121–130 of 211 posts
Pasta is a bit like toast. It's undercooked for most of the time and only ready for a tiniest fraction of the time. The rest of the time it's overdone. Although I heard a reason for the toast thing the other day. As it slowly toasts it gets a tiny bit darker. Once darker it doesn't reflect as much energy, hence absorbs it and result is exponential roasting levels.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True facts. Make a pan sauce while your pasta is cooking then throw it straight inwith some of the starchy water to thicken things up. I die inside every time somebody dumps a jar of Ragu into a drained pot of overcooked spaghetti. Hell, there are ways to dress up jar sauce in a one-pot fashion that only take a few minutes more but a lot of people simply aren't interested. Conversely I'm sure there's stuff that I do…
> I die inside every time somebody dumps a jar of Ragu into a drained pot of overcooked spaghetti. I can give you even worse than that. It was common in the 00s in Britain, maybe still is, to serve pasta as a bowl of plain, dry boiled spaghetti with sauce poured on top.
Looking back, I suspect it was more that the contrast of the sauce and spaghetti colours made it "pop" more onscreen. Though it's possibly unsurprising that could feed /back/ into how people thought it "should" be served.
Hopefully tptacek shows up... this is sort of offtopic but made me remember some comments of his from years ago here on HN. Something about the "rehydrating" step not having to be the same as the "cooking" step. I feel like he said you could end up with some pretty interesting and terrific pasta by _soaking_ it for a while (not cooking it), and then cooking it for a much shorter time later. Does this ring a bell for…
The rehydration thing is still a killer trick --- especially for Mac and Cheese.
For people who enjoyed this post, I highly recommend J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s “The Food Lab”, which is a kind of science approach to home cooking. He also has a very good YouTube channel.
Much of cooking is physics and chemistry. "The science of YUM"
We've noticed that dry pasta almost always takes significantly longer to cook than the packaging suggests. I don't think we are overcooking, but I suppose that could be true. It could also just be bad instructions on the packages, but I think there is something more.
We are at a slight altitude (2000 ft/ 600m) which has some effect, but cooking times are sometimes 50% longer than claimed, and I'm doubtful the 4F / 2.2C boiling difference would have this large an effect.
We also have quite acidic well water. I know that this affects cooking times for dry beans, but I haven't seen much about the effect on pasta. Has anyone looked into this? My quick attempt at searching didn't turn up much.
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet: I've been wondering how much acidity affects pasta cooking time. We've noticed that dry pasta almost always takes significantly longer to cook than the packaging suggests. I don't think we are overcooking, but I suppose that could be true. It could also just be bad instructions on the packages, but I think there is something more. We are at a slight altitude (2000 ft/ 600m) whic…
That could actually be a lot of what I'm seeing! I live in Somerville (just outside Boston) with MWRA water, which is kept at a pH of 9.0 to 9.5 to reduce lead leeching from old pipes. Reading a bit, it seems like that could indeed cut a couple minutes off the cooking time.
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…
(On the other hand, I really like pasta with very different texture on the inside and outside, and so strongly prefer thicker shapes. Angel hair is one of my least favorite s.)
If the advertised cooking times make your pasta mushy, the problem might be the quality of your pasta..
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet: I've been wondering how much acidity affects pasta cooking time. We've noticed that dry pasta almost always takes significantly longer to cook than the packaging suggests. I don't think we are overcooking, but I suppose that could be true. It could also just be bad instructions on the packages, but I think there is something more. We are at a slight altitude (2000 ft/ 600m) whic…
Even at ~15F / ~7C lower it only takes a few min more for pasta for me usually, I can always just use the max on the package and then test from there.
ETA: That is with a silicone boil over lid at full rolling boil, which may impact the time also.