Cooking thread: Add salt/oil to boiling water when cooking pasta?

[SandEagle]

i always add salt, garlic powder, basil, oregano, and olive oil when i make pasta. turns out good.

 

[NetWareHead]

thought it was LSD you add to food to make great. at least thats what futurama claims

No way. LSD is a fragile molecule that degrades exposed to light and heat. No mixing with hot food.

 

[z1ggy]

You're full of it. They call it gravy in the usa. italian has a word for sauce which is salsa. Gravy is meat juice based broth which is an entirely different thing.

Dated a girl who's entire family is from Italy. They call the red sauce gravy. Maybe it's just their family's thing from where they are from, but calling sauce, "sauce" or "marinara" is considered not the right word.

 

[SS Trooper]

Salt only. I have never tried oil while cooking pasta, I imagine fat people do it to avoid having to chew. Must be an American concept :O

 

[surfsatwerk]

Salt only. I have never tried oil while cooking pasta, I imagine fat people do it to avoid having to chew. Must be an American concept :O

It keeps the water from boiling over because of all the starch in the pasta.

 

[NetWareHead]

I thought it was an east coast US thing were the Italians called their sauce gravy. They certainly did that on the Sopranos. I've never heard it called that anywhere else.

My theory was when the very first Italian immigrants came over to the US, they found a land full of German, Irish and British descended people and food customs. When these Americans saw the Italians spooning sauce over their pasta, the Americans called that sauce gravy because it looked very much like the meat based broth that is spooned over meat. I'm pretty sure none of these cuisines utilize a tomato based sauce to the extent that Italian cuisines do. The Americans called it gravy out of ignorance. Now the Italians in their quest to learn English, copied this misnomer and that's how sauce became known as gravy. Like I posted before, Italian has a word for both sauce and gravy and anybody in Italy who has studied English knows what to properly call each one.

 

[torpid]

Dated a girl who's entire family is from Italy. They call the red sauce gravy. Maybe it's just their family's thing from where they are from, but calling sauce, "sauce" or "marinara" is considered not the right word.

I read an article about the gravy/sauce divide a while ago. I can't find it now but the gist was that the term gravy seemed to have first been used by Italian immigrants in the US but because the immigrants had family in Italy it started being used there too by some (not all - others still used sauce).

 

[NetWareHead]

It keeps the water from boiling over because of all the starch in the pasta.

My water only boils over when I leave the lid on the pot. Otherwise I have no need for oil.

 

[surfsatwerk]

My water only boils over when I leave the lid on the pot. Otherwise I have no need for oil.

Well then you don't need to use oil. My pots boil over because I stuff a lot of pasta in a relatively small pot. If I didn't use oil I would have to reduce the temperature or use a bigger pot.

 

[torpid]

Well then you don't need to use oil. My pots boil over because I stuff a lot of pasta in a relatively small pot. If I didn't use oil I would have to reduce the temperature or use a bigger pot.

Your pasta is bound to have issues even with the oil. It needs space to roll about and the pot should have a rolling boil.

 

[Fern]

My wife is from Italy, she's here on a Greencard. Never heard them use the term "gravy".

Some add oil to keep the pasta from clumping, however, keeping the heat sufficiently high will do that too. I just make sure I keep the water boiling fairly well with an occasional stir and I have no problem.

After cooking/draining the pasta, some oil or butter can be added to keep it clumping together in the pot. Although that is unnecessary if you serve it quickly.

Fern

 

[surfsatwerk]

Your pasta is bound to have issues even with the oil. It needs space to roll about and the pot should have a rolling boil.

This I understand. I use oil in a pinch instead of spending the money to buy another pot for the rare occasion when I have to feed so many people. I'm simply stating that oil does serve a purpose.

 

[SS Trooper]

Well then you don't need to use oil. My pots boil over because I stuff a lot of pasta in a relatively small pot. If I didn't use oil I would have to reduce the temperature or use a bigger pot.

I was guessing you didn't have a big enough pot. I just stir the bubbles down when need be. Pasta is pretty hands off so I'm almost always cooking something else at the same time, not much effort to give a quick stir to smash the bubbles and make sure it's not clumping.

 

[surfsatwerk]

I was guessing you didn't have a big enough pot. I just stir the bubbles down when need be. Pasta is pretty hands off so I'm almost always cooking something else at the same time, not much effort to give a quick stir to smash the bubbles and make sure it's not clumping.

True, I just prefer to use a couple tablespoons of olive oil.

 

[mmntech]

So it does nothing, then it does something?

Somebody needs a coffee. It does nothing for flavour.

 

[torpid]

This I understand. I use oil in a pinch instead of spending the money to buy another pot for the rare occasion when I have to feed so many people. I'm simply stating that oil does serve a purpose.

