General Notes About Pasta

Pasta comes in many different textures and shapes; there are the basic spaghetti noodles and elbow noodles, the more exotic angel hair, shells, lasagna noodles, not to mention soba, udon and others. Likewise there are egg noodles, spinach, artichoke, just to name a few. Try using one of these different types in your recipes, for variety. There is no need for pasta to be boring; you could just make macaroni and cheese out of the box, but why bother when other more interesting dishes are almost as easy?

Three things to keep in mind when cooking pasta:

  1. The thicker the pasta, the longer it takes to cook.
  2. You don't want to overcook it.
  3. You don't want it to stick together in a clump.

Overcooking pasta means cooking it to the point where it gets soggy, if you can imagine pasta being soggy. If you can't, get one of those packages of 3-minute ramen, only 30 cents so you haven't lost much by ruining it, and cook it for 5 minutes. Now try a bite... yeech!

You can use the large saucepan and fill it about 2/3rds full of water. Bring it to a boil. Now add your pasta, which should not fill more than 1/3rd of the pot but otherwise can be as much as you like. Stir it up a little and wait for the water to start to boil again. This could take 10 seconds or a couple of minutes, depending on how much and how thick the pasta is. Now, if the water seems to be getting ready to boil out of control, you can turn the heat down a litle, as long as it continues to boil well. Stir the pasta 2-3 times a minute until it softens up. You can't be a slacker about this or the pasta will stick together in a clump, and a large clump of egg noodle on your plate is pretty unappetizing.

After that you can stir it about once a minute. Be sure to stir all the way down to the bottom of the pan or it will stick there too.

You can look at the package for cooking times. Always cook it the minimum length of time it says on the package and then check to see if it's done; better to be a little underdone than soggy.

To test it, get a fork and take a piece out, blow on it to cool it off, and taste it. If it is too chewy yet, try again in another minute or two. These things are a matter of taste, very subjective, so when you think it's edible, it's done.

Drain it in one of the metal strainers. If you are making a cold pasta dish you can now run cold water over it while it's in the strainer. This keeps the pasta from cooling into one huge sticky lump. If you are makeing a hot dish, you should add the sauce right away, again to keep the pasta from sticking.

Cooked pasta keeps a long time in the refrigerator, at least a couple of weeks depending on the sauce, or you can store it separately. BUT you must keep it in a sealed container, or at least tightly covered with saran wrap, or it will dry out.

You can reheat a pasta dish in the microwave. If it is a dish without a lot of liquid, e.g. a pesto dish, you might add a little bit of water to help rehydrate it, since even when kept covered the pasta loses a little moisture.