How to cook pasta

✅ The essentials

You need a big pot, plenty of water, coarse salt and a timer. Oil is useless in the water, it floats on the surface. What keeps pasta from sticking is having plenty of water and stirring once or twice at the start. For the rest, the timer works for you.

🍳 The method

1. Fill a big pot with water, at least one litre (4 cups) per 100 g of pasta, and bring it to the boil on high heat, with a lid to go faster.
2. When it boils hard, add the salt, 10 g per litre, that is a level tablespoon of coarse salt, then the pasta.
3. Stir once right away and once after a minute, then leave it alone. Set the timer to the packet time minus one minute.
4. Taste. If it is good, drain, keeping a glass of the cooking water.
5. Mix the pasta with the sauce right away. If it is too dry, add a little of the water you kept: it binds the sauce to the pasta instead of leaving it at the bottom of the dish.

⚖️ The quantities

Count 80 to 100 g of dry pasta per adult, and 60 g for a child. It doubles in volume as it cooks.

⏱️ How long it takes

Fifteen minutes, ten of which the water heats and the pasta cooks on its own.

🩹 If it goes wrong

Overcooked, it will be very good as a gratin tomorrow, with a little cheese on top. Stuck in a block, a little hot water and you stir, it comes apart. Not salty enough, salt the sauce a bit more, it catches up on the plate.

🍽️ Make it tonight

Pasta with butter and parmesan, in twelve minutes, if you are starting out. Or the grandma-style bolognese sauce, if you have an hour ahead of you.

🥘 The linked base recipe: Pasta with butter and parmesan (serves 4)

• 400 g pasta (penne, fusilli or spaghetti)
• 40 g butter
• 60 g grated parmesan
• Salt, pepper