Pasta Cooking Time

Post by triceratops » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 1:20 AM 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 bromuro » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:06 AM UTC

foofoo12 wrote: post #40

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.

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:19 AM UTC

nyrikki wrote: post #129

nkurz wrote: post #125

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…

I can't answer on the acidic water question but as someone at 7000 ft; I have been told that ~3000 ft is when you need to make adjustments in some foods. 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.

Post by ars » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:55 AM UTC

Luker88 wrote: post #80

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…

> and the teflon-vs-bronze die thing ....is slightly-overstated r*dditry So, there's this thing that I heard, but I never found confirmation, maybe someone here can help. Apparently bronze by itself can't be used as a cooking utensil since it loses material too easily. When they use bronze for extruding and such, they have to coat it in teflon to have a legal bypass. But it all remains kinda brittle, and now you are…

Post by t-3 » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:58 AM UTC

senderista wrote: post #130

Cue shaming Americans for liking their pasta more done than al dente, as though it’s some moral failing. I will eat my pasta exactly as done as I like it, thank you very much.