The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 833

The water from pasta cooked in a smaller pot (left) is packed with more starch This starchy pasta cooking water improves the texture of your sauce, helping it cling to the cooked pasta Following that logic, our goal should be to get the water as starchy as possible, the more efficiently to bind the sauce with I took a look at the water drained off the batch of pasta cooked in 1½ quarts against the one cooked in quarts Notice how much cloudier the one on the left is? “All the better to bind you with, my dear,” I said out loud, just as my wife happened to walk into the kitchen She declined to join me in my tasting, but side by side, after saucing, the pasta cooked in less water resulted in a much better sauce consistency, and the sauce actually clung to the pasta better as well Reason 3 debunked Reason 4 There are few times in life that I’m glad I don’t have an Italian grandmother, but trying to explain low-water-pastacooking to her would be one of those times Now that I was completely satisfied that I could cook pasta in less water with no problems at all, I decided to try and take the method to the extreme I knew that when you cook pasta, proteins denature and starches efficiently absorb water at temperatures as low as 180°F So is it actually even necessary to boil the noodles the whole time? I covered a pot of penne with water by a couple inches (to account for the pasta expanding as it absorbed water), seasoned it with a bit of salt, and set it on a burner After allowing it to come up to a simmer, I stirred it once to ensure that the pasta wasn’t sticking to itself or the pot, immediately threw a lid on the thing, and shut off the burner  ... should be to get the water as starchy as possible, the more efficiently to bind the sauce with I took a look at the water drained off the batch of pasta cooked in 1½ quarts against the one cooked... after saucing, the pasta cooked in less water resulted in a much better sauce consistency, and the sauce actually clung to the pasta better as well Reason 3 debunked Reason 4 There are few times... in quarts Notice how much cloudier the one on the left is? “All the better to bind you with, my dear,” I said out loud, just as my wife happened to walk into the kitchen She declined to join me