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Just 4 days until Christmas..get in the mood with some festive nosh!
It’s safe to say, especially regarding student stereotypes, that pasta is a staple food that would be found in most students’ kitchen cupboards. It’s cheap, easy to cook and can be incorporated into a variety of different meals; spaghetti bolognese, pasta with cheese, rotini tuna bake, sausage pasta bake, the list goes on. Pasta is a safe bet for any money saving student who doesn’t want to spend all day in the kitchen.
However, have you ever wondered how to make pasta properly? No, I don't have in mind the instructions written on the labels by manufacturers. There exist a few small tips. At first glance they may seem extremely insignificant but you might be surprised how they can make your pasta taste better than you ever thought possible.
So here are a few insider tips to help you make the most of your pasta:
When buying pasta look for the note 'pasta di semola di grano duro'. This pasta is made from the whole-wheat, which makes it healthier (much higher in fibre, vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids). Besides, it will not be sticky, so it will look and taste definitely better.
Cook in a large quantity of water! Use at least 4 litres of water for every 450 grams of pasta.
Add a pinch of salt, a spoonful of oil and your pasta only when the water is just boiling. This helps to prevent pastiness and it helps to make pasta 'al dante'.
Do not cover a pan when the water is already boiling and do not overcook pasta. The best pasta is cooked when it is firm but not hard. It is called 'al dente' which means there is a slight resistance in the centre when the pasta is chewed.
Be careful – pasta tends to become cold very quickly. A great Italian proverb is: "friends are like macaroni. If they're not warm, they're not good".
After all these tips, be sure that you make some additional ingredients. It is wonderful that almost everything goes perfectly well with pasta. However, if you are concerned about healthy diet, you should be aware that pasta itself is not too fattening (cooked pasta has only about 200 calories per cup) but where you really can get into trouble is with your pasta sauce. Besides, choose only whole-wheat pasta, not the one made with white flour. Finally, you should know that pasta is slowly digestible food. It means that if you eat too much of it you could become very sleepy (so, perhaps not the best idea for breakfast then).
Have fun with it, try out these small tips and maximize your pasta experience!
It's great that there's an article on how to have every-day food the best way possible but it's a little bit hard to take advice from someone who doesn't spell al dEnte right... Sorry!
Scraping the barrel with this article.
Scraping the barrel with this article.
Noodles are so much tastier and better for you. Plus they can be eaten by themselves, whereas pasta really needs some kind of sauce. Although noodles + soy sauce is always better than noodles solo.
This article was written by someone who first language isn't English and it's tough for editors to keep the integrity of their original work whilst anglicising it sufficiently for a British speaking readership.
Hi Chris, I’m not really sure if I understand your argument correctly. Surely the spelling of this article should be correct. The term al dente should either be spelled in correct English, or in the language it comes from, which in this case surely is Italian, which means it is spelled al dente. I’m sorry to complain about this but it just really doesn’t make sense to me!
You're absolutely right, and it's not an argument... I'm was under the impression that people were complaining about the language used. I do italian myself so I should have picked that up.
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