Nothing should be simpler than cooking pasta. After all, it’s just a matter of heating some water to a boil and tossing a wheat and egg-based product into a pot for a few minutes, right? But within this seemingly simple operation lies many potential pitfalls.

To avoid them, though, requires nothing more than a little thought and planning followed by some careful execution.

Start fresh.

That much should be obvious. Fresh food tastes better, provides better nutrition and makes for a nicer presentation. But how do you tell when pasta is no longer fresh, since it doesn’t show mold readily nor wilt? The date on the package is a clue. Tasting a sample of it raw is another route. The surest method is to make it yourself, which isn’t difficult.

Give it room.

Providing plenty of water for the pasta to move around in a pot is a good idea. That way it receives even heating, doesn’t stick together and retains plenty of the starch that helps sauces stick.

Some will ‘cheat’ and break spaghetti in half. But that makes rolling it up on the fork more difficult. Alternatively, rather than having half of it stick out of the water for two minutes, where it doesn’t heat at the same time as the rest, just get a bigger pan.

Don’t go halfway…

To save a few minutes, you could always parboil the pasta. This, not surprisingly, is a matter of controversy among chefs. Parboiling is partial cooking by boiling for a brief period. Then, when the moment you need to add the pasta arrives, it can be cooked the rest of the way in a shorter time. Professional restaurants do this in order to serve a plate of spaghetti (that would normally take six to eight minutes just to cook) in two minutes.

But surely you can spare an extra few minutes to avoid the downside of parboiling. It pre-softens the glutens, then sits while they relax. More boiling usually turns the pasta to mush. It’s very tricky to get it just right. If you don’t need to serve twenty people in a hurry, there’s usually no need for parboiling.

…unless you must.

If you must, add a pound of pasta to a pot of boiling water and return to a boil. Then cook for two minutes exactly, drain and rinse with icy water. Add a little olive oil to a container, add the spaghetti and stir, then refrigerate until you’re ready for the final boil later.

When you’re ready, take the softened pasta and cook it in boiling water for one to two minutes, then drain in a colander. If it’s done just right, the pasta will be tasty and ready for sauce.

Experiment

The best tip for aspiring cooks, though, is a surprisingly simple one: experiment. Professional cooks do this all the time. Sometimes their experiments are tried on customers, sometimes they’re reserved for friends or just themselves. But no one improves without practice. Every artist has to practice his or her craft to test new ideas.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS