I was looking for some advice about how to cook pasta and I came across the following article which I have repeated here for other people to see. Pasta is mainly cooked in a pan in water or a sauce. However many pasta recipes can be cooked in an oven. There are different types of oven, for example a deck oven is generally for cooking pizza or bread. A common kitchen oven will suffice for oven based pasts dishes.

So here are the tips for cooking pasta.

Choose your pasta first. There are mainly two kinds of pasta: ribbed and ribless. Ribbed (= rigata in Italian, hence rigatoni) has the advantage of retaining the sauce, but the downside is that it won't cook evenly because of its structure.

Pasta goes into boiling water, everybody knows that. But not many know that there has to be plenty of water, because pasta likes space. Every 100g of pasta require one liter of water. 300g means 3 liters.

What about salt? Is there a rule for that too? Yes, actually there's two: salt has to be added after water has reached boiling temperature, or boiling will be delayed. If you have one liter of water add 10g of salt, for 2 liters add 20g and so on.

Unlike what many people think, there's no need to add oil to the water. If the pasta turns out sticky, it means that the its quality was bad, or you used too little water.

Wait for 30 seconds for the salt to dissolve and pour the pasta. If you're using spaghetti, use your hands to push them down instead of breaking them. Make sure you don't touch the boiling water!

Pasta will make water temperature go down, so try to bring back the boil quickly: increase the heat and put a lid on the pan. When water has reached the temperature again, take off the lid, and bring back the level of heat you had before. Turn it up a little bit is fine, as long as the water doesn't pass the brim of the pan.

Stir the pasta every 2-3 minutes, keep it moving to make sure it won't stick. The cooking times in the packet usually are for pasta al dente. This means that it will be cooked but it won't melt in your mouth, you'll still have to bite it.

Not to leave pasta overcook is the essence, and for a threefold reason: it won't take long to digest, it will keep cooking on your dish without turning into jelly, and most of all: Italians cook it this way.

Pour the content of the pan over the colander, and shake it vigorously, unless you need a little bit of cooking water (for example in pasta carbonara, or with ricotta cheese). If you have prepared the sauce in another pan, add the pasta and stir at low heat for 2-3 minutes before serving.

If you're preparing a cold pasta dish (like pasta salad) or you're eating it later at work, you can stop the cooking with cold water, after it's drained.

Article Source: www. a1-articledirectory.com Andrea is keen on cooking. Cheese and Pears is his blog about Italian cooking recipes. If you think you know more about pasta after reading this article, start with an easy pasta recipe.