7x pasta crimes you need to prevent
It’s possible that you regularly make one of these pasta mistakes, or perhaps you’ve read about them here before and therefore never do them anymore! But for everyone who could use a little reminder, we’re happy to list them once again: the biggest pasta mistakes everyone makes (or used to make)…
Because you know: at FavorFlav, we can never get enough of pasta and pasta facts. So read along and shudder, so that these mistakes can never be held against you again:
Breaking pasta
Why would you?? Pasta shapes have a reason behind their form, a purpose, and if you’re no longer a toddler, you’ve outgrown bite-sized pieces of spaghetti. No more of those sad half-spaghetti strands, agreed? If you want small pasta, just buy small pasta. For the tastiest mac ’n’ cheese, for example, although we’d always buy nice, thick maccheroni for that too. Yum…
Oil in the water
First of all, it’s incredibly wasteful to waste oil in the water instead of using it over your pasta, where you could actually taste it. Afraid your pasta will stick together in the cooking water? You can prevent that by skipping the next crime too:
Not stirring
Walking away after dropping the pasta into the boiling water, thinking you’ll take another look in 8 minutes? Nope. Not going to work. Stirring everything thoroughly a few times and loosening it while it cooks is important, so you don’t end up with chunks of pasta cooked into one solid mass. And that’s exactly what you don’t need the oil for!
Draining and rinsing
Nooo! What a waste! Okay, we’ll let draining pass if you’ve first saved a large mugful of pasta water, but rinsing under the cold tap is a definite no-go. And we’ll only let rinsing with cold water pass if you want to make (the best) pasta salad, but with every warm plate of pasta, you want to leave that lovely layer of starch on it instead of washing it down the drain.
Cooking for too long or too short
Letting the pasta cook for another ten minutes after the indicated al dente cooking time because you got distracted? I know from experience that it happens… So, so stupid. It’s as soggy as if you’d pulled it out of a swamp. But overly firm pasta is also absolutely disgusting, when you suddenly bite into a hard, floury core in the middle of the pasta strand without realizing it. In short: pay attention.
Spoon the sauce over the pasta
Sad but true: unless you come from an Italian famiglia, this is probably the image you have from the past of a plate of spaghetti with red sauce. A plate full of pale-yellow pasta strands with a steaming mound of tomato sauce in the middle. By now, collectively, we know better: you make the sauce in a sauté pan, or a roasting pan, or a frying pan with high sides—in short, whatever works as long as it’s big enough to add all the pasta with its cooking liquid clinging to it and stir it together. Because every pasta strand deserves a jacket of sauce, not just the lucky bastards that happened to be underneath the sauce in the middle. Related to this: the pasta shouldn’t drown in the sauce either. Yes, it’s all about precision, isn’t it…
Sprinkling pre-grated cheese on top
Don’t! It’s nasty, dusty and stale, and such a shame to ruin your carefully prepared meal at the last moment with this stuff. A small piece of Parmesan can bring you pleasure for a long time (you can even use the rind!) and if you want to spend a little less, there’s always good old Grana Padano; cheaper than Parmesan and tasty too. Buy a piece, grate away merrily yourself, and give your pasta the finish it deserves.
Also read:
- Recipe: quick scampi pasta by Gordon Ramsay
- 9x tips from chefs for the best, simplest pasta
- 5x 10-minute pastas
Source: Serious Eats
