Some weeks change your cooking forever.
Mine involved a tiny kitchen in Trastevere, a Roman chef named Marco, and more Pecorino Romano than I’d typically go through in a month.
I’ve spent years around great food—service, sourcing, tasting menus, the whole circus.
But a week cooking in a real Roman kitchen taught me that good pasta isn’t complicated.
It’s disciplined.
The difference lives in small decisions, repeated with care.
Here are the five habits Marco drilled into me that transformed the way I cook pasta at home.
1) Salt and size your water like a pro
I used to treat salting pasta water like seasoning soup—generous, but casual.
Marco treated it like a non-negotiable ratio.
The rule he hammered into me: about 10 grams of salt per liter of water.
That’s roughly 1 tablespoon of kosher salt for every quart.
Yes, it tastes like the sea.
It needs to.
Your pasta should absorb seasoning from the inside out while it cooks, not rely on the sauce to bail it out later.
But here’s the second part most home cooks miss: use less water than you think.
Roman kitchens aren’t filling Dutch ovens to the brim.
They go smaller—just enough to keep the pasta moving without sticking.
Why?
Because less water means a higher concentration of starch.
That starchy liquid is your secret weapon for emulsifying sauce (more on that in a moment).
A few tactical notes that stuck with me:
– Start with a pot that fits the quantity you’re cooking. For two portions, a medium saucepan is fine if you stir.
– Bring water to a fierce boil before salting, then re-boil before dropping the pasta so it doesn’t stall at lukewarm.
– Stir in the first 30 seconds like you’re paying rent—that’s when sticking happens.
The result: the pasta itself tastes seasoned, and your “pasta water” is actually useful—silky, cloudy, and ready to do work.
2) Finish the pasta in the pan, not the pot
This habit alone will upgrade 90% of home pasta.
We’ve all seen the routine: boil pasta, drain it in the sink, drop it on top of sauce.
Marco called that “pasta with sauce,” not a sauce and pasta becoming one thing.
His move: undercook the pasta by a minute or two, then transfer it straight into the sauce pan with a ladle or tongs—no colander.
Bring the sauce and pasta to a simmer together.
Add ladlefuls of the reserved starchy water, toss, and let the pasta finish cooking as the sauce tightens and clings.
He called it mantecatura—marrying the starch in the water with fat in the sauce (olive oil, guanciale fat, butter if you’re not in Rome), then using heat and movement to create an emulsion.
No cream needed.
You’re engineering gloss.
I watched this play out with cacio e pepe.
We bloomed freshly cracked pepper in a splash of hot pasta water to wake its oils, then added the undercooked spaghetti and more water.
Off the heat, we rained in a mountain of ultra-fine Pecorino Romano, tossing constantly.
Cheese plus starch plus residual heat formed a sauce that coated every strand like velvet.
No clumps.
No broken cheese.
Just shine.
Key details that matter:
– Finish heat low. If you add cheese over roaring flame, you’ll break the emulsion.
– Add water a little at a time; you can always reduce, but split sauces are harder to save.
– Keep the pasta moving—toss, stir, or swirl. Emulsions like motion.
Do this with carbonara, amatriciana, gricia, even simple aglio e olio.
Once you feel the sauce tighten around the pasta instead of sit below it, you won’t go back.
3) Match shape to sauce, and portion with a scale
I used to be loose with portions and casual about shapes.
Spaghetti with everything.
A handful here, a guess there.
Roman cooks are not guessing.
They’re measuring, and they’re strategic about shape.
Portion first.
Marco kept a small digital scale on the line and weighed dried pasta—90 to 100 grams per person for a full portion, 70 to 80 grams if the meal includes other courses.
It sounds fussy until you realize two magical things happen: you cook exactly the right amount and your water-to-pasta ratio stays consistent.
Consistent inputs, consistent results.
Now shape.
There’s a reason Romans are loyalists:
– Spaghetti and tonnarelli (a slightly thicker, square-cut spaghetti) excel with clingy, glossy sauces like cacio e pepe and carbonara. The long strands create maximum contact.
– Rigatoni and mezze maniche love amatriciana because the ridges and tubes trap tomato and guanciale. Every bite is sauce plus pasta, not sauce sliding off.
