Do you cook your pasta in a large pot, with plenty of boiling water, and a good amount of salt? Usually I just stir once just after putting the pasta in, and I never have noodles sticking together.
My pot would have to be 3x its size to fit the amount of water a single package of pasta says I should use.
1kg to 10l
Do you have a bathtub in your stove?
1 kg of dry pasta is enough for 10 people! Do you often cook for that many people? (Genuine question)
This is making me chuckle, because I just did this last night for a dinner party. It was a hell of a lot of pasta for 7. I kept it moving, even in my big stock pot. Only a few strands stuck to the bottom. We have leftovers.
I usually cook a quarter of that for the two of us, sometimes half if I want to eat for a couple of days.
2lbs/1 kg is a lot.
I have a 12 gallon pot I use for the same.
If it didn’t have the spout off the front I’d probably use it for a lot more stuff like huge batches of chili (for canning). I end up using multiple pots for that instead because I don’t want to have to clean around the dumb thing.
But the drain tube makes it soooo easy to strain the broth.
Me who never stirs and never gets sticky pasta…
It’s not salting your water, nor the water volume to pasta ratio, nor if the water is boiling or not, nor oil in the water, but stirring early in the cooking process that will prevent sticking.
From the great Kenji Lopez-Alt:
Pasta is made up of flour, water, and sometimes eggs. Essentially, it’s composed of starch and protein, and not much else. Now starch molecules come aggregated into large granules that resemble little water balloons. As they get heated in a moist environment, they absorb more and more water until they finally burst, releasing the starch molecules into the water. That’s why pasta always seems to stick together at the beginning of cooking—it’s the starch molecules coming out and acting as a sort of glue, binding the pieces to each other, and to the pot.
…
The problem is that first stage of cooking—the one in which starch molecules first burst and release their starch. With such a high concentration of starch right on the surface of the pasta, sticking is inevitable. However, once the starch gets rinsed away in the water, the problem is completely gone.
So the key is to stir the pasta a few times during the critical first minute or two. After that, whether the pasta is swimming in a hot tub of water or just barely covered as it is here, absolutely no sticking occurs. I was able to clean this pot with a simple rinse.
Yep, I really like how he applies the scientific method to cooking. Some of my favourites are how he’s found the perfect way to boil an egg, cook steaks and roasts (dry brine, reverse sear), and make chocolate chip cookies (he made over 1500 cookies testing how changing each variable changed the final cookie).
Yeah you only need to do it once in the beginning. Say a seconc time to make time pass.
Not salting the water is a crime against humanity though so be aware.
My biggest gripe with cooking instructions is the non-specificity. “Stir pasta frequently”? How frequently? How continuously? Tell me in unit Hertz
I don’t understand the basis of the 24Hz limit rumor. My monitors are 144Hz, and if I limit them to 60Hz and move my mouse around I see fewer residual mouse cursors “after-images” than I do at 144Hz. That’s a simplified test that shows that the eye can perceive motion artifacts beyond 60Hz.
The eye can perceive LEDs that are rectified at 60Hz AC, it’s very annoying.
Is this a meme I’m too Italian to understand?
