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Pasta Cooking Time
- praash 1y agoMeasuring pasta with calipers is prime HN material, thank you for posting this!
- LordShredda 1y agoReminds me of nailing jelly to a wall
- seeeeebt 1y agoIn 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!
- abakker 1y ago15min is certainly needed for some shapes in Boulder, even the loss of a few degrees seems to matter a lot.
- cogman10 1y agoYup, 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.
- croisillon 1y agomaybe because the US water is not hot enough at 100 degrees
- cogman10 1y agoNearly 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
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- afandian 1y agoYeah, 100 degrees in the US is barely 38°C.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoIt 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!
- notindexed 1y agoYou 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
- delta_p_delta_x 1y agoDon'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.
- octo888 1y agoIsn't De Cecco pretty mid? It's found in every supermarket in the UK for example
- bpicolo 1y agoIt’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.
- dfxm12 1y agoYeah, there's more to good (extruded and dried) pasta than bronze dies. The ingredients of the pasta, quality of the flour and drying technique are important too. That said, taste is subjective.
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- rhaps0dy 1y agoThis is awesome. Measurement and experiment for a very quotidian thing is a great vibe.
- kshahkshah 1y agoThe 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
- travisjungroth 1y agoBased on the article, this seems like a recipe for overcooking pasta.
- frantathefranta 1y agoAs 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.
- oulipo2 1y agowhy 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
- 1y ago
- travisjungroth 1y agoThere’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.
- oulipo2 1y agoIt'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
- gwbas1c 1y ago> 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!
- jefftk 1y agoThis isn't a Market Basket-specific issue: I see the same thing with pasta at Shaws/Star, Stop and Shop, and Wegmans.
- zahlman 1y agoMeh, 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.
- octo888 1y agoYou 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
- tirant 1y agoAnother 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.
- andrewbarba 1y agoThis math doesn't account for the time it takes to get the water to a boil. Probably closer to 40% savings. Still, quite good!
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoI 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.
- dfxm12 1y agoIf 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.
- ascorbic 1y agoIf 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
- simondotau 1y agoThe 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.
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- oulipo2 1y agoAlso 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
- rs186 1y agoHow much time for cleanup? I did this once or twice and decided I was not that into pasta to justify making my own.
- oulipo2 1y agoNot that bad, once you learn how to do it, it's mostly just a big mixing bowl to clean up (where you make the dough) and the counter top where you rolled it flat
- chaiDrinker 1y agoIt'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.
- foofoo12 1y agoPasta 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.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoSame with avocados
- bromuro 1y agoIt depends a lot from the quality of the pasta. some are more generous with the time and will get overcooked more gently.
- kqr 1y agoThis is one of the reasons to finish it in the sauce. It spends slightly longer ready when finished in the sauce.
- jjgreen 1y agoOverdone toast, no such thing; the blacker the better. [Dirty looks from SO.]
- foofoo12 1y agoI once heard that burnt toast was carcinogenic. Might want to check that.
- losvedir 1y agoHopefully 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.
- xnx 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948177 There's so much superstition and ritual around food preparation (especially coffee). Tested processes are extremely rare.
- dang 1y agoAdded to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights 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.)
- tptacek 1y agoI 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.
- spiffytech 1y ago> 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?
- cestith 1y agoHow hard is your water and how high above sea level do you live?
- spiffytech 1y agoVery soft. Elevation is nearly sea-level.
- cestith 1y agoWell, 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.
- Night_Thastus 1y agoHow does water hardness affect it? Mine is on the harder end, I've been wondering if that is giving me trouble.
- Finnucane 1y agoWho needs a timer? When the pasta is about done, just pull a piece out and eat it.
- nahumba 1y ago"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
- jefftk 1y agoHow does removing pasta cool down the water? I was putting in a slotted spoon, and removing one piece at a time. The water remained at a full boil throughout.
- IAmBroom 1y agoNo, they're right. You took out at least a nanojoule of thermal energy. Did you factor that in to your next tasting?
- foofoo12 1y agoThis post disappeared from the front page, what happened? https://hnrankings.info/45424704/ https://hnrankings.info/45424704/
- jmclnx 1y agoMan, if you can shop at Market Basket, you must now the real Pasta cooking time is Wednesday :) Nice article BTW.
- beezle 1y agoWednesday is Prince spaghetti day!
- cudgy 1y agoInteresting. 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.
