Knowing how to make good pasta is important because there’s probably a box of it kicking around in your cupboard somewhere, but it’s also important because pasta is one of the few quick meals that does double duty as weeknight food and date night food. It’s got that whole sexy, Roman trattoria, Lady and the Tramp thing going for it, but it’s also ready in the time it takes you to change into your designer sweatpants, pour a large glass of alcohol, and put on some sweet Bruno Mars tunes at the end of a long day [Ed note: “Uptown Funk” forever!]. Pasta is your friend! As such, it deserves a little respect.
Despite the fact that it comes in a box printed with cooking directions and will be ready in less than twenty, cooking pasta is pretty easy to mess up. If you get too distracted checking your ex’s Instagram on your phone, you can end up with a bowl full of mushy noodles, or under-salted noodles, or noodles whose sauce falls off of them like an ill-fitting suit. But heed these five small pieces of advice, and you’ll be so proud of your pasta moves you’ll throw a big noodly dinner party to show them off. Just don’t throw any spaghetti at a wall—it’s really not necessary. Your walls deserve respect too.
1. Make sure your cooking water is salty like the sea, and almost as plentiful
Forgetting to salt your water will make for flavorless pasta, and you’ll have to overcompensate by oversalting your sauce—not a good move. Pour water into a big pot so that your pasta has plenty of room to move around, then salt it generously: it should taste like seawater, not disgustingly salty but markedly so. Add your pasta once your water reaches a rolling boil.
2. Check the package’s cooking time, but don’t put too much faith in it
Most mass-market pasta is going to tell you to overcook your pasta. I don’t know why, but that’s how our country works! So if you’re cooking pasta of the Barilla variety, check it a few minutes before the box says it’ll be done. (Tasting your food as it cooks is one of the best ways to become a better, more knowledgeable cook.) You want to cook your pasta to al dente, which means it’ll have a bit of a bite to it—an old boss of mine used to liken the experience to biting a stick of gum. It’ll cook a bit more as it cools, and even more if you toss it with sauce in a hot pan, which is always a good idea.
3. Reserve a little pasta water
Pasta water is the glue that will hold your final dish together; learn to use it. When pasta cooks, it leaches out starch, which is why your cooking water is a little cloudy when you drain it. That starch helps to adhere your sauce to your pasta (kind of like edible velcro). Before you drain your pasta, ladle out a quarter cup of so for each serving, then add it in splashes when you combine pasta and sauce. If you’re using a sauce, add a few splashes of pasta water to it in a pan, then add your pasta and cook until everything looks nicely combined.
4. Never, ever rinse
Remember what we learned about starchy pasta water and how it’s good and important and valuable? Rinsing your pasta with water in a colander strips it of its starch. There is literally no reason to do this.
5. Finish your pasta in its sauce
If you’re just gonna dress your pasta with a little bit of nice olive oil and maybe some Parmesan cheese, you can go ahead and skip this step. But if you’ve got any sort of sauce planned—creamy, tomato-y, whatever—finish your dish by cooking your pasta and sauce together, with a bit of that pasta water you reserved. This isn’t a sandwich, after all—sauce and pasta shouldn’t be layered on top of each other, but well combined.
