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Pasta Cooking Time

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Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#141

Post by ch4s3 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #113
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…

> You do not cook pasta by cooking time I learned this the hard way moving to an altitude where water boils around 200°F. Just threw out the timers and started obsessively tasting. Flip side is I make fresh pasta more often because the active work of kneading and shaping is more interesting than standing around eating uncooked pasta.

That would be really unfortunate if you were trying to make a pour over coffee at 205°F.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#142

Post by laurencerowe »

walthamstow wrote: post #95
alexjplant wrote: post #81

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.

This was my experience growing up in Britain in the 90s. Fortunately one of my housemates at university worked in kitchens made a point of showing me how much tastier it was when the pasta was properly coated with the sauce.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#143

Post by cortesoft »

Arch-TK wrote: post #120
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…

With long pasta it's not hard, with a tiny bit of experience and attention, to learn how it physically behaves when it's either done or close to it. It's about as easy to learn (experientially) how much it changes minute by minute at that point. I will stir it to see how it behaves, as soon as I catch it behaving like pasta which is may be al dente I will sample it, if it's still a bit too hard, I can more or less te…

> I think attempting to formalise cooking techniques is a funny sort of thing... The people trying to do it are clearly into cooking, but if you really enjoy cooking, you're probably better off learning these things intuitively and spending your time learning other skills to expand your general cooking ability.

Some people like to create rules and systems for things, some people like to grow their intuition. Everyone can cook how they want.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#144

Post by marak830 »

triceratops wrote: post #131
CharlesW wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you do that aren't you just eating uncooked flour and egg?

It cooks in the liquid from the surrounding ingredients. You can do this with a sufficiently wet enough Lasagna quite easily.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#145

Post by cortesoft »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #135
nyrikki wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of those wild things about being from Illinois is I don't even think I know anyone who knows their altitude, much less how to adjust cooking instructions because of it!

Well, the highest point in Illinois is only just over 1000 feet, so it isn't really necessary to adjust any cooking for elevation anywhere in the state.

People who live in mountain areas are used to changing elevation quickly, and you really notice the difference. They will know their altitudes.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#147

Post by frm88 »

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…

This sounded interesting, so I went and read a few articles. It seems, dies come in 5 categories: bronze, brass, steel, teflon coated (various bases) and plastic [0].

The bronze (and even brass) are uncoated and don't seem to lose material, on the contrary, they seem to get a patina with use. From what I read, bronze pasta is extruded at lower speed and temperature to account for the material (and the desired texture of the pasta). From an engineering point of view, this article give more insight [1].

[0] https://flavor365.com/pasta-die-materials-the-ultimate-guide...

[1] https://pastasty.com/the-engineering-of-extrusion-how-bronze...

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#148

Post by cortesoft »

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.

This whole thread is full of some serious pasta snobs. I always find it funny how upset people get with others who don't want to do whatever task is being discussed in the purest form. I use a timer for my pasta so I can do other things while it cooks, and it isn't that big a difference to me.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#149

Post by TychoCelchuuu »

triceratops wrote: post #131
CharlesW wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If you do that aren't you just eating uncooked flour and egg?

[dead]

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#150

Post by culopatin »

laurencerowe wrote: post #140
themafia wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a spaghetti cooker that works like a rice cooker. I put in the precise amount of water and then when it's all absorbed it signals me that it is done.

I've been cooking variations on this lazy Instant Pot spaghetti recipe for a few years now. I expect Italians would be horrified but it's extremely low effort and very tasty! https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/instant-pot-spaghetti/ I substitute the can of sauce for a 28oz can of tomatoes, and cook some onion and garlic in with mince instead of adding onion and garlic powder.

The pictures are not selling that well at all. Looks about 2min overcooked.
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