Pasta is a popular and versatile source of carbohydrates, and once you know how it’s easy to cook too!
Pasta comes in all sorts of different shapes and colours, both fresh and dried. But all types of pasta are made from the same basic ingredients, so you can apply the same principles to cooking them.
Dried pasta is easier to store and transport, so it’s more common and cheaper than fresh pasta.
Start by measuring a portion of pasta. You can use your hands for this – the amount of dried pasta you can grab in a handful is one portion for you. (Remember: if you’re cooking for people who are bigger or smaller than you, their portion sizes will be different!) It often won’t look like enough when you first put it in the saucepan, but as the pasta cooks it absorbs water and expands.
Place your pasta in a saucepan and cover it with water. (Starting with hot water from a kettle will cook your pasta slightly faster, but cold water works fine too.) Your pasta does need to be fully submerged, but using as little water as you can saves time and energy.
Put a lid on your saucepan and heat it on the hob. Keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t boil over. Once it’s boiling (big bubbles in the water), turn the heat down to a nice simmer (small, regular bubbles in the water), and make a note of the time. The pasta packet should give you a cooking time, but generally small pasta like macaroni take as little as 5 minutes, while larger pasta shapes can take up to 20.
As dried pasta cooks, it goes from being slightly translucent to opaque, and becomes soft. To check pasta is cooked all the way through, cut (or bite) a piece in half. If it’s soft and the same colour all the way through, it’s cooked.
Fresh pasta is a little trickier, both to store and to cook. Because it hasn’t been dried out, fresh pasta cooks more quickly. However, the changes in colour and texture are harder to spot, so it’s easier to overcook fresh pasta.
(If you really want to push the boat out, you could try making your own pasta from scratch. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, but it’s still a bit beyond the scope of this blog!)
Once your pasta is cooked, you can mix it with a sauce*, herby pesto, or just a splash of oil and a sprinkle of salt. Pasta is great in a huge range of dishes, but for warm weather my favourite is a tomatoey pasta salad!
*(You can cook pasta in a sauce, but it will take a little longer than in water.)
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