- derbOac 1y agoYeah, 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.
- UberFly 1y agoI am the same though I'm embarrassed to admit I never realized it was because I'm at sea level. I just always wondered what was wrong with pretty much every printed pasta cook time. Doh.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoDon't forget that altitude is also a factor.
- comeonbro 1y agoThere 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.
- Levitating 1y agoDo you happen to know the brand/type/number?
- Luker88 1y ago> 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?
- ars 1y agoEating teflon is harmless, it goes out the same way it goes in. (It's not a PFAS, since it's missing the alkyl chain tail.)
- frm88 1y agoThis 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-to-perfect-texture/ https://flavor365.com/pasta-die-materials-the-ultimate-guide... [1] https://pastasty.com/the-engineering-of-extrusion-how-bronze-dies-create-superior-pasta-texture/ https://pastasty.com/the-engineering-of-extrusion-how-bronze...
- saaaaaam 1y agoThis 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.
- messe 1y agoI 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.
- saaaaaam 1y agoOh dear. I think you’ve taken a frivolous comment rather too seriously. Calling people “a dick” online is a self fulling prophecy. Sorry if my gastronomic bigotry upset you.
- tracker1 1y agoLOL... 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.
- t1234s 1y agoThere was a similar post in the past but had to do with getting the perfect hard boiled egg.
- ilikepi 1y agoNot sure what post you have in mind, but Kenji Alt-Lopez's video[1] on the topic is excellent. If I remember right, it's based on work he did with a well-known food publication (or show or something)... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb0Elaa6gxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb0Elaa6gxY
- jillesvangurp 1y agoI 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.
- CharlesW 1y ago> 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-recipe 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."
- GloriousKoji 1y ago
- dateSISC 1y agoIf the advertised cooking times make your pasta mushy, the problem might be the quality of your pasta..
- jefftk 1y agoThe pasta tastes great when I cook it for my preferred amount of time, doesn't seem like an issue with the quality of the noodles.
- ekjhgkejhgk 1y agoAnyone 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:Ukrainian_microscope_(cropped).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscope#/media/File:Ukraini...
- meatmanek 1y agoNot sure the brand, but you can find lots of these USB microscopes in the usual places. They have a light that shines down onto your subject rather than shining light up through a glass slide.
- ekjhgkejhgk 1y agoFunny, "USB microscope" actually finds it. Thank you.
- zrobotics 1y agoThe 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.
- lstodd 1y agoThat's МБИ-3 See https://www.microscopemuseum.eu/catalogues/LOMO_1970s_Microscopes.pdf https://www.microscopemuseum.eu/catalogues/LOMO_1970s_Micros...
- ekjhgkejhgk 1y agoI was asking about the microscope in the article, not in my link. I linked only to show that the one in the article is unlike what Im used to. But thanks for the link, such a cool find :-)
- niek_pas 1y agoFor 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.
- Night_Thastus 1y agoI'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.
- karlosvomacka 1y agoIMO the longer the pasta you're choosing needs to be cooked, the more the effect will be pronounced. Look into thin fast cooking pasta.
- bigmanjon 1y agoNever really ran into the issue but perhaps try soaking the pasta for a while (10-30 min never tried) then it should be able to boil for less time and cook more evenly.
- sandworm101 1y agoMy 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.
- jefftk 1y agoI 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.)
- binaryturtle 1y agoI 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. :)
- nkurz 1y agoSince 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.
- jefftk 1y ago(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.
- atombender 1y agoNote 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.
- nyrikki 1y agoI 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.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoOne 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!
- senderista 1y agoCue 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.
- ratmeadow 1y agoShaming 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?
- t-3 1y agoThis. Also, I don't care at all about what "the right way" is, no crunchy asparagus on my table.
- cortesoft 1y agoThis 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.
- allturtles 1y agoThis 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.
- 1y ago
- mlindner 1y agoImportant to note that these are only valid for close to sea level.
- ThrownOffGame 1y agoHerein 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.
- bubblyworld 1y agoThis 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!
- mielioort 1y ago[dead]
- dboreham 1y agoConfused 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?
- jefftk 1y agoDifferent 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.
- throwaway984393 1y ago[dead]
- matteuan 1y ago(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
- sotix 1y agoI 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. [0]: https://www.barilla.com/en-gb/campaign/passive-cooking https://www.barilla.com/en-gb/campaign/passive-cooking