Add a dash of olive oil to the boiling water. It won’t fucking help, but at least you can fuck up pasta in new and interesting ways.
Just use whole wheat pasta.
Stir literally once. No salt, no oil, no additional stirring.
What psychopath doesnt salt their pasta.
Afraid of a little NaCl?I can just salt it in my plate. Feels wasteful to put a ton of salt in the water and dump 99% of the salt in the sink anyway.
Plus, sometimes, I just feel like keeping it unsalted entirely. Depends on the sauce etc. You taste the subtle sweetness of the noodles more that way.
You’re mostly salting the surface when you salt at the table. If you salt the pot, the salt will dissolve in the water meaning it has an even distribution when it penetrate the pasta. Salting at the table means it will have saltier spots than others unless well tossed and tasted until even. But this only solves the distriution issue and not the penetration issue.
If you’re worried about wasting the salted water, you might get some milage with adding the pasta water to your sauce. In this case, using a smaller amount of water increases the starch to water ratio and reduces the total amount of water used. Carbonara used this approach while keeping it all in one pan.
Lightly salted pasta water, I feel, preserves the sweetness of the durum while still hiding the bitterness of the flour. Just my two cents.
Honestly I’ve tried salting a few times and for the little difference it makes… I don’t feel it’s worth the trouble.
But thanks for the info, I honestly hadn’t thought about the details.
Yeah no, that’s not how salt works. If you need to add salt at the table, you should have tasted and salted the dish better.
The exception is multiple people with very different salt tolerances, there’s just no good solution for that.
That’s a giant asterisk. My mom regularly oversalts her soup and I wish she didn’t. Some restaurants (especially fancy restaurants) salt their food so much it’s borderline inedible. There’s no good reason for them to do that. Arrogance perhaps.
Even my own tastes in salt vary greatly from day to day. So I wouldn’t even trust myself with getting the salt amount right for myself if I cooked for myself alone. As soon as any other human is implied, it just gets riskier.
No salt?
That’s true for any pasta
Serious comment on a shitpost community, but the easiest fix I found to pasta that sticks too much was to just buy better quality noodles. The cheapest stuff would stick like nothing else, while Barilla or any pasta cut on bronze dies never did.
easiest fix i found was to add half a cup/ladle of starchy pasta water to the sauce (halfway through the pasta boiling)
You stir your pasta?
Never, those fat clumps taste the best.
Mhmmm…Splätzle clumps :p
Ngl, they are the best feature of doing them yourself.
Test
…
I just boil barilla penne in my little rice cooker.
Put in the water, bit of salt, bit of pepper, bit of italian seasoning.
Bring to rolling boil. (this takes ~10min w/ my rice cooker)
Add pasta.
Do nothing, the pasta stirs itself because rolling boil, wait 5 minutes.
Get mitts, keep the lid on the cooker bowl thing, pour out 90%-95% of the water through the vent hole on the lid. Should take another minute or two to empty the water this way.
Slap what remains into a bowl.
Now presumably you also have some pre grated or shredded cheese, as well as some kind of italian sausage or something grilling up on a skillet… flash it if you have to, sear it a bit maybe, the pour marinara over the skillet.
Stir occasionally for maybe 2 minutes, at high heat, now dump all that onto the penne, and then sprinkle on the cheese.
Kablamo, italian pasta from a rice cooker.
Now… the real ‘chef’s kiss’… also have some italian bread that you’ve lightly braised with olive oil, dusted with a cheese crumble, and then toasted. Then, have olive oil and/or balsamic vinaggrette as a dipping sauce.
Bellissimo.
You can also dip the toasted bread into the pasta, no one is stopping you.
But yeah basically the trick with pasta is… don’t involve the pasta untill the water is well good and angrily boiling.
bread that you’ve lightly braised
You “lightly” sear and slow-simmer your bread? That must make it hard to toast afterwards…
i mean i’ll try premixing some italian seasoning and putting it in with my pasta, but your recipe scares me. why do i have to be naked in front of my pasta bacon? i’ve tried that. i have a scar (on my eyeball, so it’s not like the clothes would have helped, but like maybe the grease wouldn’t have popped so excitedly had my junk not been exposed) from baconing nakey.
Flashing your meats by way of cooking naked; it causes their muscle fibers to relax, as they now know you’re not a threat (like showing your “underbelly”). Now you can get a really good sear and lock-in the juices, as you and your meats reach an understanding of mutual vulnerability. You just can’t show any fear though, so no aprons allowed. Trust is essential for tenderness, and vice versa
I’m gonna get such a burn, aren’t i
… it is extremely funny that you extrapolated from that, that I cook naked.
… Because I actually do, quite often, now that you bring it up.
Teaches you to be precise and delicate, very quickly.
But uh yeah, I would at least wear an apron for bacon, anything with popping grease… sorry about your scar.
sorry about your scar.
i’m not. it looks cool.
… it does make for a funny drunk story too.
… its 100 fucking degrees, has been for over 48hrs straight now, never below 90…
…, ive ran out of witty puns, brain hitting thermal limits, going to melt now
Dude go drink some hot toddies. It is the only way through. Boiling
No really go find yourself some ice. Take care dude
Yeah it is probably cold/cool shower time… bllllaururrrrgfjhhhhh
Hydrate your pasta for an hour before cooking. Not only will it not stick, burn, or have undercooked bits, but it will fully cook within a minute. So you can just put it in your sauce directly and skip the boiling step.
Dissolve about a tablespoon of salt into the water when it starts boiling. This helps the pasta starch causing the stick to break up so pasta doesn’t stick to itself or the pot as much when it’s in.
Then just make sure the pasta has plenty of room to roll in, not crammed in a small pot. Obviously never put pasta into non-boiling water. Just like noodles.
If it’s happening on your plate, it’s just too starchy still. Get better pasta.
Salt does nothing to “break up” starch, it adds flavour to the pasta. Starch is definitely the reason your pasta is sticking but the fix is to cook it in more water. That said, if you want to use some pasta water in your sauce then stirring more frequently and using less water can be beneficial.
Or don’t put any salt in the water for utterly disgusting pasta.
