So, when you should you add salt to your pasta water? Ideally, you should wait until your water is at a rolling boil. The boiling water will agitate and dissolve the salt quickly. You can add salt to your cold water if your prefer, though. You don’t want to forget it after all!
It's OK: We all make mistakes. But you know what's less OK? Not learning from them. Welcome to Effed It Up, a semi-regular column where you, the Basically reader, write us with stories of your...less-than-proud kitchen moments, and we try to figure out how to, you know, not do that again. Got a burning question or a shameful story to share? Hit us up at [email protected]. Up this week: How much salt should you actually be putting in your pasta water?
When non-professional cooks (i.e., most of my friends) watch me cook at home, there often comes a point when they turn to me with a look of disbelief on their face. Usually that happens when I'm using salt—I, like most people who cook for a living, do not hold back when it comes to seasoning. But when the thing I’m making happens to be pasta, that look turns from disbelief to absolute horror pretty quickly when they see me dump a literal handful of kosher salt into the pot of water I'm going to boil the noodles in. “You’re adding all that salt?!” they ask incredulously. The answer is yes—and you should too.
Seasoning food properly is the thing that separates good food from great food. The point is not to make something salty, but to add enough salt to make an ingredient shine. And dried pasta is no exception. It's typically made of just flour and water and nothing else—meaning it doesn't have much flavor on its own.__ Cooking the pasta in salty water allows it to absorb some of the salt as it cooks, enhancing its flavor from the inside out__. It'll taste better than pasta that was only seasoned at the end of cooking because the salt is dispersed throughout the dish, not just sitting on the surface.
So how much salt should you put in pasta water? Well, it depends on what kind of salt you're using. Here at Basically, we always recommend Kosher salt for seasoning during cooking. Do not use iodized table salt, which is tongue-tinglingly salty and gives food a tinny, bitter taste. Among the kosher salts out there, though, there's a big difference in the size and shape of the salt crystals and therefore a difference in how salty each tastes by volume. Of the two most popular brands, Diamond Crystal and Morton’s Kosher, Diamond has flakier, irregular crystals, whereas Morton’s are rounder and pebbly. To achieve the same level of saltiness, you would use nearly twice as much Diamond as Morton’s. When it comes to salting pasta water, then, for every 4 quarts (or gallon) of water, go with 2 Tbsp. Diamond or 4 tsp. Morton’s.
Keep in mind that while being liberal with salt is good, it's totally possible to OVER-salt pasta water. It happens to me on occasion, usually when I forget that I'm also going to add other salty ingredients to the pasta, like anchovies, Parmesan, or bacon, in which case I'll back off on how generously salting my pasta water. It also happens when I forgetfully let the water in the pot boil off and reduce, which concentrates the saltiness. If you have the pasta water going for a long time, periodically top it off with additional water to keep the salt from concentrating.
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Didn't think there was all that much to say about salting your pasta water? I didn't either, until I really thought about all the hows and whys. But making small, easy, incremental adjustments to how you season food will definitely make you a better cook. I promise your food will taste better. And that's as good a reason as any.
Ready for some fettucine alfredo? Yeah, us too:
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I'm pretty sure I just added too much salt to the pasta water; I've heard too many times to make it 'taste like the sea', so I just went with that.
The ingredients of the pasta include the following (no amounts because I just added what felt right):
Grilled chicken
Sun-dried tomatoes
Red pepper flakes
Garlic
Parmesan Cheese
Olive Oil
About a handful of Spinach
Splash of lemon juice
Fresh Basil
Black Pepper
I was thinking of maybe trying to add some tomato sauce to it tomorrow, with the sweetness maybe cutting out some of the saltiness. Would this work, or is there a better way to deal with this?
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