Directions. Add pasta, 1 tspn. parsley flakes, dried onion (vary amount depending on how much you like onions), sea salt and pepper to a pot of water large enough to. If you binge on salty foods, you'll likely consume excess sodium -- a substance in table salt, and an ingredient in many cured, smoked, canned and.

The Food Lab: A New Way to Cook Pasta? Perfect Pasta. [Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez- Alt]Gemelli with Asparagus, Ricotta, Arugula, and Lemon Zest. Think you know how to boil pasta? Think again: Here's the recipe!

My wife and doorman have got a pretty sweet deal. All they have to do is nothing, and they get hot, fresh food delivered to them several times a day. Of course, they do have to be content with eating, say, fried chicken and nothing else for a month as I test a recipe, and of course there's the never- ending supply of burgers, but all in all, they've pretty much got it made. So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I walked into the kitchen and saw my wife cooking, and my even greater surprise when I realized she was cooking pasta—in our smallest pot—at a simmer.

The water was barely covering the noodles as she stirred them to keep them submerged."You can't do that!" I exclaimed before launching into a diatribe about how when cooking pasta, there's always got to be at least one thing rolling, and you'd probably prefer it to be the boil of a large pot of water, and not the Italian grandmothers in their graves. She, being the smarty- pants that she is, of course came back with the best question she could have asked: "But why?"Obviously, my dear, you haven't cooked a lot of pasta in your time. The pasta will stick together. The starch will become too concentrated. It will cook unevenly.

It will become mushy. It will be nine different sorts of horrible, each one worse than the one before. It is scientific fact that you will end up with an inedible starchy, sticky blob. Eat Clean 7 Day Meal Plans.

That you are reading this now is a good indicator that none of that happened. In fact, in an incredible blow to my ego, and seemingly defying the unbreakable laws of physics, the pasta came out totally fine. Of course, I politely—make that sulkily—declined to eat any more than a single tester piece, citing potential paradoxes in the space- time continuum as my reason). SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that not only do you not need a large volume of water to cook pasta, but in fact, the water does not even have to be boiling. Wait. What? Let me explain: I, and every other trained cook I know, have been taught that when cooking pasta, you need to have a large pot of boiling water.

It turns out that not only do you not need a large volume of water to cook pasta, but in fact, the water does not even have to be boiling. Wait. What? Let me explain.

If my wife turned out to be right, just think of the pastabilities!* This could turn my whole pasta- cooking regime on its head. Some serious testing was in order—I called downstairs and told my doorman that I hope he likes noodles, cause that's gonna be his lunch for a few days.*Thorough apologies for that and any other horrible pasta puns that may or may not appear in this article. Watching the Pot. Food Tv Schedule. This actually wasn't the first time I had heard of this concept. Harold Mc. Gee wrote about it in the New York Times about a year ago. His conclusion? It works, but requires constant attention. Stirring a pot of pasta constantly for 1.

Read the Help! Added too much salt to tomato sauce discussion from the Chowhound Home Cooking, Pasta Sauce food community. Join the discussion today. Heat the broiler. Put fennel seeds in a small, self-sealing plastic bag, and crush with a rolling pin. Add parsley, brown sugar, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon. Pasta (Italian pronunciation:) is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, with the first reference dating to 1154 in Sicily. Also commonly used to refer to the. Got questions about Salt Intake and High Blood Pressure? Ask Joanne Larsen, Registered Dietitian and nutrition counselor.

1. Combine pasta, tomatoes, onion, garlic, red-pepper flakes, basil, oil, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and water in a large. The difference between bland pesto pasta and a truly mind-blowing version? How much salt you put in that pasta water. So how much salt should you put in pasta water? For many of us, pasta is the very first meal we make for ourselves. But just because it takes little more than a pot of boiling water doesn't mean the process can't.

I mostly ignored his findings. But did I judge too soon? Do I really have to stir the pot?

