The Art of Cooking Pasta

Something I have noticed, while living around the world, is that a lot of people, despite their best intentions, don’t really know how to cook pasta – not the way I like it, anyway.

Except in Italy, of course.  And in my family.  ;)

It’s not as simple as just throwing  noodles into boiling water and “tada!”…. no, no, no.  There’s an art to it.

Follow these three steps that are often overlooked, and you’ll have dinner guests swooning over your pasta dishes in no time.

Salt your water. This is very important.  Before you put the pasta into the water, add salt.  Preferably sea salt if you can get your hands on it.  Otherwise use regular salt.  No matter how interesting your sauce or your presentation is, the pasta dish will be pretty bland if you didn’t salt the water first.  Believe me.  It makes a world of difference!

Don’t over-drain.  I’ve seen many people pour the cooked pasta into a colander to drain it, only to shake the colander as much as they can to get every tiny bit of water out.  Really, this is not necessary.  It’s best not to shake at all.  If the pasta remains moist, sauce spreads more easily and the overall effect is delicious.  If you over-drain, the pasta will clump together.  And for heaven’s sake, don’t rinse! The bit of starch that stays on the pasta helps sauces stick.

The whole “al dente” thing. This is actually pretty important.  There is nothing worse than pasta that is too soft.  Overcooking ruins the pasta’s gluten structure and releases too much starch into the water.  Not even the best sauce can make up for this.  On the other hand, pasta cooked perfectly “al dente” holds on to sauce in a really nice way.  My first piece of advice in this regard is to ignore the “cooking time” in the instructions listed on the package of pasta.  Instead, be attentive to your pasta, tasting it every few minutes.  You’ll know when it’s time to drain your pasta when it’s slightly firm (but you can still chew it).  You’ll want to drain the pasta at this point, keeping in mind that pasta keeps cooking for a minute after it has been drained (and also for this reason, you don’t want to over-drain).

Do you have any tips for cooking pasta successfully? If you live in Italy, what seems to be the norm in your region?

This post was written on behalf of AffordableCallingCards.net.

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