Olive oil in pasta water, fact or fiction?

Is your spaghetti sticking together? Oh, then you should just add a splash of olive oil to the pasta water. Or not?

The idea is that the oil creates a protective, soft and slippery layer around the strand of pasta, so it no longer sticks to its fellow strands. If you’ve ever tried stirring olive oil into water, you know that it won’t work: the oil floats on top of the water, and the pasta, bubbling away beneath the surface, gets absolutely nothing from it. So using olive oil to prevent sticking is nonsense.

Olive oil in pasta water: Italians know better

Where does this idea come from? In Italy, no one adds oil to pasta water. They know better; they have better uses for that delicious olive oil. When spaghetti and macaroni were first cooked in the Netherlands, housewives didn’t really know what to do with them. They cooked them for as long as potatoes and served them separately alongside slavink and cauliflower florets. Well, if you let spaghetti cook for twenty minutes, it does indeed turn into a mushy lump that sticks to everything. Also bear in mind that the spaghetti sold in supermarkets in the 1970s wasn’t exactly the best quality…

Salty pasta water

So what do you do about pasta that sticks? Cook your pasta properly. Use a large pot with plenty of boiling water, so it doesn’t cool down too much when you add the pasta. Add a generous spoonful of salt, because pasta water should be as salty as soup. And don’t cook it for too long. Keep an eye on the cooking time on the package and taste your pasta. The test where you throw a strand against the kitchen tiles (does it stick? Done!), also turns out to be a myth – so you can skip that.

Before serving, mix the pasta and sauce together, so your strands are deliciously coated in sauce on all sides. Do you rinse your pasta before mixing it with the sauce? Stop doing that right away. And that pasta water? Never throw it away!

Also read:

• 5 pasta rules for the perfect pasta
• Eat pasta like a true Italian
• Italian dishes you will never, ever get in Italy