Ah. Well, I didn't know the oil helped with boilovers and might start experimenting when cooking other things. Seems to happen a lot when I'm making steel cut oats.

 

[NetWareHead]

This I understand. I use oil in a pinch instead of spending the money to buy another pot for the rare occasion when I have to feed so many people. I'm simply stating that oil does serve a purpose.

You need to give the pasta room to move around and boil or else it will won't cook correctly. Too little water and it will boil over due to the foam at the top. The correct ratio if 6 quarts water per pound of pasta.

I have a 5 quart pot that I fill to about an inch from the top edge. I can fit a pound of pasta in that and not have the boiling problems which leads me to believe you are using an even smaller pot. My 5 quart is a tad on the small side but it works well enough.

 

[microAmp]

Myth Smashers... Alton Brown's take on oil and pasta.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNNq9ykU0g&feature=player_detailpage#t=782s

 

[lxskllr]

You need to give the pasta room to move around and boil or else it will won't cook correctly. Too little water and it will boil over due to the foam at the top. The correct ratio if 6 quarts water per pound of pasta.

I have a 5 quart pot that I fill to about an inch from the top edge. I can fit a pound of pasta in that and not have the boiling problems which leads me to believe you are using an even smaller pot. My 5 quart is a tad on the small side but it works well enough.

I heard a cooking show on the radio where the host(a professional cook) was a proponent of using just enough water for the pasta, and you had little wastewater left over. It saves time and energy. I don't remember the exact technique, but you should be able to find something online if you're interested.

 

[sjwaste]

My qualifications: First generation, fluent/native Italian speaker (Toscano, and a little bit of Abruzzese and Romanesco, if we're specific on dialects), love to cook, love to eat even more.

Salt only, no oil, when making regular dried pasta. I will add oil when making a filled pasta like ravioli or tortellini because they float up to the top, or at least roll in the boil, and I've found a little oil does help them from clumping together. This is, however, only a shortcut when I don't want to boil a huge stockpot to make a relatively small quantity - basically, more water would accomplish the same task.

Sauce or gravy basically comes down to what your parents told you it was called. It's a matter of translation and nobody really agrees. "Sugo" is generally the word used for a tomato-based substance served on pasta, and depending on who you ask, the translation varies. There isn't a direct, practical translation that I've been taught, so it's either sauce or gravy. Google Translate and the like will tell you that "sauce" translates to "salsa" and "gravy" to "sugo", but practical Italian would more or less indicate that just about everything is "sugo" and "salsa" refers to things that are more condiment-like. For instance, my grandmother would refer to what goes on your pasta as "sugo" but the barbeque sauce I put on a burger to be "salsa."

You'll never settle this debate among Italian-Americans, though. Basically, the PA/NY/NJ crowd is more likely to call it gravy, and everyone else, sauce. My solution is that everyone else should learn to speak Italian so that we can just communicate clearly on one of the world's finest cuisines.

 

[NetWareHead]

I heard a cooking show on the radio where the host(a professional cook) was a proponent of using just enough water for the pasta, and you had little wastewater left over. It saves time and energy. I don't remember the exact technique, but you should be able to find something online if you're interested.

Wastewater? I don't understand. The water, no matter how much or how little is always discarded down the sink when straining the pasta. It is always "wasted" in that sense. If too little water is used the pasta sticks together and doesn't have room to cook properly.

I have seen some people utilize a cup or two of the pasta water in a sauce for extra flavor since the salt and starchiness of the water would enhance the sauce but that's not usually done.

 

[torpid]

Wastewater? I don't understand. The water, no matter how much or how little is always discarded down the sink when straining the pasta. It is always "wasted" in that sense.

Seems like you understand.

 

[lxskllr]

Wastewater? I don't understand. The water, no matter how much or how little is always discarded down the sink when straining the pasta. It is always "wasted" in that sense. If too little water is used the pasta sticks together and doesn't have room to cook properly.

That's the point. All the water is wastewater, and his technique minimized it. Less energy to heat it up(and the house in the summer), only to pour it down the drain. He said his pasta didn't stick. I'll have to look it up, because I can't remember exactly how it was done, and I don't like boiling so much water at one time.

Edit:
A quick DuckDuckGo found this. I'll read it thoroughly later, but it looks like a good starting point.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/05/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab.html

 

[slayer202]

OP is trolling

or he's really ignorant

 

[silverpig]

Use a big pot, a lot of water, a generous amount of salt (the water should taste like the sea), and have it on as high as your stove will go to get a good rolling boil.

This way the pasta rolls around and doesn't stick. It won't boil over if you use the right sized pot.

Dump it into a colander, let it drain fully, then onto the plate (no rinse with cold water... some people do this).