Pasta Cooking Time

Post by Hikikomori » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:15 PM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #14

notindexed wrote: post #6

You do not cook pasta by cooking time. “La pasta vuole compagnia” Pasta needs company! Never leave it alone, keep stiring once in a while and keep testing them. Best to drain it before you think it's "good" or al dente cause paste keeps cooking after beeing drained due to the heat and moisture/vapor. Also, most good pasta dishes get their final cooking in a large pan in the sauce with some cooking water. So usually y…

Don't know why this was downvoted. My best pasta comes from when I start testing it roughly 9 minutes in. Pasta softness depends on water softness, salinity, even ambient air pressure (though I am decidedly a low-lying person). Also pasta shape, and even quantity of pasta in the container (unless you have one of those huge boilers used in restaurants). The instructions on the box tend to overcook my pasta well beyond…

Post by meatmanek » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #98

Anyone know the name of that microscope? It doesnt look like it passes the light thru the way Im used to seeing [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscope#/media/File:Ukraini...

Post by GloriousKoji » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #96

jillesvangurp wrote: post #90

I don't tend to look at the clock for pasta. I just eyeball it and sample it. You can sort of see the pasta turning whiter from the outside in. Especially with my regular goto brands, I can see when it is done. I fish some out with a fork to verify usually when it's getting close. And I generally mix it with some sauce and it might sit in there for some minutes. So the cooking process actually continues after you rem…

> Speaking of pasta water, use less water for boiling past[a]… Or skip the boiling completely: https://www.seriouseats.com/food-lab-no-boil-baked-ziti-reci... "But who's to say that these two phases, water absorption and protein denaturing, have to occur at the same time? H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of the fantastic blog Ideas in Food asked themselves that very question, and what they found was this: You don…

Post by karlosvomacka » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

Night_Thastus wrote: post #106

I'm not sure if anyone else runs into this, but I feel cursed by bad pasta. Every time I boil it, I inevitably get pasta that is under-cooked in the center while mushy on the outside. I've had some times where I've had to boil it for several minutes more than recommended just to get the inside to cook fully. And even a few minutes in, the pasta seems to split apart into pieces. I've tried 'quieter' more simmer-y boil…

Post by comeonbro » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

banannaise wrote: post #99

comeonbro wrote: post #68

There is a dry pasta I use that, long story short, comes without a listed cooking time, whose correct cooking time I have experimentally determined to be ~18 minutes (though remarkably flexible, good at a much wider range than "normal"). I like it quite a lot (even though it seems to have the teflon-die surface rather than the bronze-die surface). I think greater pasta thickness is underexplored, and the teflon-vs-br…

Bronze-die pasta has an obvious and substantial textural difference from teflon-die pasta. The stickiness of the bronze requires more force from the extruder, but results in a rougher surface on the pasta, because it literally sticks to the die. Bronze-cut pasta holds sauce much better, especially for thinner sauces. It also makes your pasta water more starchy, since it loses more material during cooking. These thing…