8 ms·

The secret is that restaurants which make traditional cacio e pepe are using pasta water to emulsify the sauce. But it's not the same pasta water you're using

by mapt 2y ago

The secret is that restaurants which make traditional cacio e pepe are using pasta water to emulsify the sauce. But it's not the same pasta water you're using at home! Only a tiny amount of starch is coming off of the 500g of pasta you just cooked in the proper ratio in 5000g of water (with 50g of salt). They've been cooking with their pasta water all day or all week; It's completely full of starch that came off the other pasta. Dump a bunch of cornstarch or flour in there to get above 1% concentration (or more efficiently, into a tiny portion in a bowl) to replicate the emulsifying effect, or just use a different emulsifier.

bradleyjg 2y ago
Or just use less water to cook the pasta? What’s the downside?
- bobmcnamara 2y ago
  Clumping
  - greggyb 2y ago
    Stir.
    - tanvach 2y ago
      Sometimes I forget to stir and have to reboil the pasta. Long noodles like spaghetti will stick like crazy and have inconsistent cooking. If I need to cook quickly I use less water. Otherwise more water is hands off.
      - greggyb 2y ago
        Reduce your pasta water. You can even save it like stock. Adding some is also a savior when reheating sauces that break easily.
  - wlll 2y ago
    I don't get clumping. I use an adequate quality pasta (De Cecco mostly), stir it when I put it in the water, and a few times after that, cooking to al dente. If I'm making a Caccio e Pepe or Carbonara I cook the spaghetti or (my preference) Buccatini I'm aiming for the minimum amount of liquid left, ideally just enough to put in the sauce. I use a frying pan so I can lay the noods out flat to minimise the water. As I said I don't get clumping, it is absolutely possible to cook noods in minimal water without clumping because I do it so try switching some thing up if it's happening to you.
    - Aloisius 2y ago
      How do you stir long pasta in minimal water before it has softened? While small pasta shapes are relatively easy to stir such that they break contact with anything nearby right from the beginning, long pasta tends to move together when stirring until they’ve softened - at which point they’ve already started sticking together. You can try to stir it so that the pasta isn’t all running parallel before it softens, but then you get ends start sticking out of the water until it softens more, leading to uneven cooking. For long pastas, I’ve found using more water and just adding a little flour while cooking to be a lot easier.
      - ikawe 2y ago
        It’s more of a “jostle” than a stir when cooking spaghetti in a frying pan.
      - wlll 2y ago
        I use kitchen tongs to pick up and jostle the noods as another commentator mentions. It starts out parallel as you say. Flour would add a flavour I didn't want and I don't have an issue with uneven cooking or clumping so I don't need to.
      - thefringthing 2y ago
        Boil long pasta in a skillet, not a pot.
    - eecc 2y ago
      De Cecco? Nah, that's pretty bad. You want to try Garofalo or Molisana.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- speff 2y ago
  Or use the normal amount of water and reduce the liquid after straining the pasta out?
  - PartiallyTyped 2y ago
    If you do that, you gotta strain into another pot, and then reduce that. No need. Just use a lot less water, and barely cover the pasta.
  - wlll 2y ago
    By the time you reduce the liquid the pasta is going to be pretty cold. Just using less water takes less time.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  You certainly can, but: - It's still not going to be enough starch - You can't rely on box cooking times even as a starting point. Your pasta will take significantly longer to cook, since it will bring down the temperature of the water when you put it in, since there's so little water
  - messe 2y ago
    In my experience box cooking times are never quite right, and irrelevant if you're going to be finishing your pasta in the sauce anyway. Unless you're extremely familiar with the exact brand of pasta, temperature of your stovetop, etc., you should be tasting your pasta toward the end of cooking to decide when to stop cooking it. > - It's still not going to be enough starch I'm inclined to disagree, but only have anecdata on this, so I can't really get into an extended debate over it. So I guess now I get to look forward to experimenting with starch additions the next few times I cook pasta.
    - wahnfrieden 2y ago
      simply lift pasta and observe (and do this enough that you learn what to look for). that's enough to avoid tasting it until a final confirmation.
      - messe 2y ago
        For a longer pasta, sure. But something like Fusilli can be more difficult to judge, I've found.
  - aardvarkr 2y ago
    1. The starch comes from the pasta, not the water. Decreasing the water increases the concentration of the starch in said water. That’s why every good recipe for cacio e Pepe I’ve seen recommends using as little water as possible 2. This has been thoroughly debunked. Kenji did a full write up of this but suffice to say that starches absorb water starting at 180 degrees. As long as you have the water above that temp it will cook in the same amount of time. https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
- wintermutestwin 2y ago
  Here is a great video on cooking pasta with less water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=259MXuK62gU&t=219s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=259MXuK62gU&t=219s
