Hello!
I just noticed on a package of pasta I bought that it encouraged a 10:1 water to pasta ratio. That is 1 litre of water per 100 g pasta. A standard pack of pasta would require 5 liters of water.
Is this totally normal to you? What’s your ratio?
I think I’m somewhere slightly less than 3:1 for my standard pasta boil.
Traditionally you use a fuck ton of water in a giant pot but, really, that’s mainly so you can boil it harder without it boiling over so easily. The actual pasta comes out basically the same regardless of the amount of water.
What isn’t the same, though, is the water. And many pasta dishes call for adding some of the starchy pasta water as a thickener/emulsifier for sauces, so actually if you’re doing that you’re better off using less water as it’ll be more concentrated. And obviously less water boils faster.
For this reason many well regarded chefs have taken to cooking pasta in a wide flat pan with just enough water to cover it, at least for small quantities.
Serious eats has a good article: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab
This video even shows a method using a wok that’s really similar to kenji’s last experiment, where he cooks the pasta with a small amount of water and just uses the remaining starchy water to immediately make a sauce. Pretty smart!
Thanks. That article was great. I feel like I’ve been cooking pasta all wrong, for all these years.
Depends on your vessel. Honestly, it doesn’t matter at all. It’s not like rice where the water becomes a significant portion of the finished pasta. Just have enough water to cover the pasta without having to break it. Boiling duration, however, will heavily impact your pasta texture.
Don’t forget to salt the water because unlike Asian noodles which usually have salt incorporated into the dough, packaged pasta does not.
I usually use as little water as I can get away with, as the resulting pasta water is much more starchy and works better in sauces.
I want to echo this, it makes sauces so creamy and luxurious, makes your pasta genuinely have the mouth feel of like high quality restaurant pasta. Heard about doing this in a j Kenji lopez-alt video and I swear by it now. Also has the benefit of coming to temp faster (less water means you need less heat to boil it) so stuff tends to move faster in the kitchen
I hear you all about having nice, starchy pasta water but it is important to have enough water that the pasta can move around freely or else it can end up being cooked unevenly. I think that’s probably where the water ratio recommendation comes from.
Fair point, I have flown too close to the sun before, and used so little water that my pasta came out with undercooked clumped spots. So reduce water volume with care.
