Helpful Pointers For Cooking Pasta

There are many easy pasta recipes, but sometimes even harder recipes don't turn out because the pasta itself wasn't prepared properly. Cooking pasta in the correct way can sometimes take some small complications out of even more complex recipes. For example, if pieces of your pasta are always sticking together, then you very likely didn't cook it in enough water, or didn't stir it when you first put it into the water. Knowing how to cook spaghetti and other types of pasta won't suddenly make a complex recipe easier, but it will help.
To make any pasta meal, whether using easy or more involved pasta recipes, you always must get the pasta to the right consistency by beginning the same way. Provide enough water for the pasta to "swim" in, so it won't stick, and also to expand to about twice the size it is when dry. Salting the water will help it taste good, without adding excessive amounts of salt to your diet.

Put the pasta into boiling water and stir for the first few moments, again to prevent sticking, and cook at a gentle boil for the amount of time indicated on the package. A quick and easy way to tell when it's done is to bite a piece; it should be tender, but firm enough that it's not totally limp.

Even the size and shape of the pasta types make a difference in your end result. You can make sure you are creating easy pasta recipes if you take some thought for how the pasta you're using will relate to the sauce you want to make to go with it. If you are creating a thick, meaty or chunky sauce, you'll want larger pasta pieces that won't be overwhelmed by the weight of the sauce. Smaller or thinner kinds of pasta like angel hair pasta will do much better with lighter, creamier sauces.

Easy pasta recipes can be made unnecessarily more difficult if you haven't mastered the basics, like cooking the pasta properly and matching the different pastas with the right kinds of sauces. You might follow all the recipe instructions to the letter, but if you've missed out on one of these fairly simple points, the final dish may be less than perfect. Learning to do things the right way at every step of the process will make the entire recipe much easier.

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