- mapt 2y ago
  First, temperature dynamics and being able to reliably determine doneness by time. Boiling water is nature's thermal measuring stick, and if your water is dropping to 150 it's a Problem. This is especially the case if you like to let the water 'coast' heat-off so that your pasta doesn't burn to the bottom of the pan during an unattended rolling boil. Second, clumping. You want the ability to freely stir and get water between pieces of pasta, or if the heat is on for the boiling bubbles to stir, in order to avoid the pasta sticking together. Third, use 80% less water and you only get a 5x higher concentration of starch. I don't have measurements in front of me but I suspect this simply isn't starchy enough to take a tiny portion of that water and use it as an effective emulsifier. The article pins 1% starch as a threshold of effect, and I doubt I'm losing 0.2% of pasta weight when cooking to al dente. Note: This is all for dried durum wheat-flour pasta, the generic industrial 'macaroni' of American agribusiness. Egg pasta is a very different product, with different cooking characteristics, that happens to share the name. Durum semolina pasta, whole-wheat pasta, gluten-free "pasta", rice pasta... no guarantees that this is applicable.
  - mapt 2y ago
    Correction: To attain 1% of 5kg of water, I need 50g of starch. In 500g of pasta, there's no way in hell I'm losing fully 10% of the weight of the pasta. If I cut the water to pasta ratio by 80%, I would still need to lose 2% of the weight of the pasta, and I don't think that's happening.
hsuduebc2 2y ago
That makes sense, but using the same water for weeks at a time seems a bit disgusting to me. Even if it is boiled quite often.
- greenthrow 2y ago
  They aren't using the same water for a week. The GP comment is nonsense.
- Mystery-Machine 2y ago
  What? What is gross? Did you ever saw raw meat? It's probably gross. There are also insects walking over your vegetables. Gross.
  - hsuduebc2 2y ago
    Gross part is that you are boiling same liquid in open space where people are working and making a mess. Also you are going to accumulate residue ar the bottom. Unlike meat or vegetables this can't be washed.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Do you find it gross when there's a big stockpot simmering stock for 12 hours without a lid in order to reduce? And what's to wash? You don't wash food after cooking, and pasta is like bread -- it certainly doesn't need washing beforehand either. It's just flour and some other ingredients. It's not like vegetables where you need to wash off dirt, pesticides, etc. Or meat where you wash off bacteria. Those aren't issues with pasta.
      - hsuduebc2 2y ago
        I do not. I didn't make myself clear in first comment. Sorry for that. I was talking about using same water for a whole week. I felt that it is not optional. The residue building at the bottom, open space of messy kitchen with lid open and constant reheating because it cools overnight is what seems little bit off for me.
jounker 2y ago
but keep it below 4% to prevent it from getting too viscous.
soared 2y ago
Discussed about half way through this post: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
- andybp85 2y ago
  did this recently and it totally works
- XajniN 2y ago
  I’ve been doing it with little water since forever. It would take ages to boil a lot of water before I had an induction stove, so I tried with little and it worked the same.
  - froh 2y ago
    yesyesyes! 100g of dry pasta turn into about 230g of al dente pasta. thus 200g of water per 100g of pasta is plenty. bring to boil. pasta in. lid on(!), heat way down, to a simmer, very very slight boil. stir after 40% of the cooking time. taste and chewiness testt after the advertised overall cooking time. if the pasta form is very fluffy then have a little preheated water handy should your pasta unexpectedly need more water. hint: it won't. but an unusual pasta form may rarely ask for more water. drain and catch the starchy water if you think you need it. (I personally don't like the taste and prefer adding starch to the sauce if needed, but ymmv here). rinse pasta briefly to stop the cooking and ensure all dente chew. energy saving compared to "recommended standard method": 80%. eighty percent less energy. (200ml instead of 1000ml). more actually, because the lid is on. taste: indistinguishable and excellent.
    - cassepipe 2y ago
      The logical next step : https://www.barilla.com/en-gb/campaign/passive-cooking https://www.barilla.com/en-gb/campaign/passive-cooking
      - 2y ago
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Dump a bunch of cornstarch or flour in there Don't add powdered starch to hot water. It will clump. Add it to a small amount of cold water and then add that to the hot pasta water. (And the starch you want is amylopectin. Waxy potato starch will work better than corn starch [1].) [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amylose-and-amylopectin-content-of-starch-from-different-sources-14_tbl1_317965311 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amylose-and-amylopectin-...
s0rce 2y ago
This is what the paper suggests.
XajniN 2y ago
Also, if you’re using home-made, artisanal, or just some better rough-surface pasta, it will release a lot more starch than the standard smooth-surface sort.
peoplefromibiza 2y ago
[dead]

by mapt 2y ago

bradleyjg 2y ago

Or just use less water to cook the pasta? What’s the downside?

