For many cultures, pasta is a quick dinner thrown together at a moment’s notice on a weeknight. After all, it’s easy enough to make, isn’t it? Simply pop a pot of water on the stove, toss in your pasta, boil and drain before mixing in the sauce.
The truth is that for Italians, cooking pasta is a delicate process passed down through generations – each closely guarded tip combining on the plate to create the perfect bite.
When made correctly, your commonplace spaghetti, ravioli, farfalle and fusilli pasta is the perfect starter dish for special occasions like birthdays, weddings and holidays.
So, let’s roll up our sleeves and pop on our chef’s hats – it’s time to cook pasta the Italian way!
Choose Your Pasta: Dry or Fresh?
Before mastering the art of pasta, you must choose the type of pasta you’re going to cook. Here, you have two distinct options: dry or fresh pasta.
Under these two categories are multiple sub categories as there are different types of dry and fresh pastas depending on their ingredients and production processes.
Dry Pasta
Dry pasta is the more accessible option and can be widely found all over the world, making it the perfect choice for anyone outside of Italy trying to recreate an authentic Italian spaghetti dinner at home.
However, not all dry pastas are created equal.
When browsing the pasta aisle, you’ll likely see two distinct colors: white and yellow. This pasta color is the best clue to the pasta’s taste and overall quality.
White pasta indicates that the dough was processed slowly, meaning the dough was gently dried over a long period of time at a low heat. This slow drying process affects not only the color, as it maintains the original ivory hue of the dough, but also the taste and nutritional value. The slow heating process maintains the dough’s freshness while also preserving the pasta’s nutritional value.
Yellow pasta, on the other hand, is processed quickly – being dried for a short amount of time at high temperatures. This changes the dough’s natural white color as its sugars are burnt, yellowing in the process. This eliminates much of the pasta’s natural nutritional value and often lends it a harsh aftertaste and an unpleasant chewy texture.
White dry pasta can be fractionally more expensive than yellow pasta due to its slow processing time, but if you’re looking for a nutritionally balanced and authentic Italian pasta dish, we highly recommend it.
Fresh Pasta
If you’d really like to treat yourself, you can splurge time or money on some authentic Italian fresh pasta.
Like dry pasta, there are different varieties of fresh pasta. Most notably, there’s semolina pasta and egg pasta.
As the name suggests, semolina pasta is made using fine semolina (i.e. durum wheat) flour. Simply mixed with water, kneaded until smooth and rolled out into shapes, semolina pasta has a slight grainy texture and is often considered easier to work with as it’s sturdier and easily formed into different precise shapes.
Egg pasta is semolina pasta’s stretchier and smoother cousin. This refined texture is possible with the use of whole eggs and 00 flour – an extra fine durum flour that creates a strong but pliable dough. Consequently, fresh egg pasta is often chewier with a smooth and slightly sticky surface, allowing sauces to easily cling to it.
Match the Pasta Shape to the Sauce
Any seasoned Italian knows that each sauce calls for a specific type of pasta to accompany it. These pasta pairings are determined by the shape, texture and size of the pasta.
Ragù
Long or textured pastas like tagliatelle and rigatoni are best paired with ragù. The tagliatelle’s rough and wide surface and the rigatoni’s deep ridges offer the perfect surface for the ground beef and tomato sauce to stick to, ensuring every bite is full of flavor.
Seafood
Seafood is almost always paired with a long pasta, like tagliatelle or linguine. The seafood’s silky and light sauce perfectly complements the pasta’s smooth and silky texture. The pastas’ length also allows you to pierce the seafood with your fork before twirling the pasta around the tongs for a perfectly balanced bite.
Tomato
The classic tomato sauce is usually smothered over a long silky pasty like linguine or a short, starchy pasta such as gnocchi. The long shape of linguine allows you to twirl the fresh bits of tomato and melted cheese around your fork while the gnocchi absorb the flavors on the plate, creating delicious savory pillows.
Cream or Cheese
A creamy sauce like carbonara or cacio e pepe is often accompanied by linguine. Meanwhile, creamy and cheesy sauces, like ragù bianco (i.e. white sauce), are thought best paired with a smooth, short pasta like penne or gnocchi.
5 Tips for Perfect Pasta Every Time
Now that you know what goes into choosing the perfect pasta, you need to know how to actually cook it.
Here are a few top tips from InRome Cooking’s talented chefs on how to make the best authentic Italian pasta at home.
Add the pasta to boiling water
Unless you want to break an Italian’s heart into a million pieces, you must always bring your water to a roaring boil before popping in your pasta. Adding your pasta to cold or lukewarm water can result in overcooked, soggy pasta as the pasta absorbs the water before boiling.
Salt along the way
When added in increments throughout the cooking process, salt can add a depth of flavor to your pasta dish. As small amounts of salt cook, they develop an umami flavor that, in addition to seasoning the food, adds a distinct depth to your sauce. Sprinkling a few generous pinches of salt in your pasta water will also season your pasta, ensuring every part of your dish is flavorful.
Don’t overcook your pasta
When it comes to boiling your pasta, “al dente” is the name of the game. Overcooked pasta can become chewy and soggy, and in the case of fresh pasta, may even cause it to lose its shape. You’ll want your pasta to have a slight bite to it as this will also ensure it won’t become soggy when you add it to your sauce.
Save some of your pasta water
Don’t pour all that valuable pasta water down the drain! This starchy water is the perfect addition to your sauces and many Italian pasta dishes call for a pasta water as a thickening agent. We recommend preserving about a cup of pasta water for later use.
Don’t rinse your pasta
Once cooked, pasta is coated in starches which, like the pasta water, enhance the sauce’s flavor and texture. Rinsing the pasta also cools it down, which can create a rubbery noodle and cool the sauce, potentially upsetting its consistency. So, unless you’re planning on making a cold pasta salad, it’s common practice to never rinse your pasta after draining it.
Wrapping Things Up
If you want to cook as the Italians do, following our bonafide tips and tricks is a sure-fire way to ensure perfect pasta every time. Whether you’re planning on making dry or fresh pasta with a ragù, seafood, tomato or cream/cheese sauce, you’ll understand which pairings to make for the perfect plate of pasta every time.
Remember to always boil your water before adding the pasta and never rinse away those valuable starches.
Check out our pasta paking classes to learn how to make three delicious pasta dishes from scratch!
