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Pasta Cooking Time

jefftk.com

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Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#61

Post by dang »

xnx wrote: post #52
losvedir wrote: post #42

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…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948177 There's so much superstition and ritual around food preparation (especially coffee). Tested processes are extremely rare.

Added to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights!

(I mention this so people can know the list exists, and hopefully email us more nominations when they see an unusually great and interesting comment.)

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#62

Post by IAmBroom »

jefftk wrote: post #59
nahumba wrote: post #47

"I boiled some water, put in the pasta, and starting at 9min I removed a piece every 15s until I got to 14:30:" When you remove pasta, you Cool down the water. So its not the same reault as actual 15 minutes cooking

How does removing pasta cool down the water? I was putting in a slotted spoon, and removing one piece at a time. The water remained at a full boil throughout.

No, they're right. You took out at least a nanojoule of thermal energy.

Did you factor that in to your next tasting?

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#63

Post by derbOac »

cudgy wrote: post #55

Interesting. I live at low altitudes and I almost always have to cook noodles longer than the instructions on the box. Now I only use Italian pasta like DeCecco or Rummo.

Yeah, I think usually the recommended time is an underestimate for me, but it depends strongly on the brand and type of pasta. I usually treat the recommended time as a ballpark of when to think about monitoring it closely if I'm busy prepping other things. Usually the first time I cook a given type of a given brand I'll watch it more closely and then try to remember what seemed best.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#64

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

seeeeebt wrote: post #4

In the UK pasta instructions tend to be 9-11mins. 15mins is nuts, especially for the small cheap pasts he's using here. "More for your dollar". Yum!

It depends on the type and shape of pasta. Whole wheat pasta takes longer than white flour pasta. 7 min for whole wheat sphagetti, 9 min for rotini.

13-15 min for that rigatoni definitely sounds excessive.

The "throw it at the wall, and see if it sticks" test is about right!

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#65

Post by zahlman »

travisjungroth wrote: post #12

There’s an American fear of “not enough”. I think the overboiled pasta is informed by a fear of undercooked food, but also just this general not-enoughness. It’s the same fear that makes someone buy a truck that can hold the biggest load they can imagine needing, rather than accepting they might need to make two trips or rent a bigger truck every few years (or never) and get a truck half the size.

Meh, connoisseurs would probably say my pasta is overcooked; I don't care. I've tried it other ways and I don't like what's supposedly best.

I'm Canadian and I don't think this is an American thing at all. Certainly my lifestyle is nothing like stereotypical US lifestyle.

Also: there's a certain kind of machismo associated with liking steak rare, which is hard to reconcile with overcooking other things habitually.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#66

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

tirant wrote: post #20

Another advice for cooking pasta: The water does not need to be boiling the whole time. You can boil the pasta just 2 minutes, turn off the stove, close the lid and leave the pasta in the water for the rest of the time until reaching the desired cooking time, plus around one more minute. The result will be the same and you would have saved round 80% of the energy.

I don't do this, but I'm impatient so I start with scalding hot tap water. Not sure if there is any energy saving (or waste) there, since it takes at least 30 sec for hot tap water to reach max temp.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#68

Post by comeonbro »

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-bronze die thing as the highest determinant of pasta quality, while not nothing, is slightly-overstated r*dditry.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#69

Post by saaaaaam »

This is crazy. I cook my pasta for 9 minutes max. Often 8. Because by the time you’ve taken it off the stove, drained it and added it to your sauce any longer and it will be mush.

But this guy is starting at 9 minutes. I worry for American food.

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