Question for the cooks here
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Do you salt your pasta water? So many books say you should, but all I have ever found was it just makes the pasta saltier, not more flavorful.
What says the group?
It occurred to me this evening, as MFR is out and I'm making a simple Rao's marinara with frozen meatballs and bucatini.
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Never. I usually take advantage of every opportunity not to add salt to a recipe. There’s always something. Else in the recipe that will be more than salty enough. In this case the pasta sauce.
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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Never. I usually take advantage of every opportunity not to add salt to a recipe. There’s always something. Else in the recipe that will be more than salty enough. In this case the pasta sauce.
@jon-nyc said in Question for the cooks here:
Never. I usually take advantage of every opportunity not to add salt to a recipe. There’s always something. Else in the recipe that will be more than salty enough. In this case the pasta sauce.
Same.
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Agreed with everything (except Horace).
As for salt enhancing other flavors, I've never found that to be true. If anything, it obscures them.
Also, Marthy (Stewart) taught me not to add oil to the pasta cooking water; it just causes the sauce to slide off the pasta. A coupla stirs early on will unstick the pasta readily enough.
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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.
