Oil in pasta water is a weird thing. It generally helps the pasta not stick, especially after cooking and waiting for sauce. This can be mostly ignored if you s

Oil in pasta water is a weird thing. It generally helps the pasta not stick, especially after cooking and waiting for sauce. This can be mostly ignored if you stir the pasta often and leave a wooden spoon across the top of the pan (to stop boil-overs). It does add flavor at times. The main drawback to putting oil in the pasta water or tossing the pasta with oil/butter afterwards is that some pasta sauces won't stick too well to oiled pasta. This may not be such an issue with fattier sauces: cream sauces or something with ground meat, since they already have oils in the sauce. Vegetarian tomato sauces (regardless of fake meat) seem to fare worse.