5 Secret Tips to Cook Pasta 🍝 🇮🇹

How to cook the perfect pasta?  If you really want to cook pasta as Italians do, here is what you need-to-know and the essential advice for cooking the perfect pasta.

We take it for granted that the quality of the pasta should be excellent. We suggest Rummo , made with the best ingredients and in the traditional and artisan way. But, if you have time, and if you want to make your own fresh pasta, follow these steps on Sonia’s blog.

 

Photo on the left: Oggi pane e salame, domani....
Photo on the right: Valdirose

Once you have bought, or done, your spaghetti, fill up a large pan with cold water and bring it to boil. Drop in the pan, only after the water is boiling, a handful of salt. Weight the spaghetti as our Grandmothers use to do, by holding a bunch of spaghetti in your fist for each portion (as you see Italians use their hands to talk and also to cook !! ). Drop the spaghetti in the boiling water and turn them a couple of times with a wooden spoon or fork. Check the cooking time on the package .

Now, pull up a chair and read our 5 secret tips to cook the perfect pasta.

“Al dente”

Cook the pasta always 2 minutes less then what it is written on the package. It will stay “al dente” and will allow you to mix in the condiment or sauce that you have prepared.

 

 

“Risottata”: a chef touch!

Get the sauce ready in a large flat pan. Add the spaghetti (or other pasta type) yet to be cooked from the pan with the water to this flat pan. Pour the hot water with a spoon gradually from the first pan into the second pan, while the sauce “shrinks” and the pasta cooks (medium fire). Consider that if the cooking time of pasta is 10 minutes you need to transfer the pasta in the sauce pan after 6 minutes and let the pasta cook in the sauce for another 2-3 minutes in order to avoid to overcook it. This is the same procedure to cook risotto; hence the name pasta “risottata”.

 

Less is more

Don’t let pasta sink in the condiment. It is a false believe that Italians over staff pasta. Too much sauce makes pasta heavy and less tasty.

 

 

Serve in a bowl

Once you have mingled the pasta with the sauce in the pan, pour it in a serving bowl and add fresh herbs to decorate (i.e. basil leaves) and a little bit of EVO. In Italy we prefer not to add the condiment on each dish but to share the sauce, that sometimes remains at the bottom of the serving bowl, with a spoon among all the guests.

 

Cook Pasta with Love

This is the most important secret. There is a special care when cooking pasta in Italy. Usually recipes are passed from Grandmothers, to Mothers, to children. We cook by heart and with our heart 💜

 

 

Featured Image: cooking, style and pic by Pane&Burro. Recipe here.