Pasta is one of those dishes that most of us find ourselves making when we aren’t sure what to cook. It’s quick, easy, and completely customizable—which means you can use up just about any ingredients in your fridge and it’ll still be a crowd pleaser.
Because many of us have been boiling pasta since we learned how to cook—maybe even thanks to good ‘ole boxed Kraft Macaroni and Cheese—we might think we’re pros. However, on a recent trip to Academia Barilla, Barilla’s culinary school in Parma, Italy, I learned that there’s more of an art to making pasta than you may have thought.
Chef Marcello Zaccaria shared many tips for making restaurant-quality pasta at home, from using julienned vegetables in dishes with long pasta and cubed veggies in dishes with short pasta to the notion that we should be tasting our pasta water to ensure it’s salted to perfection.
However, there’s one mistake you might be making that could throw off your entire pasta recipe—and it’s a mistake made at the start of cooking.
The Biggest Pasta Mistake You Might Be Making, According to a Chef
As Julie Andrews sings in “The Sound of Music,” “let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” Because, according to Marcello, your pasta-to-sauce ratio can really make or break the dish.
So, there are two ratios you should live by. When you’re cooking a pasta dish with marinara, Alfredo, vodka, or any other sauce that’s not pesto, you’ll want to use an even 100 grams of dry pasta to 100 grams of sauce.
If you have one, use a food scale to get a precise measurement, but if you don’t, 100 grams of dry pasta is about 1 cup and 100 grams of pasta sauce is about 1/2 cup.
For pasta dishes made with pesto, you’ll use the same 100 grams of dry pasta, but only 50 grams of pesto—or 1/4 cup.
To make the perfect bowl of pasta, you’ll cook your desired noodles in salted water—without breaking the pasta—according to package instructions. However, Marcello recommends pulling the pasta off the heat about one to two minutes before the package suggests for al dente pasta. That way, you can finish the pasta in the sauce on the stove unless you’re making a pesto dish.
Pesto should never be heated on the stove, according to Chef Marcello, instead, cook the pasta all the way until al dente, drain it, and then add it to a separate heat-safe bowl with your pesto. Marcelllo recommends covering the bowl with plastic wrap or something else to seal it in, then shaking the bowl to ensure the pesto coats every noodle.
It’s a simple trick, but it will take your pasta dish from an at-home meal to one that transports you to the streets of Italy.
Dining and Cooking