bobmcnamara 2y ago
Clumping
- greggyb 2y ago
  Stir.
  - tanvach 2y ago
    Sometimes I forget to stir and have to reboil the pasta. Long noodles like spaghetti will stick like crazy and have inconsistent cooking. If I need to cook quickly I use less water. Otherwise more water is hands off.
    - greggyb 2y ago
      Reduce your pasta water. You can even save it like stock. Adding some is also a savior when reheating sauces that break easily.
- wlll 2y ago
  I don't get clumping. I use an adequate quality pasta (De Cecco mostly), stir it when I put it in the water, and a few times after that, cooking to al dente. If I'm making a Caccio e Pepe or Carbonara I cook the spaghetti or (my preference) Buccatini I'm aiming for the minimum amount of liquid left, ideally just enough to put in the sauce. I use a frying pan so I can lay the noods out flat to minimise the water. As I said I don't get clumping, it is absolutely possible to cook noods in minimal water without clumping because I do it so try switching some thing up if it's happening to you.
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    How do you stir long pasta in minimal water before it has softened? While small pasta shapes are relatively easy to stir such that they break contact with anything nearby right from the beginning, long pasta tends to move together when stirring until they’ve softened - at which point they’ve already started sticking together. You can try to stir it so that the pasta isn’t all running parallel before it softens, but then you get ends start sticking out of the water until it softens more, leading to uneven cooking. For long pastas, I’ve found using more water and just adding a little flour while cooking to be a lot easier.
    - ikawe 2y ago
      It’s more of a “jostle” than a stir when cooking spaghetti in a frying pan.
    - wlll 2y ago
      I use kitchen tongs to pick up and jostle the noods as another commentator mentions. It starts out parallel as you say. Flour would add a flavour I didn't want and I don't have an issue with uneven cooking or clumping so I don't need to.
    - thefringthing 2y ago
      Boil long pasta in a skillet, not a pot.
  - eecc 2y ago
    De Cecco? Nah, that's pretty bad. You want to try Garofalo or Molisana.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
speff 2y ago
Or use the normal amount of water and reduce the liquid after straining the pasta out?
- PartiallyTyped 2y ago
  If you do that, you gotta strain into another pot, and then reduce that. No need. Just use a lot less water, and barely cover the pasta.
- wlll 2y ago
  By the time you reduce the liquid the pasta is going to be pretty cold. Just using less water takes less time.
crazygringo 2y ago
You certainly can, but: - It's still not going to be enough starch - You can't rely on box cooking times even as a starting point. Your pasta will take significantly longer to cook, since it will bring down the temperature of the water when you put it in, since there's so little water
- messe 2y ago
  In my experience box cooking times are never quite right, and irrelevant if you're going to be finishing your pasta in the sauce anyway. Unless you're extremely familiar with the exact brand of pasta, temperature of your stovetop, etc., you should be tasting your pasta toward the end of cooking to decide when to stop cooking it. > - It's still not going to be enough starch I'm inclined to disagree, but only have anecdata on this, so I can't really get into an extended debate over it. So I guess now I get to look forward to experimenting with starch additions the next few times I cook pasta.
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    simply lift pasta and observe (and do this enough that you learn what to look for). that's enough to avoid tasting it until a final confirmation.
    - messe 2y ago
      For a longer pasta, sure. But something like Fusilli can be more difficult to judge, I've found.
- aardvarkr 2y ago
  1. The starch comes from the pasta, not the water. Decreasing the water increases the concentration of the starch in said water. That’s why every good recipe for cacio e Pepe I’ve seen recommends using as little water as possible 2. This has been thoroughly debunked. Kenji did a full write up of this but suffice to say that starches absorb water starting at 180 degrees. As long as you have the water above that temp it will cook in the same amount of time. https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
wintermutestwin 2y ago
Here is a great video on cooking pasta with less water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=259MXuK62gU&t=219s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=259MXuK62gU&t=219s
mapt 2y ago
First, temperature dynamics and being able to reliably determine doneness by time. Boiling water is nature's thermal measuring stick, and if your water is dropping to 150 it's a Problem. This is especially the case if you like to let the water 'coast' heat-off so that your pasta doesn't burn to the bottom of the pan during an unattended rolling boil. Second, clumping. You want the ability to freely stir and get water between pieces of pasta, or if the heat is on for the boiling bubbles to stir, in order to avoid the pasta sticking together. Third, use 80% less water and you only get a 5x higher concentration of starch. I don't have measurements in front of me but I suspect this simply isn't starchy enough to take a tiny portion of that water and use it as an effective emulsifier. The article pins 1% starch as a threshold of effect, and I doubt I'm losing 0.2% of pasta weight when cooking to al dente. Note: This is all for dried durum wheat-flour pasta, the generic industrial 'macaroni' of American agribusiness. Egg pasta is a very different product, with different cooking characteristics, that happens to share the name. Durum semolina pasta, whole-wheat pasta, gluten-free "pasta", rice pasta... no guarantees that this is applicable.
- mapt 2y ago
  Correction: To attain 1% of 5kg of water, I need 50g of starch. In 500g of pasta, there's no way in hell I'm losing fully 10% of the weight of the pasta. If I cut the water to pasta ratio by 80%, I would still need to lose 2% of the weight of the pasta, and I don't think that's happening.

