How To: Perfectly Boiled Pasta Recipe

Subtitle: You Mean Cooking Pasta Doesn’t Have To Include Throwing It At The Wall??

Jokes aside, perfectly cooked Pasta is a serious matter – especially here in Italy.  Below is Pepo’s pasta recipe, without fail it makes perfectly cooked pasta every time.  An occasion springs to mind when I was momentarily distracted (conversation and vino rosso) and cooked the pasta for a minute longer than prescribed.  Saying nothing, I served the dish and was unfortunately met with Pepo’s correct evaluation that the pasta had been cooked for 9 or 10 minutes, not 8.  To avoid this kind to reaction again, I now stick closely to the below recipe whenever I cook a pasta recipe.
Recipe: Plain Pasta Recipe (Pepo’s Pasta 101)
(printable recipe)
100g pasta per person
Cold Water
Salt

Always use a large pot, to give the pasta room to cook without potentially clumping.  Always start with cold water, put it on high heat and Salt the water well (about 1 tsp. Salt per 2ltr. water).  Put the lid and once the water is really boiling then add the pasta, if the pasta is added before the water is really boiling then it will taste floury so this is really really important.  Paste is then boiled for exactly 8minutes, you’ve got to keep the water boiling so use a lid to keep the heat high.

If you are cooking a pasta recipe that requires you to add cooked pasta to a sauce and combine the two over heat for a minute or two then just cook the pasta for 7minutes to avoid serving overcooked pasta. An example of this is the Pasta Al Arrabiata recipe.

So, after 7 or 8minutes the pasta is drained, and splashed with a little Olive Oil and serve as desired. Delicious every time.