Italians furious, now at fellow countrymen: this is no way to cook pasta??!!
He came under fire from his fellow countrymen, but Italian physicist and Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi fearlessly drew attention to a cooking method that touches on the deepest emotions Italians have about pasta. Want to know what his argument is for cooking pasta in an energy-efficient way—and what the reactions were? Read on.
Parisi recently said something along these lines in a Facebook post: that you can cook pasta for 2 minutes in boiling water, after which the pasta water no longer needs to boil for the pasta to cook. He once again quoted the words of the (also Italian!) Alessandro Busiri Vici, who said that if you turn off the heat after the water has boiled, you can let the pasta continue cooking in the covered pan, saving as much as eight minutes of gas consumption.
Passive or active
What is this method called? Passive cooking. Yes, passive in a completely different way from trudging to the snack bar for a frikandel, and potentially good for saving as much as 47% in energy use and carbon emissions (according to calculations by food organization Union Italiane Food).
Active outrage
Less passive? The angry reactions from a great many Italians. They were boiling with rage, and several chefs were not passive about it either. The pasta would certainly eventually cook through, they said, but it would be ‘very poor’ and ‘become sticky and taste overcooked’—some of the reactions from Italian chefs quoted in an article by Business Insider.
Uselessly wasting energy
We, too, have often expressed very strong opinions about how pasta should or should not be cooked. But according to one of Parisi’s fellow countrymen and fellow scientists, Italian chemistry professor Dario Bressanini, the real question is why we do pointless things that waste energy (such as cooking pasta in a huge pan of vigorously boiling water). Below you can watch a YouTube video in which he illustrates his argument, under the rather hilarious name The Friendly Neighborhood Chemist:
Barilla joins the discussion
Who is clearly also willing to think along about solutions to the current energy crisis (and the associated financial worries in households)? None other than the huge Italian pasta manufacturer Barilla. They have even gone so far as to include, on their packaging, preparation times for cooking their pasta using the passive method alongside the traditional cooking times. Take a look here—and we certainly call that thinking outside the box:
Read also:
- Italians lose it on Twitter: THIS IS NOT PASTA
- 25 types of pasta, because none of us can ever get enough
- This is the best supermarket pasta brand, according to Italians
