1,470 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

Cooking time for pasta

What is as good and simple as pasta? Not much, I think, and it's so easy to prepare: boiling water, salted (or not, depending on your taste), a few minutes of boiling and it's ready.

The only "difficulty", so to speak, is the respect of the cooking time and the risk of, unfortunately, overcooking your pasta.

19 K 4.6/5 (19 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Pasta Time Cooking Al dente Italy

Last modified on: July 18^th 2019

For this post: Comment Follow Send to a friend

Cooking time for pasta

As always with pasta, we must take inspiration from the masters that are the Italians, they are very attached, and rightly so, to a rigorous and fair cooking, the famous "al dente".

Cooking is very precise: the pasta is plunged into boiling salted water and left for the precise number of minutes indicated on the packet, a number which depends on the nature of the pasta: 5, 6, 7 minutes or more, then drained and eaten or served.

Impossible to miss? In principle not, but there is a very easy mistake to make, it is to overcook, and thus to have overcooked pasta which becomes sticky, and much less good.

An Italian friend of mine pointed out to me that "At home" (in France) pasta is always overcooked, no matter where you go to eat it. It's not that it's inedible, just that it's a little overcooked, usually by a minute or so.

It's not always the cook's fault, the mistake is often already on the package, so she pointed me to this great tip.

If you have a package of pasta where it is written in Italian

pâte italiennes

Respect the time indicated precisely (here 6 minutes)

If you have a packet of pasta where it is written in a language other than Italian

pates françaises

Subtract 1 minute from the indicated cooking time, so here 12 - 1 = 11 minutes.

With this simple rule, you should have pasta that is always al dente.

To sum up: The cooking time is indicated not in Italian on the package => subtract one minute from the indicated time, the cooking time is indicated in Italian, do not change anything.

Lasts posts

Travel cakes

You may have come across the term "travel cakes" ("gateaux de voyage" in french) for certain pastries, so let's take a look at what they're all about.
January 27^th 202596

The aromatic power of sugar

In the kitchen, sugar doesn't just sweeten, it also has an exceptional ability to capture flavors. Combined with aromatic ingredients, such as citrus zest, it acts as a veritable sponge for aromas. By taking the time to let the sugar soak up the flavors, you can transform your desserts, making...
December 25^th 20241,1585

The little trap of thick cream

When you need to add cream to a recipe, you might be wondering: thick (heavy) cream or liquid cream? In most cases, there's no big difference: you can use either. But there is one exception, and that's when the cream needs to be cooked, for a sauce for example, and here the difference between...
December 13^th 20242,3205

Sauce and salad: When and how to mix them?

When dressing a salad, there's a kind of golden rule: add the dressing very shortly before serving, especially if your salad contains crunchy elements such as croutons or fresh vegetables, which will retain their crunchiness or crispiness. But, as is often the case in the kitchen, there are...
November 29^th 20242,3125

No need to boil gelatin

Gelatin is a magical ingredient for making light, creamy, structured desserts, yet it's often misused in the kitchen. A common mistake in some recipes is the idea that it needs to be boiled for it to work properly, but this is a mistake indeed: gelatin melts at a much lower temperature, around...
November 21^th 20242,1525

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201372 K4.0

The golden-brown finish on puff pastry

Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
February 8^th 201842 K 24.6

Candied fruits: don't get ripped off

Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
June 21^th 201759 K 24.2

Is it really necessary to cream egg yolks?

Let’s try and answer a question that crops up in cookery and patisserie, even if it verges on the existential: do the egg yolks in a custard recipe really need to be beaten until pale, or not?
February 28^th 201839 K4.3

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202128 K4.5