Homemade pasta will be ‘restaurant-quality’ with this simple trick loved by experts (Image: Getty)
Pasta is a staple meal for any occasion that requires minimal effort when you’re in a bind. However, if your homemade bowl of pasta doesn’t live up to the ones you’ve had at Italian restaurants, there’s an easy way to fix it – and it’ll cost you absolutely nothing.
Essentially, when pasta is tossed with the sauce, you could risk losing the moisture. This will result in a clumpy, stuck-together mountain of pasta that’s dry and cloying. To keep the pasta moist and the sauce silky and smooth, there’s a simple fix that chefs use all the time. The answer? Pasta water.
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Food writer Katy O’Hara uses this for any last-minute pasta dish you’re rustling up for dinner, Katy wrote for Simply Recipes: “The key here is that pasta contains starch that releases into the water when it’s boiled. When you add the starchy water to your sauce, it loosens the sauce and creates an emulsion.
“Think of how you make a vinaigrette. You need some sort of emulsifier to bind the oil and vinegar together, such as mustard or mayonnaise. In the case of pasta water, starch helps the oil or butter in the sauce blend with the water.”
Adding starchy pasta water to the sauce will help emulsify the fats, thicken the sauce, and help it cling to the pasta. This means the sauce won’t slip off the pasta when you eat it.
Reserve some pasta water before straining the pasta (Image: Getty)
All you need to do is to reserve some of the water before you strain the pasta. Katy recommends one quarter cup (approximately 60ml).
Once the pasta is strained, return it to the saucepan and add your sauce. The amount of pasta you cook determines how much water you need to add to the saucepan.
You’ll need the full amount of reserved pasta water for roughly one pound (approximately 450 grams) of pasta. Simply add the water and stir in until the sauce is glossy and all the pasta is coated generously with the sauce.
If you’ve cooked less than 450 grams of pasta, add one tablespoon of the pasta water at a time until you’ve reached the desired consistency.
It’s not just a dash of pasta water that will make your pasta restaurant-worthy. Katy explained a few key details you should remember.
The first is choosing the right pasta shape. Depending on the type of sauce you’re using will determine the shape.
For light and silky sauces, long, thin pasta is best. If you’re eating a thick cream sauce, Laty recommends wide, flat pasta. Lastly, if your sauce is packed with meat or vegetables – or both – opt for short, textured pasta shapes.
To give the pasta more flavour, season the water with sauce. Finally, make sure you don’t undercook or overcook the pasta.
Katy wrote: “Finally, when you cook pasta, be sure to cook it to al dente, which means ‘to the tooth.’ That means the pasta isn’t limp and mushy; it should have a bit of bite. Follow the cook time on your packaging for the proper texture, but it never hurts to check by biting into a piece of the cooked pasta—it should have a faint white line in the centre of the noodle.”