– Bucatini is playful, but it can be maddening; the hollow center splashes everywhere. It’s fantastic if you enjoy living dangerously.
– Short shapes like fusilli or farfalle? Great for chunky vegetable sauces, beans, and braises. Less ideal in classic Roman cheese-and-fat emulsions.
Shape-to-sauce pairing is about mechanics.
How does this piece of pasta hold, trap, or carry this specific sauce to your mouth?
When you start asking that question, you’ll choose on purpose instead of habit.
One more small but surprisingly big thing: use the right size pan for finishing.
Two portions of spaghetti should finish in a 10-inch sauté pan, not an enormous stockpot.
Surface area helps the emulsion form and water reduce quickly.
4) Respect timing like you respect seasoning
This is where working in fine dining spoiled me: timing is the difference between “good” and “wow.”
Pasta magnifies that truth.
The Roman way is to undercook and let carryover do the rest.
You’re aiming for al dente in the bowl, not in the pot.
Here’s the flow Marco drilled into me:
– Taste the pasta earlier than the package suggests. If it says 10 minutes, start tasting at 7.
– Transfer to the sauce when the core still has a pale dot—what Italians call the anima, the soul. It’s not crunchy, just a hint of resistance.
– Finish the last minute or two in the pan with the sauce and starchy water.
– Plate immediately. Eat immediately. Pasta waits for no one.
If you let cooked pasta sit, steam will push it past perfect.
If you rinse it (please don’t), you strip the starch that helps sauce cling.
If you hold it in a colander while you futz with the sauce, you’ll overshoot.
The rhythm matters because the texture matters.
Texture is 50% of pleasure.
A few micro-habits that add up:
– Warm your bowls. A cold plate pulls heat and tightens the sauce too quickly.
– Have your sauce 80% ready before the pasta hits the water. Pasta shouldn’t be standing in line.
– Keep a small pot of simmering water on the back burner if you’re cooking multiple rounds. It gives you emergency heat and extra starch without starting from zero.
This is also how you avoid clumps in cheese-based sauces.
Lower heat, gradual cheese, constant tossing, and the right moment—that’s your insurance policy.
5) Finally, insist on fewer, better ingredients—and treat them with respect
I know this sounds romantic, but it’s also practical.
Roman pasta is minimalism with standards.
Fewer inputs, higher quality, handled correctly.
What changed for me:
– Cheese: Use true Pecorino Romano (aged, salty, sheep’s milk) and grate it very fine, almost powdery. A microplane or fine rasp does the trick. Fine grate melts quicker and emulsifies better.
– Pepper: Buy whole peppercorns and grind or crush them fresh. Toast them lightly in the pan to wake their oils before you add water or fat. The aroma difference is night and day.
– Fat: Good extra-virgin olive oil is a sauce unto itself. For guanciale, render slowly so the fat stays clear and sweet, not bitter. Reserve some for gloss at the end.
– Eggs (for carbonara): Room temperature yolks emulsify more predictably than fridge-cold. Temper them with hot pasta water off the heat, then add gradually while tossing so you get silk, not scrambled.
– Tomatoes: For amatriciana, many Romans prefer whole peeled San Marzano or a high-quality passata. Crush by hand, keep it bright, and don’t over-reduce into jam. Sauce should coat, not smother.
The “respect” part is just as important as the shopping list.
Don’t dump cheese into a boiling pan and walk away.
Don’t torch garlic to bitterness and call it depth.
Stop a minute earlier than you think, taste, adjust, taste again.
Every step is a chance to ruin or rescue.
A chef friend once told me great food is mostly restraint.
After a week in Rome, I believe it.
The goal is not to prove how much you can add; it’s to reveal how good simple ingredients can be when you get out of their way.
Final thoughts
If you want one habit to start tonight, make it finishing your pasta in the pan with a ladle of starchy water.
Feel that moment the sauce turns glossy and hugs the noodles.
After that, dialing in salt, shape, timing, and ingredient quality becomes addictive.
You don’t need a Roman kitchen to cook like Rome.
You just need five small habits and the patience to repeat them.
The payoff shows up on the fork.
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Dining and Cooking