How long to cook pasta?
Put pasta into boiling water with some salt added and cook for 7 to 15 minutes. The precise cooking time is always indicated on the package.
Drain cooked pasta into a colander placed over your kitchen sink and wait until all the water runs out. Pasta is cooked!
How to cook pasta
1. For 200 grams of pasta (about a half of a standard package) pour 1 litre of water into a pot.
2. Pour a tablespoon of oil into the pot for the purpose pasta not to stick together.
3. Pour some salt into the water.
4. When the water starts boiling, put pasta into pot.
5. Stir pasta for the purpose it doesn't stick together or to the bottom of the pot.
6. Cook pasta for 7-10 minutes.
7. Rinse pasta in cold water if necessary.
Your pasta is ready!
Types of pasta and time for cooking
- Elbow pasta should be boiled for 10-15 minutes.
- Pennes should be boiled for 13 minutes.
- Pasta nests should be boiled for 5 minutes.
- Cannelloni pasta should be boiled for 10 minutes before baking till it is half-ready.
- Fettuccine should be boiled for 10 minutes after the water starts to boil.
- Lasagna sheets should be boiled for 5 minutes before baking till they are half-ready.
- Noodles should be boiled for 5-7 minutes depending on their size.
- Ravioli should be boiled for 3-7 minutes depending on their size and filling.
- Farfalle or butterfly pasta should be boiled for 10 minutes.
Cook yourself: homemade pasta!
Pasta is a simple product that can be cooked by everyone. Pasta is made from products that there are always in your fridge. There is no need even to go to the supermarket. Print out this page and go straightly to the kitchen. Take a puff of wheat flour, mix with water. Knead into a dough, add the spices, garlic and salt to taste. Dough should be rolled and cut. Let pasta dry for about 15 minutes. Pasta is ready for cooking.
Tips for cooking pasta
- It is believed that undercooked for 2-3 minutes pasta contains less calories.
- For pasta not to stick together pour a spoon of oil into the water and stir it from time to time.
- Pasta should be cooked in a big amount of salty water (1 tablespoon of salt for 3 litres of water, and 1 litre of water as a minimum for every another 100 grams of pasta).
- Pasta should be cooked without lid.
- If you have overcooked pasta, you can rinse them with cold water (in a colander) and stir with some butter added - then pasta will not stick together.
- In the process of cooking, pasta increases in size approximately by 3 times. 100 grams of pasta is enough for two big helpings of pasta as a side dish.
- If you want to use boiled pasta as an ingredient of a complex dish that requires additional cooking, undercook your pasta a bit - for the amount of time it is to be cooked additionally.
Pasta benefits and nutritive value
Ingredients of a good pasta - flour and water. For this reason we can't say they possess good nutritive properties, no matter how easy it is to cook them and how popular this product is. Pasta has almost no vitamins.
In Italy they say, pasta doesn't cause overweight. However, it is related to pasta with no additions; but when cheese or sauce is added to pasta it is not recommended to eat such pasta if you are trying to lose weight. The same is for pasta at night - due to the high content of carbohydrates, the dish gets much less dietic.
Pasta caloric value is about 100 kcal/100 gram. In comparison with boiled cauliflower, it is 3.3 times more. That is why daily eating boiled pasta leads to gain in weight, even when pasta is cooked "al dente". However, if you cook pasta at least every other day and add a significant portion of vegetables and mushrooms to it, such dishes with pasta may well balance any diet.