Do I really need to add salt to the boiling water? How long should I cook it? And, perhaps the most crucial question of all, how do I know when the pasta is done? Here are simple steps and tricks to cooking pasta to perfection every time.
Cooking pasta: What to know
- Each kind of pasta has a cooking time, usually indicated on the package. Cooking pasta for less than the cooking time; hard pasta, cooking pasta for longer; softer pasta.
- “Al dente” means a little hard. Generally you get this type of pasta by cooking it for exactly the indicated cooking time but this varies.
Boiling pasta: The basics
- Add salt when water boils. Salted water takes longer to reach the boiling point. Adding salt immediately won’t impact the taste, but it will extend the time.
- After adding salt, wait, then put the pasta in. Put the pasta into the water only when it has returned to a boil, not before.
- Cook the pasta as indicated on the package.
Cooking pasta: Sauce
- Heat the sauce in a pan, strain the pasta out of the water and pour it immediately in to a pan where you are heating the sauce. Pour over one or two tablespoons of cooking water from the pot where you cooked the pasta. It can be used to adjust the consistency of your pasta sauce and finish the cooking time.
- The sauce can wait for the pasta to be cooked, but the cooked pasta cannot wait for the sauce. If you leave the drained pasta in the colander for even a short while, it starts getting all starchy on the outside, and before you know it, you have pasta clumps.
