Whether you swirl your spaghetti and dive your fork right into a bowl of farfalle, pasta is something we can all admit to having and certainly craving. Yet when it comes to cooking a box of dry pasta it can be a pain, it just takes too long! Well prepared to have your mind blown, because you can have pasta faster — and get this — without having to boil the water beforehand.
If you find yourself blankly staring at the backsplash while your pasta water crawls to a boil, then YouTuber Ethan Chlebowski has you covered. He did the testing to see if there was an easier and faster way to cook pasta and luckily for us, there is a better technique.
Start by adding your dry pasta to the pot, followed by water. Now here’s the trick, only add enough water to barely cover the pasta, no more.
Then set the pasta over a medium flame and let it heat up. You need to stir your pasta a bit. When the pasta starch comes in contact with water, the pasta is prone to stick to itself or the pan. Stirring the pasta does two things — it separates the pieces and prevents the pasta from clumping later on. Since there is less water (and less space) for the pasta, it’ll be more prone to sticking, so use your cooking spoon and give that water and pasta a good swirl!
Now Ethan uses a thermometer, looking to get the temperature of 180° F. After the water gets to that temperature, he sets a timer for six and a half minutes. This 180°F number isn’t arbitrary — it is the lowest temperature where pasta starches will start absorbing water and softening, hence him checking the temperature. For those (like me) who don’t want to use an arsenal of equipment, just keep an eye on the pasta, stirring and testing occasionally.
Once the pasta gets to the desired level of cooked, strain the pasta. Ethan found that most shapes took six and a half minutes to cook from start to finish, quite faster than the traditional fifteen-ish minutes.
Now, if you’re going to use the pasta water for a sauce, make sure you don’t add as much salt to the pot. With the traditional pasta boiling method, you want to over salt the pasta, but with this fast-cooking method, don’t go so heavy with your salt. You can click video above to watch the start to finish process.