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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Cooking pasta correctly is an art, but there are some basic rules to follow if you want consistent results.
If you want to avoid this situation in particular, take the pasta out just before it's done along with about 1/4 cup of the water and add both to your sauce and finish cooking the pasta there. You'll end up with pasta that is cooked perfectly with a sauce that readily adheres to each noodle and no stickyness
This is the way. Once I learned the pasta water trick, I never looked back.
Don't you just end up with shitty, watery sauce?
The pasta water helps thicken the sauce and makes it more stickier, same way the cornstarch water slurry works.
No
Let me rephrase: how do you NOT end up with shitty, watery sauce?
Well, you only use a bit of the pasta water, it depends how much tomato sauce you’re making.
Pull out about a cup of the pasta water.
Dump the pasta. Don’t rinse the pasta, ever.
Now either slowly pour in a bit of the pasta water into the sauce, stir it, look at it, there should be a sheen. The pasta water makes the red sauce very silky.
Or, take a frying pan, turn the heat on. Add butter and olive oil. When the butter gets melted, dump diced veggies (or not) into the pan. Cook the vegetables to almost desired tenderness. Dump garlic in for no more than one minute.
Dump some pasta water in, just a little, and throw the pasta on top. Mix it up. After a short time, 15 seconds maybe, pour the red sauce on top of the spaghetti and veggies, stir.
After about a minute or so, add pasta water, just a bit. Stir. Taste. Is it shiny and silky? If not add a little more water. Repeat until it’s tasty.
Rinsing the pasta is fine for making a cold pasta salad or something like that, removing the free starch stops it from sticking. But for a dish with sauce, definitely don't rinse.
The sauce itself should be quite thick before adding the pasta water. I let my bolognese reduce for at least an hour and a half before starting to boil water for the pasta.
Let the water evaporate, duh. You can also add cream or cheese to the sauce.