Pasta can be considered one of the simplest and inexpensive dishes to make. You can either make your own pasta dough or you can pick up some from your local grocery store. As long as you have a pot to boil water in, you can make some pasta. Some recipes are simple like spaghetti meanwhile some can be complicated like rasta pasta [recipe here]. With our tips, you will be making the best pasta ever time and time again.
Measure Out Your Portion Size
I know this is a radical idea as the common practice is to empty the entire box of pasta or at least leave half, but measuring out your pasta will help you cook the best pasta ever. If you are cooking pasta with small shapes like farfalle, stelline, rotini or orzo, it is recommended that you do one cup of dry measure pasta per person. If you are cooking long noodles like spaghetti or fettuccine you can use a pasta measuring tool or you can use a kitchen scale and weigh out your servings. Remember that one serving is roughly two ounces.
Salt Your Pasta Water
You need to put salt in your pasta water. There is no escaping this if you want to make the best pasta. If you think a pinch of salt in the huge tub of cooking water is going to cut it, you are sadly mistaken. You have to add a healthy amount. For every pound of pasta, you need about one and a half tablespoons of salt. Always keep that in mind.
Use A Pot Big Enough For The Pasta
Avoid using small pasta pots. Remember that when pasta cooks, it expands. Your pasta has to have room to swell and get bigger. You do not want your pot to get too big because you could risk having your pot running over, which can be very messy and dangerous. As a rule of thumb, use a pot that can hold three or four quarts per pound of pasta of water. There are plenty of pots to pick from and you can start cooking your pasta in no time.
Do Not Break Long Pasta
If you are cooking long pasta, make sure you leave their length intact. If your pot is not big enough to get the long pasta in all at once, resist the urge to break the pasta in half. This is a no-no in almost all Italian dishes. Instead, put one end of the pasta in the boiling water and over time it will soften. Use a spoon to delicately push the rest of the exposed noodles into the boiling water the more they soften. Soon it will cook al dente.
Drizzle In Your Olive Oil After The Pasta Finishes Cooking
The common practice is to dose your cooking water with olive oil, but this is another no-no. When you do this, it makes it that much easier for your sauce to slip right off the pasta. We are not encouraging you to completely do away with adding olive oil to your pasta dishes, but add it once your pasta has finished cooking.
•How do you cook your pasta?
Thank you for reading!