hsuduebc2 2y ago

That makes sense, but using the same water for weeks at a time seems a bit disgusting to me. Even if it is boiled quite often.

greenthrow 2y ago
They aren't using the same water for a week. The GP comment is nonsense.
Mystery-Machine 2y ago
What? What is gross? Did you ever saw raw meat? It's probably gross. There are also insects walking over your vegetables. Gross.
- hsuduebc2 2y ago
  Gross part is that you are boiling same liquid in open space where people are working and making a mess. Also you are going to accumulate residue ar the bottom. Unlike meat or vegetables this can't be washed.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Do you find it gross when there's a big stockpot simmering stock for 12 hours without a lid in order to reduce? And what's to wash? You don't wash food after cooking, and pasta is like bread -- it certainly doesn't need washing beforehand either. It's just flour and some other ingredients. It's not like vegetables where you need to wash off dirt, pesticides, etc. Or meat where you wash off bacteria. Those aren't issues with pasta.
    - hsuduebc2 2y ago
      I do not. I didn't make myself clear in first comment. Sorry for that. I was talking about using same water for a whole week. I felt that it is not optional. The residue building at the bottom, open space of messy kitchen with lid open and constant reheating because it cools overnight is what seems little bit off for me.

jounker 2y ago

but keep it below 4% to prevent it from getting too viscous.

soared 2y ago

Discussed about half way through this post: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...

andybp85 2y ago
did this recently and it totally works
XajniN 2y ago
I’ve been doing it with little water since forever. It would take ages to boil a lot of water before I had an induction stove, so I tried with little and it worked the same.
- froh 2y ago
  yesyesyes! 100g of dry pasta turn into about 230g of al dente pasta. thus 200g of water per 100g of pasta is plenty. bring to boil. pasta in. lid on(!), heat way down, to a simmer, very very slight boil. stir after 40% of the cooking time. taste and chewiness testt after the advertised overall cooking time. if the pasta form is very fluffy then have a little preheated water handy should your pasta unexpectedly need more water. hint: it won't. but an unusual pasta form may rarely ask for more water. drain and catch the starchy water if you think you need it. (I personally don't like the taste and prefer adding starch to the sauce if needed, but ymmv here). rinse pasta briefly to stop the cooking and ensure all dente chew. energy saving compared to "recommended standard method": 80%. eighty percent less energy. (200ml instead of 1000ml). more actually, because the lid is on. taste: indistinguishable and excellent.
  - cassepipe 2y ago
    The logical next step : https://www.barilla.com/en-gb/campaign/passive-cooking https://www.barilla.com/en-gb/campaign/passive-cooking
    - 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Dump a bunch of cornstarch or flour in there Don't add powdered starch to hot water. It will clump. Add it to a small amount of cold water and then add that to the hot pasta water. (And the starch you want is amylopectin. Waxy potato starch will work better than corn starch [1].) [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amylose-and-amylopectin-content-of-starch-from-different-sources-14_tbl1_317965311 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amylose-and-amylopectin-...

s0rce 2y ago

This is what the paper suggests.

XajniN 2y ago

Also, if you’re using home-made, artisanal, or just some better rough-surface pasta, it will release a lot more starch than the standard smooth-surface sort.

peoplefromibiza 2y ago

[dead]