How to Cook Perfect Pasta

Hi , I'm Pamela Salzman .

Welcome to my kitchen in today's cooking class .

We are going to work on how to cook every kind of pasta perfectly .

There is a technique involved and especially when it comes to some of these new awesome pastas , like these gluten free pastas and legume pastas .

There's definitely a better way to do it .

All right .

Now , let's first start off with how you cook every kind of pasta .

The first thing you want to do is bring a big pot of water up to a raging boil .

Then you're going to salt it with kosher salt .

You really want that water to be well seasoned because it's going to season the pasta and it will taste a lot better .

I use an additive free Kosher salt and I add in a good couple of tablespoons .

Once you add the salt , then it's time to add the pasta .

Make sure that once you add your pasta , you start to stir it immediately .

This is a key step .

This is what's going to help your pasta from sticking , not adding olive oil .

It's a totally unnecessary step to add olive oil .

It really does nothing .

What you want to do is to keep stirring it and stirring it until your water comes back up to a boil .

And I stay at a high temperature up until that point .

So once the water comes back up to a boil , then you can lower the temperature down to about medium , medium high and continue stirring every so often .

Now , this is where it's going to differ between your gluten-free pastas and your regular pastas , regular pasta .

Look on the box or the package and make sure you start timing it as soon as the pasta goes into the water because you don't want to overcook your pasta .

Actually , something to keep in mind is that dente pasta has a lower glycemic index than overcooked pasta .

And al dente just means to the tooth , meaning like you take a bite of it and there's still some kind of chew to it .

It's not like mushy .

So don't overcook your pasta .

You want to start timing it so that you can start testing it maybe a minute or two before you need to .

Now with gluten free pastas , whether they are grain based or legume based , I actually set my timer for about two thirds of the amount that's indicated on the box .

So if the box says 10 minutes , I usually opt for six or seven minutes .

Once my timer goes off , I taste the pasta just to see where I'm at , but I turn the heat completely off this is the key step and this will prevent the pasta from losing its shape .

And especially with those legume pastas , they can actually start to disintegrate on the outside , but still remain a little hard on the inside .

So turn the heat off and let it sit in that hot water for the duration of the total time .

So you can reset your timer for like three or four minutes .

I like to test it every minute or two just until gets to the consistency that I want .

Now , once you have the tenderness that you wanted , take out some of the pasta water and set it to the side , there's a lot of dishes that will actually benefit from getting loosened up and enriched with some of that starchy pasta water as opposed to just adding oil or adding stock .

Neither of which does anything good that pasta water has a really beautiful flavor and again , richness to it .

So save some on the side in case you need it later , drain your pasta and be sure not to rinse your pasta unless you're using it for a cold preparation like a pasta salad .

All that starchiness on the outside of the pasta will help any sauces cling to it .

All right there , you have it perfect pasta every time .

Thank you for joining me in the kitchen today .

For more tips and tricks and great recipes .

Visit my website at Pamela Salzman dot com .

I'll see you next week in the kitchen .