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Who wouldn’t like pasta? Italian pasta is beloved not only in its home country but around the world. We love pasta as an ingredient in soup, in salads, or we eat it as a main course or for dinner. But do we really know how to prepare it correctly?
How to properly cook pasta?
There are approximately 700 types of pasta, each prepared in a special way. If you want to achieve the right flavor, you should pay attention to their proper preparation. First, check that you are buying quality pasta made from durum wheat and second, follow the preparation steps according to the rules. What are they?
Preparing pasta
Add water and salt to a large pot, then bring the water to a boil and add the pasta. All of it should be under the water, which is a problem with spaghetti, so we can break them in half. However, if you want them whole, soak half in the water and after about half a minute press them all into the water with a fork.
Next add a teaspoon of oil and stir them regularly for the first 15 seconds as you begin to cook them. This way we prevent them from sticking. Cook them over medium heat and without a lid. After taking the pasta off the boil, strain them through a sieve into another pot. If they seem under-salted, you can salt them a bit more within half a minute of draining.
Ideal pasta should be springy. If you want it slightly firm (al dente), cook it 2 minutes less than stated on the package.
Preparing pasta in the microwave
Nowadays we can easily prepare pasta, for example, in a microwave oven. Put a small pot of water into the microwave and run it for 5 minutes at maximum power. Then add the pasta, a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of oil and put it back in the microwave for another 8 minutes. During these minutes stir the pasta every 2 minutes, which increases the total preparation time to roughly 12 minutes. There you go, the pasta is ready!
Rules for rinsing pasta after cooking
After cooking, pasta has a distinct layer of starch on the surface. If we rinse it, we wash off the starch and the pasta cools down quickly. So if we want to add it to a salad or mix it with a sauce that is not yet ready, we should rinse it in water. However, if we want it as a main dish and mix it with sauce immediately, we should wash it after cooking.
Pasta sauce
Most of the time we add the finished sauce to the pasta for better flavor. Try this time to do the opposite. Add the pasta to the sauce and then heat while stirring constantly for 1 minute. For a more delicate flavor add a little piece of butter.
As we mentioned at the beginning, there are many types of pasta, so it is necessary to consider what flour they are made from. For example, spaghetti should be made from finer flour and other types of pasta from coarser flour. You can even choose pasta made from buckwheat, rye, spelt or various other flours. They are more expensive, but you should definitely try them. For example, following these proven methods — what do you think?
