I somehow always make the perfect amount because I always eat it all
You probably have a perfect BMI
I don’t know what that is but thanks you too!
Kitchen
Tap for spoiler
scale
Pro tip:
10g of salt for 100g of pasta boiled in 1000g of water
I usually make 250g for two persons, so I use 2,5l of water and 25g of salt
Americans can figure out the conversion by themselves :’D
Fortunately we can buy metric scales here too. You have to ask for them in the back of the shop and pay cash only, but they exist.
Or just do 👌per person. Embodied knowledge, yo
Then you have dinner tomorrow.
Reminds me of the BBC’s own Spaghetti Tree Hoax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU
Measure by mass. Actually, that’s the solution to many cooking problems.
Do I need the mass of the chef only or the mass of every guest combined?
I’m onto you, Higgs
70 grams per serving. There.
I won’t count every single spaghetto until I reach 70g.
Juat wing it (and fail at it like the meme)
Easy just make an O with your mouth and cook as much spaghetti as will fit into it for each guest
How big should the O be? :D
Spaghetti potion size, or so, taking into account how greedy your guests may be
Surprisingly accurate
i love having leftover spaghetti. keep the pasta separate from sauce, put it in a tupperware, add some olive oil, shake to coat, and the pasta stays soft and not sticky. i’ve heard that you shouldn’t do the olive oil thing but i don’t care
No, you’re fine doing it on pasta you’re keeping as leftovers. The oil thing you don’t do is add it to the water while cooking, because it floats on top, does absolutely nothing and just wastes oil.
You are right to do what you’re doing. I like this idea. My fridge spaghetti always sticks together unless it’s mixed with the sauce, your way don’t need no sauce, I likes it.
It doesn’t do absolutely nothing. It breaks the surface tension of the water allowing for it to boil without bubbling over.
If the water spills while bubbling your pot is either too tiny or you should put less water
Oooo, did not know that. Cool.
My wife taught me the same method.
My favorite pasta recipe doesn’t really need it, and it’s the out one I had leftovers from before my wife and I started dating (a standard recipe makes 4 servings and I will not adjust the quantities. I’ll just eat leftovers) so I never really had reason to learn or develop my own method.
here's the pasta carbonara recipe, with assorted notes
Makes 3-4 servings
Ingredients:
? Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
? 1 pound pasta, such as spaghetti, linguine or bucatini (note to self, try bucatini next time you cook this)
? 1/4 cup olive oil
? 1/4 pound guanciale if you can find it, pancetta if you can’t (or in a pinch, bacon), chopped (thanks @Axolotl for the reminder about guanciale!)
? 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
? 5-6 cloves garlic, chopped (1 T minced if lazy like me. I like to use multiple garlics (dried and minced, for example) in my signature pasta sauce, but your goal is to sauté, not burn, the garlic)
? 1/2 cup dry white wine (if needing to skip alcohol, use water. Broth changes the flavor and most store bought grape juice is too sweet)
? 3 large egg yolks (I remember doing this with 2. Or 1. I’m not getting up to check my actual recipe. I just copied the one I used before I adjusted it.)
? Freshly grated Romano cheese
? A handful of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, for garnish (if using dried, just sprinkle a little on)Special equipment:
? A wide, shallow pan. Mine is 14 inches diameter, three inches tall. And doesn’t fit in the dishwasher. A second, similar sized pan with make boiling the pasta easier, but is not necessary.Directions:
Prepare your mise en place. This recipe has a lot of moving parts at the same time and it’s easier to cook with two. Which makes it a great date night dinner. You want the pasta done at the same time the bacon/pepper/garlic is done sauteeing. When you’ve got the recipe down, after the mise en place and water is boiling it should take around ten minutes.
Put a large saucepot of salted water on to boil. Add the pasta. Cook to al dente, about 8 minutes.
Assuming you’re cooking the pasta 8 minutes, start this cooking the pancetta 2 minutes into the pasta boiling. Don’t burn it, you will know the pan is ready when the pancetta sizzles lightly. It takes 5-6 minutes once the pancetta is in. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil (enough to coat bottom of the pan) and pancetta. Brown the pancetta for 2 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes and garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes more. Deglaze with wine and stir up all the pan drippings.
About halfway through boiling the pasta, temper the eggs: In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks, then add 1 large ladleful (about 1/2 cup) of the starchy cooking water. This tempers the eggs and keeps them from scrambling when added to the pasta.
