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How to cook pasta
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| Cooking pasta is easy, but cooking times, pans and the right combination of pasta and sauce must be chosen carefully in order to prepare a perfect dish. |
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| 1. |
The first important thing to remember is that pasta should be prepared just before serving it: some people "parboil" their pasta and finish cooking it just before it is brought to the table. The risk of this is that you are likely to produce sticky pasta that has lost its shine and elasticity especially if you don't really have much experience with this procedure.
Fill a large, high pan no more than ¾ with water. If there is too much water in the pan it will probably boil over, and too little will not allow the pasta to cook properly, causing it to stick to the bottom of the pan.
Salting the water is also a delicate operation that requires care and needs to be done at the right moment.
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| 2. |
The rule is "ten, one hundred, one thousand": the perfect ratio for cooking pasta is 10 g of salt, 100 g of pasta, 1 litre of water. It is important to remember that the salt must be added once the water has started to boil, turning down the heat slightly as you do.
If the salt is added too late it will not be absorbed correctly into the pasta, and if it is added too early it may lengthen the boiling time.
If by mistake you add too much salt, add a potato to the boiling water: this will absorb the salt and help to restore the right balance.
If this is not enough, when draining the pasta run it under the tap just for a moment.If you have not added enough salt, add more salt to the sauce instead.
Once the salt has been properly absorbed into the water, pour the pasta in and turn up the heat to bring it back to the boil quickly.
For short pasta, stir the water with a wooden spoon, and for long pasta like spaghetti use a large wooden fork. Do not be tempted to break spaghetti up so that it fits more easily into the pan; wait for it to bend in the water and stir in using a wooden fork.
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| 3. |
During cooking do not cover the pan, and stir the pasta every three minutes. The Barilla shapes are made so they do not stick to the bottom of the pan and so that they stay al dente, but it is still advisable to stir the pasta, so that it cooks through evenly. Cooking times clearly depend on taste, but remember that egg pastas usually need less cooking time than other types of pasta.
For perfect pasta simply stick to the cooking times on the packet, even though it is a good idea to taste the pasta before draining it, just to make sure it suits your taste. Pasta has been cooked properly when it is soft on the outside but the inside is still a little hard. In Italian cooking this point of cooking is called al dente.
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| 4. |
When draining pasta, always save a couple of tablespoons of cooking water: it may be needed to dilute the sauce or when sautéing the pasta in the pan before serving. The sauce for dressing the pasta should usually be heated beforehand, as in this way it coats the pasta better. The Barilla Sauces can be heated over a bain-marie while still in the jar, or once opened can be mixed with a little cooking water and stirred into the pasta in the pan. Remember that when the pasta is drained it is still cooking. It should therefore be dressed and served quickly.
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| 5. |
For cold pasta recipes, proceed in the same manner and, having drained the pasta, dress with a little olive oil and leave to cool in a bowl, stirring frequently. Once the pasta has cooled, mix in the desired sauce and serve. In this case the cooking times indicated on the packet should be reduced by one minute, as the heat continues to cook the pasta even after it has been drained, and cold pasta is not eaten straight away like other pasta dishes.
Following this advice, you will certainly be able to produce some excellent pasta dishes, helped by the fact that the Barilla quality makes your successful pasta dishes even more simple to prepare, with pasta shapes that are always al dente and which can be coated perfectly in the chosen sauce.
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