Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pasta Cooking Time

jefftk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 211 posts

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#81

Post by alexjplant »

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…

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 that others cringe at - my guitar-playing buddy probably feels the same way every time I drag my digital rig onto stage instead of real amp and pedalboard.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#83

Post by fsckboy »

kshahkshah wrote: post #10

The cooking time is proportional to the thickness. General advice on pasta: * a quality dry pasta (dececco e.g) will have ~14 grams of protein per 100 grams dry weight, this is really essential * bronze die cut will help soak up more sauces * you do not need the full volume of water the box says, but start your timer once the water has returned to a boil * once it has gotten to a boil, keep it boiling, but it doesn't…

>if you're struggling to tell if it's "done", take a bite of a single piece, and look at the cross section a bit of "white" in the middle means that hasn't hydrated fully. Maybe you like a bit of "toothsome"ness ('al dente'), maybe you don't

coupla quibbles, one of which you may not be guilty of:

toothsome means delicious, not any sort of mouthfeel (though I agree, it would be a great word for al dente, which means "to the teeth")

the bit of white in the middle is raw, and not al dente. al dente is the "rubbery snap" of biting a noodle and not the "concrete snap" of a raw interior. somehow (like all across NYC) there are so many chefs who think al dente means uncooked center. it does not. handmade egg noodle pasta (which has no dry interior) and extruded hard durum wheat pasta both can both be served al dente.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#84

Post by fsckboy »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #41
ebiester wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cook it in a lot less water, and add a quarter teaspoon of corn starch, you can get the same effect. Play with the ratios to taste.

I prefer to use semolina, since that's the same flour the pasta is made of. I find corn starch can add an "off" flavor.

corn starch is widely used because it has no taste raw; a flour based roux needs to be "browned" in oil to eliminate the floury taste (i've tasted the grain of wheat from a plant in a field: tastes floury)

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#85

Post by rs186 »

oulipo2 wrote: post #27

Also something I discovered recently: making home-made pasta is REALLY EASY, and quite delicious. For basic ravioli you need about 30min from going from raw ingredients (a bit of flour, one or two eggs, some salt) to a ravioli

How much time for cleanup?

I did this once or twice and decided I was not that into pasta to justify making my own.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#86

Post by cestith »

spiffytech wrote: post #43

> I generally find the numbers printed on pasta boxes for cooking time far too high: I'll set the timer for a minute below their low-end "al dente" time Interesting! I generally add three minutes to the recommended cooking time, otherwise the pasta still feels stiff. There's no accounting for taste, is there?

How hard is your water and how high above sea level do you live?

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#88

Post by spiffytech »

cestith wrote: post #86
spiffytech wrote: post #43

> I generally find the numbers printed on pasta boxes for cooking time far too high: I'll set the timer for a minute below their low-end "al dente" time Interesting! I generally add three minutes to the recommended cooking time, otherwise the pasta still feels stiff. There's no accounting for taste, is there?

How hard is your water and how high above sea level do you live?

Very soft. Elevation is nearly sea-level.

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#89

Post by ilikepi »

t1234s wrote: post #87

There was a similar post in the past but had to do with getting the perfect hard boiled egg.

Not sure what post you have in mind, but Kenji Alt-Lopez's video[1] on the topic is excellent. If I remember right, it's based on work he did with a well-known food publication (or show or something)...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb0Elaa6gxY

Re: Pasta Cooking Time

#90

Post by jillesvangurp »

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 remove it from the water. Cooking a bit longer in the sauce and shorter in the water is going to help the flavor and texture. There's no point in being hyper precise about the cooking time and then letting it sit for five minutes or whatever in the sauce. Nobody ever measures that time. Add pasta water to loosen the sauce if it absorbs too much.

Speaking of pasta water, use less water for boiling paste; not more. Many TV cooks get this completely wrong. They'll dump 100 grams of pasta in a gallon of water. Complete waste of time, energy, and salt (assuming they season the water correctly).

Especially if you plan to use the starchy water for your sauce, you need to use as little water as you can get away with. If you use too much water, there's not going to be a lot of starch in there. If it still looks like clear water by the time your pasta is cooked, you used way too much water. You might as well just use tap water for your sauce. The water should be cloudy not clear. As long as it doesn't cook dry, it's fine. About 2-3x the dry weight should be plenty for most pasta types. Restaurants tend to reuse their pasta water for multiple batches of pasta so they'll use more water. But the water has lots of starch after a few batches.

Post reply on HN