A Guide to Cooking Pasta

When you are learning to cook the best place to start is with pasta. Cooking with pasta is easy and opens up so many possibilities that it will surely save you from starvation while you tackle more challenging skills.

I am sure that you can make pasta very complicated but here I am stripping it bare. Pasta aficionados look away.

Broadly speaking there are two types of pasta — fresh egg pasta and dried pasta. Fresh egg pasta is made out of wheat flour and eggs while the dried varieties are made out of durum wheat and water. Fresh egg pasta will cook in under 4 minutes and increase in volume by about 75% while a good quality penne will take 10 to 12 minutes and will double in volume.

What Shape of Pasta Should I Use?

The DeCecco website lists 113 different pasta shapes but don’t worry too much. I think you are supposed to eat the the shorter pasta shapes with the chunkier sauces — sauces that contain things that can be impaled on a fork, while long pasta is more suited to smooth silky sauces. Go with the flow.

So How Much is a Portion?

This will not only depend on the individual but also on what you are serving your pasta with — are you stirring in a tablespoon of pesto or using your pasta as a bed for half a kilo of meatballs?

Dried pasta is around 70% carbohydrate so I would go with 70g to 75g of uncooked pasta as a portion as that will give you 50g of carbs and around 250kcal to kick off with. This is actually not a bad-sized portion particularly if you’re serving it with a hearty sauce but that’s just a guide.

What Size of Pan and How Much Water?

Traditionally you use a large pan with gallons of water but this doesn’t really achieve much. You just need to make sure the water sits a couple of inches above the pasta to allow for expansion and the pan is deep enough to allow you to stir without spillage. For long pasta like spaghetti you may want to use a deeper pan but either way, you will need to slowly push the pasta down as it cooks to submerge it.

How Much Salt Should I Add to the Water?

Pasta needs salt. I would recommend about 1 teaspoon per litre and take it from there — adjust to your personal preference. It may seem a lot but remember that you are not going to ingest all that salt unless you decide to drink the pasta water.

“The water should be as salty as the summer sea.”

Samin Nosrat

How do I Stop the Pasta from Sticking Together in the Pan?

When the pasta hits the boiling water it releases excess starch causing the pasta pieces to stick together but stirring is all that’s required. After a minute or so you can leave the pasta to its own devices although, in my experience, it’s always best to keep half an eye on it, giving it a quick stir from time to time. Adding oil to the water won’t prevent the pasta sticking together.

How Do I Know When it’s Cooked?

Experience makes this easier to judge but it’s always best to just fish a bit out and try it — be careful though as some of those little shapes do like to harbour a nasty splash of scalding water.

Adding the Sauce

Once your pasta is cooked you should combine it with your sauce immediately. If it is an oil-based sauce such as pesto then use your tongs and toss your pasta until it’s coated. If it is a tomato or cream-based sauce then combine the hot pasta with the hot sauce and stir.

If your sauce isn’t ready and your pasta is cooked then you can use some extra virgin olive oil to prevent the pasta from congealing but be aware that this may then prevent your sauce from sticking to the pasta.

Pro Tip

The starch in the pasta water can serve to bind and thicken the sauce and in the case of oily sauces, help the process of emulsification leading to a creaminess that allows any sauce to cling to the pasta.

A minute or two before your pasta is cooked lift it out of the water with a pair of tongs and/or a spider (depending on your pasta shape) and dump it straight into the sauce. By doing it this way you will probably have transferred enough water with the pasta and if not you can always use a ladle to take some more out of the pot.

Now, continue to cook until your pasta is bathed in the silky sauce of your choice and cooked to your liking.

Now you can cook pasta. You will never starve. Phew!