Food Riot will be closing at the end of June. For the next couple weeks, we’re celebrating the highlight reel of our favorite posts.
Certain shapes of pasta have long been dead to me. Fettuccine. Orecchiette. They were sticky. They clumped together in starchy coagulated masses that were an embarrassing eyesore in an otherwise lovely bowl of pasta. I knew there had to be a fix for this clumping problem. So you know what I did? I put oil in the pasta water. Sure. Why not? Logic told me that oil would make the pasta slippery, and therefore it wouldn’t clump together. I patted myself on the back for being SUCH a genius. And it wasn’t until fairly recently that I heard the truth: Don’t add oil to the pasta water!
As I was cleaning out my cupboard the other day, I found the orecchiette. Abandoned. Banished to the back corner of the cabinet where I didn’t have to look at it and be reminded of how difficult it was to cook, how disappointing it was to me. And I thought, surely there must be a way. I thought, damn. I want pasta.
I took to the Interwebs, and do you know the very first thing I found: about 80 people dog-piling on a Chowhound feed, telling someone NEVER ADD OIL TO THE PASTA WATER EVER EVER.
Here’s the deal with the oil, as Research Librarian Jonathan from the Food Network shows us:
Click here to view the embedded video.
What Research Librarian Jonathan shows us is that we actually want our pasta to be a little bit sticky. If we cook our pasta in oily water, we create a surface on the pasta that’s so slick that sauce won’t stick to it. And that’s not what we want.
One of the things that Research Library Jonathan mentioned that’s super important is “ample water.” I used to scoff at the back of the box of Velveeta Shells & Cheese when it told me how many cups of water to cook my pasta in. Like this was something I needed to measure? Please. Foodie instruction marketing hype. Culinary hokum. Right?
Wrong. You want there to be a lot of water because that gives the pasta room to move around, and that helps prevent it from all clumping together.
The other important thing is to make sure that the water is truly boiling. Like, really boiling. I know you’re hungry – I am too – but really let it come to a rolling boil before adding the pasta.
A fantastic guide from Fine Cooking explains the science of what happens when pasta hits water:
When you drop pasta into a pot of boiling water, the starch granules on the surface of the pasta instantly swell up to their maximum volume and then pop. The starch rushes out and, for a brief time, the pasta’s surface is sticky with this exuded starch.
They recommend stirring for the first minute or two of cooking to keep that ultra-sticky pasta from clumping together.
And do you know what Research Librarian Jonathan, Fine Cooking, and numerous other credible websites have in common: Don’t add oil to the pasta water!
So now we know: use plenty of water, in a big pot, and salt it (for flavor); wait for it to come to a serious boil, add pasta, stir for the first minute or two to keep the pasta from clumping, and then proceed as directed. Sauce to your heart’s delight with the knowledge that your pasta is ready to grab onto that sauce and make your life complete.
The post Don’t Add Oil to the Pasta Water! appeared first on FOOD RIOT.