In her "Absolute Best Tests" column for Food52, Ella Quittner took on pasta. Quittner explains how she chose her control factors as possible and simplified the steps. For pasta, she used the same brand of boxed, dried noodles for each test, and used Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. She added the salt once the water was boiling. All noodles were cooked exactly two minutes less than the suggested cooking time for al dente, and each cooked pasta was simmered for two minutes in sauce with a quarter cup of cooking water.
Ella Quittner stages head-to-head cooking tests for her "Absolute Best Tests" column for Food52. Photo by Anna Visintin.
Quittner chose spaghetti for her salting tests and rigatoni to judge water quality. Conventional methods advise you to use four to five quarts of salted water per pound of dried pasta. She found that using less water (about two quarts) produced much starchier pasta that helped the sauce bind to the noodle and didn't compromise texture.
The best way to cook long noodles? Aim for three quarts of water per pound of pasta, or two quarts if you can commit to stirring the noodles as they cook, Quittner says. The water level shrinks as the noodles absorb water, and it becomes a race between how long the cook can stir, so you don't get unevenly cooked noodles.
Two heaping teaspoons per quart of water enhances the wheaty flavor and complements the sauce. If you're serving eaters who are watching their salt intake, opt for salted water and leave the salinity out of the sauce.