1) Salt your pasta water! Pasta is meant to be cooked in salty water that, according and excellently-put by Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) - "is reminiscent of the sea".
2) Save and use a splash of ("dirty") pasta water - aka the water the pasta was just cooked in - when you're tossing the pasta with the sauce. The water is filled with delightful liquified starch from the pasta, and it helps the sauce coat the pasta more thoroughly.
Had lots of funny moments in my life relating to salting pasta water. Almost all the people I know put like two pinches of salt into the water. Which causes them to look at me like I'm a psycho when I pour salt in for almost a full second, straight out of the container.
I can +1 both of your tips, I follow them both since I learned to cook and they're a (small but effective) game-changer.
I agree it's kind of absurd to "salt" your pasta water with a pinch of salt (you're doing nothing!), but for me it's a lot more efficient to let the sauce to have the saltiness than to waste handfuls of salt going into water that I'm going to dump out.
INB4, "save your pasta water." I don't have a big kitchen or freezer, a pot full of water is a giant waste of space for me.
Most people just dip a coffee mug in the pasta just before they drain it to keep some water back. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone freezing pasta water.
As for "salty water vs. salty sauce", the better way from a culinary perspective is both. Over salting one thing to compensate for another thing often leads to uneven flavor; if everything is salted roughly appropriately it all kinda comes together without any extra effort. I suggest trying it, hell maybe even do an A/B test. It's subtle, but salt penetrating the pasta during cooking makes it taste that much better.
The thing about saving pasta water is about not throwing it all away when draining the pasta - just keeping a little back to toss in with the pasta and the sauce. It's not saving it for later.
- Lots of salt in the sauce means you'll have very salty sauce with undersalted pasta. It might work out fine if the sauce coats really well, but will still be slightly different.
- Ingredients cook differently when salted. Not sure about pasta specifically: I _think_ I can taste a difference between pasta cooked in salted water and pasta salted after being cooked, but I'm not certain.
- Definitely don't keep pasta water around, it's just for the sauce you're currently making
This is missing the forest for the trees. The point is not to make restaurant quality pasta and sauce, it's to not have to buy salt from the store every week. It's wasteful for little benefit.
I can't ever say I've felt like cooking pasta without salt is "under salted." Is it as savory and delicious as what I'd buy at a restaurant? No - but having done it like that in the past I just think the benefits are marginal for how much you waste.
I wouldn't say it's "forest for the trees", but I see the point that it's a choice of trade-offs.
I make pasta _very_ often, I love it and want it to be as good as it possibly can, so I'm very happy optimising for taste. FWIW I use a tablespoon of salt per portion, and get a 1.3kg pack of salt every few months: hardly a huge waste!
Unless you really love salt, you want much less salinity in pasta than the sea (1-2% for pasta, 3.5% in the sea). Kenji Alt-Lopez says that you want your pasta water "as salty as you remember the sea is", not as salty as the sea actually is because it's way too much!
If you’ve ever been at sea and tried to use seawater to cook pasta, you’ll realize that it’s too much salt. 1:1 seawater to fresh water turns out perfect (and saves your fresh water).
- A good ratio of salt/water is one tablespoon per litre (or gallon). Reduce if the sauce is going to be very salty already (eg carbonara). We're talking kosher salt here (specifically Diamon Crystal), if using table salt it's probably going to be half of that: salt density varies a lot depending on the type.
- Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible. For some reason there's some myth that you want to cook pasta in a large volume of water: that's BS. What makes pasta water "liquid gold" is the starch that comes from the pasta, you want that as concentrated as possible.
A good ratio of salt/water is one tablespoon per litre (or gallon)
A gallon is 3.5-4 litres. This doesn't seem right.
Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible.
This advice is worthless without some baseline like g of pasta to l water or how much water to cover your pasta with. You should cook your pasta in a large volume of water so the water will still be hot when you add the pasta and the pasta will be cooked as quickly as possible. Too little water and you risk the pasta sticking to itself as well. All this in mind, properly cooked pasta with diluted pasta water is a better outcome than starchy pasta water with pasta that has an odd texture. Maybe that last bit is personal preference, but when eating pasta, the first thing I notice is the texture of the pasta, not the starchiness of the pasta water. Hell, maybe we're thinking about the same amount of water, and you've just seen people try to cook with comically large amounts, I dunno.
Oh god please don't to 1 TB of salt per gallon you need way more. I would do 4TB because although it's more than 1% salt it's easy to remember and close enough. As long as you stay less than 2% you're probably good for average salt tolerance.
+1 to the as little water as possible tip, that's worked well for me. The emulsifying properties transmit flavors really well, I like to infuse a tiny bit of oil to stir in.
What does salting your pasta water do, other than aligning with how it was "meant to be"? I've never noticed a difference, but also didn't salt it that extensively, and this was years ago.
In college I got into an argument about this, believing this was the primary reason to salt the water. I was wrong -- at best it raises the boiling temp by 2F which is negligible.
Ah OK, so the same reason I use salt elsewhere - I thought it might affect the cooking process somehow.
Any idea why the pasta carries it better? I usually add it to the sauce, the idea being both that I need to use less salt (healthier), and that it interacts with the herbs I added to the sauce.
You need to salt it enough that the pasta itself becomes salty. So the sauce you use doesn't have to have much salt, a pinch or two, and the pasta carries the saltiness instead.
> Add a small amount of olive oil as extra help for that
It really doesn't. Oil doesn't mix with water. The only thing it does is oiling your pasta when you drain the water, which prevents the sauce from sticking correctly.
Pasta naturally don't stick together if you use a pot large enough, with enough water. And even then it doesn't stick, I honestly don't know how people make their pasta stick.
Cheap pans. Thin-walled that doesn't distribute heat evenly. So hot spots burn the pasta to the walls.
Secondly, not stirring at all. Boiling will do some circulation, but you have to keep some amount of stirring to prevent a small sticking turn into a burned to the pan problem.
Not sure who said it, but I've had the advice "enough salt to scare your guests" in my head for years. Adding the salt after the water boils is also very, very satisfying.
1) Salt your pasta water! Pasta is meant to be cooked in salty water that, according and excellently-put by Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) - "is reminiscent of the sea".
2) Save and use a splash of ("dirty") pasta water - aka the water the pasta was just cooked in - when you're tossing the pasta with the sauce. The water is filled with delightful liquified starch from the pasta, and it helps the sauce coat the pasta more thoroughly.