Cooking Pasta For Beginners

Part 3 of the First-Time Cooking Starter Pack

Why is pasta number three in this starter pack? Isn’t pasta something that takes forever to master? This is an offense to the master pasta makers of the world! Yes and no…. If you’re going to make it from scratch, then you’re probably in over your head as a beginner. Making pasta is a hard thing to master, but cooking pasta is not.

As a newbie cook, stick to the dried pasta packs you can find in basically any store nowadays. You can upgrade to making pasta from scratch once you get more comfortable with cooking. The reason pasta is number three on this list is because it utilizes the boiling, simmering, and sautéing methods. You can get fancier than that, but it’s not necessary to create a delicious dish.

For this pasta dish, we’ll use a traditional tomato based sauce to pair with the pasta. This will let you practice temperature control when heating up the tomato sauce. Since tomato sauce is thicker than water, you’ll want to bring it to a simmer instead of a boil (or risk having tomato sauce splattering everywhere).

You’re Cooking Pasta, Not Noodles

Unlike when you made the noodles, simply dropping the pasta into the boiling water isn’t going to be enough. For starters - most people would curse you if you don’t salt the water before putting in your pasta. Noodles don’t require this because you’re cooking the noodles in a stock or broth (we did it by adding the bouillon cube in part 2 of this starter pack guide). For pasta though, we’re just using water, so make sure to salt your water before adding the pasta. You don’t need that much salt, just a pinch or two of it.

Another thing that’s different with pasta is that it tends to stick together more than noodles do. As a result, you’ll need to stir the pot more often than you did with the noodles. Some folks suggest adding olive oil to the water so that it helps keep the pasta from sticking, but that will also make it harder for the sauce to adhere to the pasta. Pick your poison here, but I recommend just stirring the water every so often instead of adding oil. What also helps here is choosing a bigger pot because the additional room in the pot will give the pasta more room to move around. Since you’re not using the liquid as a soup base later, it doesn’t matter as much how big of a pot you use. Just don’t go with too big of a pot or else you’ll take an hour to boil the water.

The amount of time you cook pasta depends on how you like it. A good rule of thumb is about 10 minutes, but you should consult the box that your pasta came in. If you somehow got a hold of fresh pasta, that cook time will be significantly shorter (about half the cook time on average) since it’s not dried out and doesn’t need to be rehydrated as much. To check that you’ve cooked the pasta to the right consistency, just pull one out and try it. Unlike what you might have seen on TV, don’t throw it against the wall. That’s just wasting food..

Once the pasta is cooked to your liking, remove it from the water and strain it. Do not dump all of that water out yet though, we’re going to use it in the sautéing step. Keep at least a laddle of this pasta water.

Smaller Bubbles are for Sauces

For the tomato sauce, it’s best to make this while the pasta is cooking to save time. It’s pretty hands off, so don’t worry about having to do too many things at once. Being that you’re reading through this starter pack, I’m going to suggest using a pre-made sauce instead of making a fresh one. A lot of pasta sauce jars out there contain a lot of added sugar, which is the main reason I tend to make my own. However, there’s one brand I don’t mind using when I’m short on time and that’s Rao’s pasta sauces.

There are two methods to heating up your sauce. Some folks will say you should do it in a small pot, but it’s really not that necessary to use yet another pot unless you’re making different types of pasta dishes. For this case, just get a sauté pan and use that for both the simmering and sautéing steps. It’ll also be nice not to have to wash another pot if you don’t need to. Sauté pans have higher edges than a regular frying pan and they usually have a lid as well which makes it great for simmering your pasta sauce.

I recommend adding the sauce into the sauté pan before turning on the heat. You’re essentially warming up the sauce rather than cooking it, so it’s fine to start it from cold and then bring it up to temperature via a medium-low heat level. Put the lid on and let it go, this might take 5-10 minutes or longer depending on how much sauce you have. What you want to look for is a slight bubble. Once you see that, remove the lid and turn the heat down to a low. You should see vapor rising from the sauce when you do this.

Sauce You Stay, Pasta Sauté Away

Once your sauce has reached a simmering level, your pasta should either be already done or almost done. This part can be a bit tricky, but it’s much more simple than it’s going to sound.

Take the pasta water you saved and laddle in a bit of it into the sauce. You don’t need too much, one laddle full is more than enough. The pasta water contains the starch from the cooked pasta which will do two things for your pasta dish: 1) It’ll make it easier to bind the pasta to the sauce, and 2) It’ll help thicken up the sauce a bit as it mixes with it and heats up.

After adding the pasta water into the sauce, stir it a bit. If there’s no more vapor rising from the sauce, just raise the heat back to a medium-low. Once you see vapor rising from the sauce, drop the heat back to a low and add in the pasta and then stir it all together so that every bit of pasta gets coated in the sauce. After everything has been mixed in well, you’re done and ready to serve.

Good additions for pasta

• Once you’ve plated your pasta, feel free to top it with things like parsley, grated parmesan cheese, and freshly ground black pepper.
• When making the sauce, you can add things to it to improve the flavor profile. Things like mushrooms, bell peppers, diced onions, or ground beef are all great additions to a sauce, even when you’re using pre-made sauces.

Next up    👉  Cooking Steak For Beginners