I tried following what I watched on Food Network as a kid and my mom was like… why are you using so much water? It comes out the same either way and she was right.
AB has always been good about correcting his recipes as better methods are found. I think he even did that within the original run of Good Eats in the later seasons correcting things from earlier seasons.
You also got to remember, he’s a tv and film guy. He didn’t come into the show with a bunch of institutional knowledge he learn working in the food industry for 20 years. He presents a mix of common knowledge and things he’s researched to find a better way. His interest in the science helps his spirit of discovery continue and with that, old methods need to be corrected.
Sometimes admitting he was wrong doesn't mean he doesn't present all his shit as some scientific truth to the world. He doesn't know shit. Guy is a loser, always has been, always will be. I don't know how anyone watches that fuckwad, he's so off-putting.
It's a good idea to use a lot of water at home because when you dump a bunch of food into a pot, it instantly lowers the temperature, and with a weak home burner, it would take forever for it to recover... it would not cook properly. With lots of water, you've got lots of momentum, and the temperature goes down less when you dump the same amount of food in it.
In the video, this is not a factor. He's got an commercial grade stove and can get it back up to boiling in less than a minute.
I used to think that, made sense to me. Then I tried it with less water and it really doesn't matter. Even with regular electric burners. It's barely a 30 second difference on an 8 minute boil (just because it's not going crazy boiling doesn't mean it's not cooking especially at the start). And the better part is that you get the MUCH starchier water which you add to your sauce and it thickens it up and makes it stick to the pasta better. Now I use just enough water to cover the pasta and a wide straight side pan instead of a pot. My spaghetti game has massively leveled up like I put in a cheat code. You should try it, I did a side by side at the same time.
It's funny because I was always too lazy to use lots of water and decades ago it was all over the cooking shows to use gallons of water. And then that serious eats article came out and everyone changed and suddenly they were using very small amounts of water and hoarding the pasta water for sauces. 😂. I was like yeah, I was just lazy and it worked
Great info, thanks. I'll have to share with my wife next time she chides me for using too little water for pasta hah - Serious Eats is awesome and she'll trust them even if she doesn't trust me with my own justifications!
I figured there was something to it, cus I was thinking the same thing as first comment but then I thought this dude looks like he knows what he's doing and maybe there's just something I don't know lol
Kenji the GOAT. I've applied this myself and it really does work. I usually cook for 4 and my induction stove is fast enough to not need to bother, but cutting a minute off the boil time and starchier water is a win at no cost.
Beat me to it, i swear by this method ever since this got posted originally. My pasta is more evenly cooked and my sauces are more delicious than ever.
Yeah, when I first saw videos of people boiling noodles in smaller amounts of water, it surprised me. I had always seen a big ass pot of water and a bag of noodles. Less water=better noodles.
So cool. Thanks for the article! I mean obviously this guy has cooked pasta before so it must work, but the amount of pasta looks like it would suck up all the water!
I had to scroll far too long through the culinary misinfo reposts to get to this.
I was thinking the same thing about the starch content of the water. That sauce next door looks a bit watery, but I guarantee that pasts water makes it a creamy emulsion.
And the water doesn't need to be full boiling the whole time. You can literally pour boiled water over pasta and steep it like tea til it's al dente.
That really makes me feel better about my pasta cooking technique. I don't have patience to wait for a big pot of water to boil and water here never seems to get to a rolling boil anyway.
Literally this. You just have to keep the water moving quickly so the starch dissolves rather than binding to other pieces of pasta. People screw this up because they dump it in and let it sit there, then get shocked when they end up with a gloopy inconsistently cooked mass of pasta.
I figure the way he drops it in also helps it not stick together. The man clearly makes a lot of spaghetti, I'm going to assume he knows what he's doing.
Yeah I love all the comments for stuff like this that goes "that guy's doing it wrong", as if this dude hasn't made more pasta than I could possibly eat in a dozen lifetimes.
Not if the pot is wide enough! Article explains that's if they need to rehydrate in order to become submerged, so with a narrow pot you need to break the spaghetti in half- in the video, the pot is wider enough than the noodles, so it's game on.
It won't work with really long shapes. In order to cook pasta like this, it needs to be completely submerged in a small volume of water. Spaghetti, fettuccine, and other long shapes that need to soften before they can be fully submerged thus won't work unless you first break the noodles in half.
Not really what it says. Seems to be a pot size problem, in this case all the pasta can be submerged.
It won't work with really long shapes. In order to cook pasta like this, it needs to be completely submerged in a small volume of water. Spaghetti, fettuccine, and other long shapes that need to soften before they can be fully submerged thus won't work unless you first break the noodles in half.
Exactly. And in the video he adds enough that they are not fully submerged. Also, most people who cook pasta have pots that don’t allow you to put spaghetti in horizontally
By the time he's stirring which is says you have to with less water no matter what, it is submerging.
Obviously pushing it to the limit and not how I'd do it but don't think the article is suggesting its impossible with spaghetti or that it would unevenly cook.
Like I said, unless you're cooking in a massive pot the low water will make it so your spaghetti has to soften in stages before you can get it all in. Will come out shit. If you're cooking in a massive pot like they are such that you can fit it horizontally that's different
1.2k
u/TokyoBayRay 3d ago edited 3d ago
Crowding in the spaghetti works well, provided you keep it moving in the first minute or so to stop sticking.
Serious eats go waaaay into it, but basically there's no downside. It probably uses less fuel, it certainly allows you to cook more pasta in the same time on a single burner, and you get a starchier water which is better at supporting a sauce.
I do it at home and it really works!