling between the pasta.
6. Al dente
The perfect pasta is cooked al dente. The cooking times on the pasta packaging should be correct, but taste it while cooking to see if the pasta is done. If you still feel a slight ‘bite’, the pasta is al dente and can be drained. It’s best to drain the pasta just before this moment, as it continues to cook, even when the warm sauce is added.
And uh, you only eat pasta with a fork. Twist your spaghetti around your fork and bite off the strands so that the leftovers fall back onto your plate. No slurping, Italians don’t do that.
