Ingredient

Pasta

Cooking pasta is easy and finishing it is where nearly everyone stops too early. Draining pasta and pouring sauce on top gives you two separate things on a plate; finishing the pasta in the sauce with a little of its own cooking water gives you one dish.

Cooking it

• Plenty of water, and salt it properly. This is the only chance to season the pasta itself, and most of the salt goes down the drain. It should taste noticeably salty.
• No oil in the water. It does not stop sticking — it floats on top — and it coats the pasta so sauce slides off. Stir instead, especially in the first minute.
• Start tasting two minutes before the packet says. Packet times run long, and pasta keeps cooking in the sauce afterwards.
• Al dente means firm to the bite with no chalky white core. Bite a piece in half and look at the cut face.
• Save a mugful of the water before draining. This is the single most useful habit in Italian cooking and it costs nothing.
• Do not rinse it, except for a cold pasta salad. Rinsing removes the surface starch that makes sauce cling.

Why the pasta water matters

The cloudy water pasta has cooked in is salted and full of starch that has leached out of the surface. Both are useful. The salt seasons; the starch acts as a thickener and, more importantly, as an emulsifier — it helps fat and water hold together instead of separating.

That is why a splash of pasta water turns a pan of oil, garlic and chilli into something glossy that coats each strand, and why a cream or cheese sauce that has gone greasy can often be brought back with a spoonful of it. The mechanism is the same one that makes a carbonara work without cream.

Add it gradually, off high heat, tossing hard. The tossing is doing real work: it is what forms the emulsion.

Finishing pasta in the sauce

The step that separates good pasta from adequate pasta.

1. Have the sauce hot in a wide pan, and slightly looser than you want it to end up.
2. Drain the pasta a minute before it is done, saving the water. Or lift it straight from the pot with tongs, which brings water with it.
3. Tip the pasta into the sauce and turn the heat up.
4. Toss hard for a minute or so, adding splashes of pasta water. The sauce will thicken and go glossy as the starch and fat emulsify.
5. Take it off the heat before adding cheese, which splits if it boils.
6. Serve immediately. Pasta waits for nobody and stiffens as it cools.

Shape and sauce

The rule is that the sauce has to be able to get hold of the pasta, so the two are chosen together rather than at random.

Long and thin — spaghetti, linguine

Smooth, oily or light sauces that coat: aglio e olio, cacio e pepe, clams, a simple tomato.

Long and flat — tagliatelle, pappardelle

Rich meat sauces and ragù. The wide surface carries them.

Tubes with ridges — rigatoni, penne rigate

Chunky sauces that get inside and stick to the ridges. Baked dishes.

Twists and shells — fusilli, orecchiette, conchiglie

Sauces with small pieces — sausage, broccoli, peas — that lodge in the shape.

Small — ditalini, orzo, pastina

Soups and broths.

Fresh egg pasta

Butter, cream and delicate sauces. It is softer and richer and does not suit heavy, rustic sauces the way dried does.

Common questions