The blog of cooking-ez.com
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.
The only "difficulty", so to speak, is the respect of the cooking time and the risk of, unfortunately, overcooking your pasta.
11K 7 4
Last modified on: July 18th 2019
Keywords for this post:PastaTimeCookingAl denteItalyCooking 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.
Respect the time indicated precisely (here 6 minutes)
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.
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
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
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
The delicious complexity of Jura wines
Do you know the wines of the Jura? Maybe not, it's a small appellation, 2000 hectares, with a production of wines that are both very atypical and very typical, even unique for some of them. Let me tell you a few words about it.5234.7 May 14th 2022
Shall I take the tops off?
If you buy your vegetables at the market, at a farmer's stand, once you have chosen a bunch of carrots or beets for example, you must have already heard this proposal from the salesman: "Shall I pull the tops? This sentence is his proposal to remove for you all the tops, which he puts aside, to...9374.7 May 7th 2022
The color of the bread crumb
When you go to buy bread, at your baker's, at the time of the choice, if you hesitate of course, you will undoubtedly be very sensitive to the color of the crust, and you will be right. The color of the crust, from golden, to sometimes very dark, deep brown almost black, depending on the maturity...1,1024.5 April 30th 2022
The salad spinner is not only for salad
Where we see that the salad spinner can be used for many other purposes.2,9794.3 March 25th 2022
Sorrel and its cooking
Do you like sorrel? This delicious plant with its beautiful bright green leaves, whose subtle acidity goes very well with many other things, including in particular cream, to form with salmon the emblematic dish of the 70's, "Salmon with sorrel" on which was built the beginning of the fame of the...2,2135 March 19th 2022
Other pages you may also like
Salt and yeast
Let's take a look at an old baker's legend: You may have already read that somewhere in a recipe that uses baker's yeast(bread, pastries, leavened doughs in general) it is often specified "Don't put salt in contact with the yeast, you'll kill it (the yeast)"! Well, that's a belief, and there are...52K4.1 March 15th 2019
Chive flowers
Did you know that? Chive flowers are not only a beautiful purple color, but they are also edible and delicious.27K4.1 May 29th 2019
The art of the charlotte
In cooking, a charlotte is a delicious moulded dessert, with biscuits around the outside that have been soaked in a flavoured syrup, filled with a light cream or mousse. The charlotte is left to set in the fridge before being turned out and served in slices. It is very light and a lovely sweet...31K3.3 February 27th 2013
Steam for baking bread
What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...122K4.3 June 16th 2021
A few tips for effective kneading at home
When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.223K 23.4 June 23th 2021
Post your comment or question
Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.