Drain the pasta well and add it directly to the skillet with pancetta and oil. Begin tossing/flipping the pasta (to coat it first in oil). Slowly pour the egg mixture over the pasta. Toss rapidly to coat the pasta without cooking the egg. Remove the pan from the heat and add a big handful of cheese, lots of black or white pepper (really wherever your mood takes you) and a little salt. Continue to toss and turn the pasta until it soaks up the egg mixture and thickens, 1-2 minutes. Garnish with parsley and extra grated Romano.
Eat directly out of the pan.
You should use guanciale instead of pancetta but if they don’t sell it where ya live, good enough
you know the last time i looked, i couldn’t find it. but i didn’t know my italian deli back then. thank you for the reminder!
One reason I’ve heard is that oiling up the pasta sort of saturates the surface making sauce stick less to it. But I also don’t think that matters much for leftovers, you’re already losing some “quality” compared to eating it fresh, and it sounds like a way to mitigate that.
I’ve heard you didn’t do olive oil in the water because it’s not going to help. When eating the pasta soon after it is cooked, you shouldn’t need to oil it either. If you are going to cook pasta ahead of time, after it cools a moment you can oil it to help it stick less.
Same! Not sure why it’s bad, don’t care.
It’s not bad per se, it just doesn’t do much unless you apply the oil after you’ve removed the pasta from its boiling water. The theory is that oil and water don’t mix.
I use butter to keep my noods from sticking.
Just don’t finish directly on them. Or cover them in plastic or something.
I swear, some of you guys are animals.
I’m told the amount of dry spaghetti that fits through this hole is one portion.
I’ve never tried, first my wife and I had kids that ate like they’ve never been fed before. And now that we’re empty nesters we do meal prep so I still cook the whole batch.
for me, it’s either half a regular-size box, or a whole box. there is no other way.
One portion is officially 2 oz. But if pasta is your main course you are going to want 4 oz.
I do the amount that fits between my thumb and index finger when I hold them in a circle per person.
Put as much on a plate as you want to eat, then put two thirds back to account for the density / expansion.
This helps measuring for my toddlers or whoever.
I plan on 4 oz of dry pasta per person. When I buy pasta in bulk boxes I store in 8 oz portions in mason jars. This keeps the moths out and means when I’m cooking for two I just need to grab a jar instead of weighing it out during the cook.
We’ve got a lot of different sized containers that seal. I specifically got a long one for spaghetti (and a pan I can cook it in without bending or breaking the spaghetti, I’m not picky AT ALL). We basically have a 30 gallon bucket of containers of different pastas on the floor or the pantry. Fuck, now I want to eat linguine in lemon butter sauce. And I have a ton of lemons.
I’ve found ~85g of noodles per adult person to be sufficient.
Read that as kilograms at first and just nodded like “Yup, that would INDEED be sufficient.”
No! More pasta!
And that CIA logo probably shouldn’t be on there
the boxes here say 56g per serving, 8 per us pound. but your estimation is what i end up with when i’m prepping… 5 containers with sauce per box (pound).
FYI the hole in those pasta spoons is a single serving of spaghetti
Single serving for who? The serving size measurement seems to be completely arbitrarily made up. You want to say that a petite sedentary women has the same serving size as 2m 100kg active guy? Yeah the first example would eat less than a serving size and latter would eat multiple serving sizes.
But that begs to question. For who was the serving size designed for? Men, women, body type, size, activity level? All of those will change how much a person should eat.
I mean you can always add more depending on your own portion size. It’s consistent, that’s the key, vs blindly grabbing handfuls and guessing.
Coins are really good placeholders for diameter, especially when you’re measuring with your hands. Grab a nickel’s width just for me if I’m not that hungry. As you dial in the right amount, measure with your fingers and see how large of a circle you have to make.
I’d rather use a scale, but I don’t have one that works well with long pastas
That’s a good method, Of course a fixed portion size measurement could be used similarly, like the hole in the pasta spoon.
Just a personal gripe with the portion sizes.
Personally i just eyeball it and eat more or less afterwards based on refined numbers as cooking changes weight and calorie density. Over the years I’ve managed to get the eyeball measurements good enough. And synchronized cooked weight numbers to bodyweight changes.
okay we get an appropriately sized auger and adjust the spoon. I like that method too. i don’t get to play with my augers enough.
And I never know how many gallons of sauce is appropriate
Enough to fill an oil drum should be sufficient.
