Question for the cooks here
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I salt the water - guess I never thought about not doing it, I add very little salt to our food when I cook. I also put in a splash of olive oil. We eat pasta at least once a week and always make the sauce from scratch, (olive oil, canned diced tomatoes, garlic, basil and red pepper flakes for the basic sauce, sometimes adding one or more of the following - cooked Italian sausage/onions/mushrooms/peppers). I don’t add salt to the sauce. But I do put a good amount of shredded Pecorino Romano (bought in big wedges from costco) on my pasta - and it’s pretty salty.
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About adding olive oil, I have a hypothesis that I have not tested rigorously. I believe adding olive oil early on will make the pasta less absorbent of the sauce/seasoning that will be added later. So even if I want to add olive oil, I would add it later, after I mix the sauce in, or add the oil into the sauce instead.
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I salt the water - guess I never thought about not doing it, I add very little salt to our food when I cook. I also put in a splash of olive oil. We eat pasta at least once a week and always make the sauce from scratch, (olive oil, canned diced tomatoes, garlic, basil and red pepper flakes for the basic sauce, sometimes adding one or more of the following - cooked Italian sausage/onions/mushrooms/peppers). I don’t add salt to the sauce. But I do put a good amount of shredded Pecorino Romano (bought in big wedges from costco) on my pasta - and it’s pretty salty.
@jodi Cheese is probably my biggest remaining sources of sodium.
I cook most things from scratch, so I usually avoid the sodium bombs in the center aisles of the grocery store. But the saltiest ingredient out there is cheese. They make low fat versions but no low sodium versions. In fact the low fat versions are usually higher in sodium. It’s a shame, it’s not like I’m going to make my own cheese.
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That's true, and I also shop the perimeter of the store. Cheese does have a high sodium content, but you usually don't use a lot of it in pastas. I don't anyway - it's just a touch at serving for flavor, except maybe carbonara. A little blue cheese sprinkled sparingly on salad or vegetables give a lot of flavor for very little sodium.
