pasta

[darkoshi]

One of the reasons I don't like to cook penne pasta is its tendency to stick together while being boiled, and then the stuck-together parts taking longer to soften than the rest. The same often happens with shell pasta; multiple shells stacking on top of each other.

I thought a solution might be to put some drops of oil in the boiling water before adding the pasta, but I don't really want my pasta to come out of the pot oily. (Because greasy and harder to clean.) The first few articles I found on the topic discouraged using oil anyway, as it makes the sauce "slide right off". That's not a concern for me, as I put either margarine (I know, I know; it doesn't have to make sense) or salad dressing on my pasta, not tomato sauce.

The articles advised stirring the pasta right away for a few minutes when putting it in the water. And using plenty of salted water.

So I did that today. I also added the pasta to the boiling water a few pieces at a time while stirring, rather than dumping them all in at once. It took a few extra minutes, but it really worked. They didn't stick together this time.

This page suggests putting the pasta in the water before bringing it to a boil; I'm interested in trying that out too:
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/32040/how-to-prevent-orecchiette-from-sticking-to-each-other-while-cooking-how-to-sep

Comments

[marahmarie]

I've been adding pasta to water before cooking it for a weeks now. It's a new thing for me. Fettuccine and linguine have been my latest victims.

I use a 9" stainless steel pan, break the pasta in half, drop it in, cover with cold water, bring to a boil, lower the heat to medium-lowish, cover with a lid and cook for about 12 minutes or until most or all of the water's absorbed.

I usually add butter, EVOO and heavy cream for a base, then drop shrimp or ham in and cook until the seafood or meat's done. (I'll also add one of more of these depending upon my mood: parsley, spinach, tomatoes, some of the Creole sauce Other Person made last week, and so on.)

All things said my beginner's luck held so my first attempt, with just fettuccine, heavy cream, butter, parsley and shrimp, was best. The pasta was firm, soaked in the sauce and was magnificently tasty.

The downfall to this method is the pasta sticks to the pan like whoa if you don't keep scraping the pan and stirring every few minutes, and every time I've done it so far (three times?) the water's boiled over, necessitating the cleaning of burner covers and the underside of the stove.

Successive attempts have found me less and less enamored with one-pan/no-drain cooking as the sticking and scraping and boiling-over and burner cleaning all really is A Thing and the next few tries have just not lit me on fire like that first pan of pasta. Not sure what's off.

[darkoshi]

Yep, boiling over and sticking to the pot make for an unpleasant cooking and cleaning experience.

I won't be trying to make a dish like that which absorbs all the water; I'll only be putting the pasta in cold water, then boiling and draining it like usual.

It does usually taste quite good though when you have a dish like that where the pasta absorbs the sauce. I like to use the mini-pasta shapes like stars or orzo, to absorb excess water in stews. They are tiny so they don't take long to get soft. But even those tend to stick to the pot if you don't keep stirring.