Here are the most common reasons I've heard for why you need to use a large volume of water: Reason 1. A large volume of water has a higher thermal mass, and thus keeps its temperature better than a small volume. When you drop pasta into it, it thus re- achieves a boil much faster.

If you were to let the pasta sit in lukewarm water as it comes back up to temperature, it would be overcooked and mushy. Reason 2. A large volume of water at a rolling boil helps keep the pasta separated from each other. The pieces are constantly agitated by the water and thus cook more evenly with fewer clumps. Reason 3. A small volume of water will become too starchy as the pasta cooks.

This will make the pasta more sticky when you drain it. Reason 4. That's the way grandma did it. Those are some bold claims indeed. I decided to take a closer look at them, one by one. To do this, it's important to first consider exactly what happens to a piece of pasta as it cooks the traditional way, in a large pot of water. Pasta is made up of flour, water, and sometimes eggs.

Essentially, it's composed of starch and protein, and not much else. Now starch molecules come aggregated into large granules that resemble little water balloons. As they get heated in a moist environment, they absorb more and more water until they finally burst, releasing the starch molecules into the water. That's why pasta always seems to stick together at the beginning of cooking—its the starch molecules coming out and acting as a sort of glue, binding the pieces to each other, and to the pot. After this stage, the starch eventually washes away into the water (assuming that you separated the pieces of pasta by stirring), and the pasta pieces become individuals again. As the pasta cooks, the starches gradually absorb more and more water, becoming softer and more edible, while the proteins begin to denature, adding structure to the noodle (something that is much more obvious when cooking soft fresh egg- based pastas). When the stars are aligned, you'll manage to pull the pasta from the water just when the proteins have lent enough structure to keep the noodles strong and pliant, and starches have just barely softened to the perfect stage—soft, but with a bite—known as al dente.

Testing the Waters. For my first test I used gemelli. It's a nice, medium- sized pasta that I figured would give a good indication of how both thick and thin pastas would fare.

I brought three separate pots of water to a boil. One with 6 quarts of water, one with 3 quarts, and one with a mere quart and a half.

After the pots came to a boil, I added the pasta. Immediately, I noticed that despite claims that a large pot of water will hold its boil better, the difference in the time it took for each pot to come back to a full boil was no more than a few seconds at most.

In fact, the pot with 3 quarts actually came back to a boil faster than the one with 6 quarts! Fact is, when you are adding an equal amount of pasta to each pot, it may cause the temperature of the smaller pot of water to drop more drastically, but bringing the smaller volume back to a boil requires the exact same amount of energy as it does to bring the larger pot back to a boil.

Since a burner puts out energy at a fixed rate, your pot will return to boiling temperature (2. F) at the same rate no matter how much water you have. Indeed, since a large pot of water has greater surface area (and thus more places for it to lose energy to the outside environment), it may actually take longer to bring a large pot of water back to a boil.**Case in point: at my old apartment in Cambridge, the burners were so weak that a large pot of water would not boil at all unless I put a lid on it. Granted, during the time it takes for the water to come back up to a boil, the smaller pot will be at a lower temperature than the bigger pot, but it's only for a short period of time—is that enough to make a difference in the finished pasta? Nope. Tasted side by side, all three noodles were indistinguishable from each other. I've heard it said that cooking pasta at a higher temperature also ensures textural variance throughout the piece—a firm core supplying the al dente bite, surrounded by softer, more fully cooked layers around the outside.

I took a close cross- sectional look at a cooked noodle, and found that once again, in all three cases, the difference was unnoticeable. It's tough to make out in a photograph, but you can actually see the al dente core—it appears as a slightly chalky looking white ring right in the center of the noodle. To confirm what my mouth was already telling me, I also weighed each batch of pasta before and after cooking. If the batches in the smaller pots were really cooking more slowly and thus getting waterlogged as has been suggested, you'd expect them to absorb more water, when in fact, all three batches had absorbed exactly the same amount (roughly 7. Clearly, it's time to say "pasta la vista" to Reason 1.

A Sticky Situation.