A staple across many cultures and a perfect, nutritious budget conscious meal. Start at your skill level and advance as necessary
Beginner
There are two types of pasta.
- Dry Pasta
- Wet Pasta
Dry pasta which is made with flour (usually durum or semolina flour), water and maybe a little salt and then air dried. Regular boxed pasta is what is typically used for dry pasta though you can also make it and dry it yourself.
When cooking with dry pasta it’s important the pasta be high quality. This doesn’t mean expensive, it just means to use brands that are known for higher standards. In Italy, DeCecco is popular and Barilla is good as well. You can usually find one of these on sale. Try different brands until you find one that you like and remember to check the expiration dates. Old pasta tends to fall apart when it cooks.
Good, dry pasta doesn’t break or fall apart when you cook it (assuming you don’t overcook it). It has a good taste and texture from the higher quality flour. It should be cooked until the texture is slightly firm. This is referred to as cooking the pasta al denté.
Wet pasta is a pasta this is made with flour, egg, a bit of water and salt. Wet pasta is typically not dried but boiled fresh after it is made. You may have seen this sometimes referred to as “fresh” pasta. They are generally the same thing. Wet pasta is often what is used to make ravioli, manicotti, cavatelli, and gnocchi. The last two are special styles of wet pasta are substitute the wet part or dry part of the regular pasta recipe.
Gnocchi is a wet pasta where some of the flour is substituted with cooked and riced potato. Sometimes, gnocchi recipes additionally subsitute some of the egg with fresh ricotta cheese which makes Ricotta Gnocchi. Cavatelli is often made with ricotta. To be clear here, the ricotta is not being used as a stuffing as with manicotti, and ravioli. Instead, it is mixed with the flour to create the dough itself. This helps create a rich and soft texture. You can learn more about that when we cover wheat and gluten in an upcoming ingredient lesson.
Wet pasta is the style of pasta that I was in charge of at the Italian restaurant I worked at. We took the basic wet pasta recipe and modified it by adding ingredients while usually reducing the moisture (either eggs or water or both). For instance, we made squid ink linguine, artichoke linguine, and spinach fettuccine to name a few.
Cooking Pasta
First, always salt your water before adding your pasta. Adding salt to cooked pasta does not allow for the salted water to penetrate the dough of the pasta, so always salt the water first. Generally, the ratio is about one tablespoon of kosher salt to 6 quarts of water. You will need enough water to cover the pasta with a few inches of water. For long dry pastas you don’t need to cover the pasta with water when you first add it. It will soften quickly and eventually sink below the water level.
Remember to stir pasta often especially in the beginning to prevent the pasta from sticking together. The pasta sticking together does not only ruin the look of the dish but it inhibits the cooking of the parts that are stuck together by altering the pasta’s thickness resulting in undercooked pieces.
For dry pasta cooking times are often written on the box (generally 8-12 minutes) and those times are a good starting point to use. Stir it in often to prevent sticking. You do not want to cook the pasta until it gets mushy. Pasta should always have a bit of a ‘bite’. You can test the pasta for doneness by taking a piece and tasting it. This will give you an idea of how much longer it needs to cook. Remember that it changes quickly so pasta that is almost done may only need another minute. Pasta will continue to cook in a hot pot even if you shut the burner. Once you find your preferred doneness you will better be able to tell when to stop cooking.
When cooking with wet pasta it’s important the pasta be as fresh as possible. It is also easier to overcook so be prepared to remove the pasta much sooner than you would with dry. Typically fresh pasta is done when it floats to the surface of the water. Once you see this, verify doneness by tasting it.
When the pasta is done remove it from the water or it will keep cooking. You can do this with a strainer.
Intermediate
As you become a more advanced pasta cooker you will want to start cooking the pasta a bit less and retaining some of the water.
As pasta cooks it absorbs water and grows but it also sheds starches into the liquid that it is cooking in. We can use this to our advantage by only cooking the pasta most of the way and then adding the pasta into the intended sauce. This will cause the pasta to absorb a bit of the liquid from the sauce (though this is minimal at this stage). In addition, the starch will slightly thicken our sauce and improve the adherence of the sauce to the pasta. This will make your pasta taste better as the starch in the pasta water mixes with your sauces and thickens it and helps it stick to the pasta. That’s a lot of good reasons to retain the pasta water.
Note: Since the starches are heavier than the pasta they tend to sink to the bottom. So if you want some of that starch be sure to give the pot a good stir before scooping it up.
I don’t even use a strainer when I cook pasta. I just slide the pot over to the saucepan, grab the pasta with tongs or a slotted spoon (for short varieties) and drop it into the sauce and add a bit of water from the pot and stir and watch it. I remove most of the sauce before hand so that additional sauce can be added on top. I only leave the amount I want to coat the pasta with. With other recipes such as Carbonara and Al Burro (Alfredo) that step is not required–the pasta jut goes straight into the pan.
It takes a bit of practice in order to get a feel for the right amount of water to leave behind. If you see your pasta drying out, add a bit of sauce and plain water and cover it to fight the evaporation. If it is too wet, try to drain some of the excess moisture off, then put it back on the heat with lid off to finish cooking. The pasta will keep absorbing liquid until it is fully cooked and cannot absorb anymore.
Remember that the pasta is the main part of the dish you are making. Not sauce. So do not over sauce it. You should be able to taste the pasta not just the sauce.
The goal is to get the the exact texture of pasta at the exact moment that the remaining liquid has reached the desired level. A rich, velvety sauce with slightly firm pasta. Perfection.
Advanced
Make Pasta from Scratch
The ultimate pasta is homemade. It takes some practice but once you get it, the process is cheap, fast, and easy.
We will be posting a fresh pasta lesson in the future and will update this post with a link to it. There is a lot of information and a lot of pictures to take. Stay tuned.
