“Every Time This Technique Is Replicated, An Italian Dies”
I thought I'd seen it all. I thought I'd experienced every crackpot “time-saving” and/or “labor-saving” technique and device out there for the simple task of cooking pasta. I've gaped in amazement at all the so-called “hacks” (I really hate that term) that espouse cooking pasta in cold water or that proclaim pasta can be successfully prepared using cups of water rather than quarts. I've shaken my head in bemusement at the rubbery, silicone gizmos that claim to produce “perfect” pasta in the microwave. I've heaved sighs of frustration at American “old wives” who dump oil in pasta cooking water or who don't liberally salt said water. As I said, I thought I'd seen it all: then I saw this.
Some benighted woman in the pasta cooking capital that is northeastern England has gone on record – via TikTok, of course – with the ignominious idea of cooking pasta in its sauce. Sort of.
Now wait! Before you remind me that that is, indeed, the proper Italian way to finish cooking pasta, let me explain this culinary genius's complete method. The woman, named Jasmine, claims that she got the idea from an Italian-American restaurant chain called Frankie & Benny's. Founded in London in 1995 by one Kevin Bacon, (probably not that one), the fact that it is a British Italian-American outfit means it's already at least two degrees separated from anything remotely authentic.
Anyway, according to Jasmine, the best way to prepare your pasta in one pot with a minimum of muss and fuss is as follows: you boil some water in a teakettle. Then you pour a jar of spaghetti sauce directly into a pot and add some of the boiling water from the kettle. Toss your dried spaghetti into the sauce and water mixture and boil it up. Once you reach the desired degree of doneness (and I shudder to think what that might be) you throw in a few meatballs and declare the insipid result to be a delicious Italian dish.
According to the website wantedinmilan.com, one person commenting on this travesty summed up the reaction of Italians everywhere with the statement, “Every time this technique is replicated, an Italian dies.” Let me expand on that. Not only does an Italian die, they die screaming and are joined in their death throes by the spinning of generations of nonne in their graves.
With admittedly facetious apologies to Jasmine and other “experts,” there is one and only one proper way to prepare pasta. Uno. Un. Um. En. Een. Ett. Ein. Éνας. Moja. You get the idea? ONE! And it most assuredly does not involve tossing uncooked pasta into a pot of diluted tomato sauce. Uffa!!! And that's the mildest word I can conjure at the moment.
You gotta have water. Lotsa, lotsa water. The water's gotta be boiling. Lotsa, lotsa bubbles. And it's gotta be salted. Lotsa, lotsa salt. Did you notice that Jasmine didn't include any salt anywhere in her “recipe?” Those are the only ways you can coax desiccated bits of durum wheat flour to give up their starches, achieve perfect al dente tenderness, and absorb flavor. Otherwise, what's the point? Any other method or technique or “hack” (the word reminds me of what a cat does to a hairball) is going to produce an unsatisfying mush.
Now, as I said, finishing the cooked pasta in a pot of sauce is not only a good idea, it's an essential and quintessential Italian technique. Only in Italian-American restaurants, greasy spoon diners, or church “spaghetti dinners” do they actually serve piles of naked spaghetti on a plate doused in cups if not quarts of red sauce. You will not find an Italian anywhere in Italy or elsewhere on the planet who cooks pasta that way. Unless they own one of the aforesaid Italian-American joints, in which case they do so under protest because that's what their palate-less customers expect and demand.
I took over running the kitchen in one of those diners once. The place offered “spaghetti specials” on the weekends and the very first thing I did was to change the method of preparing the spaghetti.
My cook had already prepared a big pot of pasta when I got in one day. I tasted it. Horrible. Bland. Devoid of any semblance of flavor. I asked him how he had cooked it. He looked at me as though I had grown a third eye and and told me that he had boiled the water, added some salt, and cooked the spaghetti. I asked, “how much salt and for how long?” “I don't know. A couple of teaspoons, I guess, and for about fifteen minutes.” Dio mio! He had produced the equivalent of canned spaghetti alla Chef Boyardee.
“Throw it out,” I said, “We're starting over.” We boiled some more water and his eyes bugged out as he watched me pour in the salt. We're talking a restaurant stock pot here, okay? Forty quarts. Ten gallons. Probably eight gallons of water. Allowing two or three tablespoons of salt per gallon, that's about a cup and a half of salt. I thought he was gonna choke. “Taste the water,” I told him. “What does it taste like?” “Kinda salty,” he replied. “Like seawater,” I asked? “Yeah,” he said. I exclaimed, “Perfect!”
I added the pasta and cooked it at a rolling boil for a generous eight or nine minutes. I pulled out a strand and told my cook to try it. “Oh, wow! That's good! I'm gonna make that way at home from now on.” Flavor! What a concept!
Okay, so now the par-cooked pasta goes in the fridge. We kept a big pot of sauce simmering on a back burner of the stove. When an order came in for the special, instead of throwing a portion of the pasta back in some hot water to heat it up (called “double-cooking”) and then plopping it on a plate and pouring a big glug of sauce over it, I insisted that the cooks ladle some sauce into a smaller pot and add the pasta to that pot of sauce to finish cooking for maybe two minutes. Then you plate it up on a warm serving plate and present it to your happy customer. Not only were the patrons amazed at the difference – especially the regulars – but the cooks were, too, and so I achieved what I set out to achieve.
You can do the same thing at home. Cook your pasta in plenty of generously salted water until it's just shy of done, then finish it in your sauce before serving. It's that simple, it's that easy. It's the way generations of Italians have done it. No “hacks” required. And no dead Italians or spinning grandmothers, either. Win-win, right?
Good work is seldom fast and fast work is seldom good. Remember that rule next time you see a “hack” that promises to make things quick and easy. (Remember, too, that one of the definitions of “hack” is “someone who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success.”) 'Nuff said.
Buon appetito!
