I mostly don’t salt the water but depending on the sauce (green pesto comes to mind), I have found it to be much better than salting afterwards.
The cooking times in your first link feel borderline insane to me. Up to 15 minutes to cook pasta?? I have never seen a cooking time over 11 minutes in 30 years in France and that was for bulkier pasta than the rigatoni in the link. 9 mins is usually considered a pretty long cooking time.
I have noticed that cooking times in Canada seemed a bit longer, like one additional minute, sometimes two? This might be a NA problem.
The sauce part is the really heretical one to me. The practical advantages are interesting, especially the sauce to ratio part although I feel like this is likely often more of a skill issue on the part of the cook? The line between not enough and too much sauce is not that large.
On the different sauces, sure but this has never been an issue in my life? You simply split the pasta in two bowls with different sauces. I may be missing something here but everytime it has happened in my life this was very easy to handle.
I wholeheartedly disagree that the taste of the pasta and the sauce should be distinguishable, (at least to the level I understand from your post, maybe there’s a cultural divide here and we actually agree) your pasta is supposed to be not cooked enough once out of the water because you’re going to cook it again quickly with the sauce instead of the water which will end the cooking. Basically the only divide I ever heard on this is whether you put the pasta in the sauce (the correct one from what I understand) or the sauce after the pasta when cooking them together for 1-2 minutes. This step allows the sauce to get into the pasta, which won’t be possible in your plate.
The cooking times in your first link feel borderline insane to me.
Agree! To be fair, though, this wasn’t one I was counting as a heresy. It’s pretty widely acknowledged that the high end of cooking time on boxes here will make your pasta badly mushy.
This step allows the sauce to get into the pasta, which won’t be possible in your plate.
Yup, I don’t want that. It’s neat that it’s possible to do this, but to my palate it makes the dish too homogenous.
Some of this does feel heretical.
I mostly don’t salt the water but depending on the sauce (green pesto comes to mind), I have found it to be much better than salting afterwards.
The cooking times in your first link feel borderline insane to me. Up to 15 minutes to cook pasta?? I have never seen a cooking time over 11 minutes in 30 years in France and that was for bulkier pasta than the rigatoni in the link. 9 mins is usually considered a pretty long cooking time. I have noticed that cooking times in Canada seemed a bit longer, like one additional minute, sometimes two? This might be a NA problem.
The sauce part is the really heretical one to me. The practical advantages are interesting, especially the sauce to ratio part although I feel like this is likely often more of a skill issue on the part of the cook? The line between not enough and too much sauce is not that large. On the different sauces, sure but this has never been an issue in my life? You simply split the pasta in two bowls with different sauces. I may be missing something here but everytime it has happened in my life this was very easy to handle.
I wholeheartedly disagree that the taste of the pasta and the sauce should be distinguishable, (at least to the level I understand from your post, maybe there’s a cultural divide here and we actually agree) your pasta is supposed to be not cooked enough once out of the water because you’re going to cook it again quickly with the sauce instead of the water which will end the cooking. Basically the only divide I ever heard on this is whether you put the pasta in the sauce (the correct one from what I understand) or the sauce after the pasta when cooking them together for 1-2 minutes. This step allows the sauce to get into the pasta, which won’t be possible in your plate.
Agree! To be fair, though, this wasn’t one I was counting as a heresy. It’s pretty widely acknowledged that the high end of cooking time on boxes here will make your pasta badly mushy.
Yup, I don’t want that. It’s neat that it’s possible to do this, but to my palate it makes the dish too homogenous.