According to numerous pieces of credible research, Italian cooking is the most popular cuisine the world over. So best not to bugger up one of its staples; pasta. I feel like I should be wearing a badge that says, "Wanna know how to cook pasta? Ask me how." But I'm not.
I'll try to keep this brief. I could waffle on about the debate about Italian pasta and whether it really was brought back to the peninsula from China by Marco Polo as some of the popular legends claim. Or, I could wax lyrical about the intricacies all of the particular regional variations with which I am familiar. Then again, I could muse about the folkloric tale that the best way to tell whether pasta is properly cooked is to throw it against a wall and see whether it sticks.
But, having been in many Italian kitchens that do not have walls filled with the detritus of well cooked pasta, I'm going to float the suggestion that, perhaps, all of these are red herrings and that the basics of physics and chemistry that are at the heart of cooking are what you really need to consider.
Unless you're making it from scratch (Oh yes, of course you people exist) it comes in two basic forms: supposedly "fresh" or dried.
In the case of the former, filled or otherwise, you'll generally find it in a chilled cabinet in a deli of supermarket and, because it isn't dehydrated, it cooks faster. Most often the cooking time is listed as between 4 and 6 minutes.
In the case of the latter, the bags you find on supermarket or delicatessen shelves are filled with essentially the same thing that has been dried out. Because it's dehydrated, it takes a little longer to cook. The majority of manufacturer instructions suggest a cooking time between 10 and 12 minutes.
Pasta is almost always boiled in salted water (yeah, we can go down the rabbit hole that is re-fried pasta in the Swiss style some other time).
Almost all pasta, dried or fresh, comes with instructions on the packaging as to optimum cooking times, and you should generally follow these in the first instance. But, the reason there is no one "time rule" for cooking pasta perfectly lies in the basic science:
Yes, water boils at 100°C/212°F at sea level, but that doesn't mean all hobs heat to the same high temperatures; think about the temperatures above boiling point
The size of your pot and how much salted water is in it makes a difference
The materials from which your pot is made make a difference. Not all materials conduct heat as effectively as each other or in the same way
The amount of pasta you're cooking makes a difference
No, I'm not suggesting you all don lab coats and reach for clipboards when cooking pasta. I'm saying you should take the instructions on the packaging into account and then go with your gut and observations. Over time, you'll get to understand your particular set-up.
Al Dente
No, not the guy who runs the local Italian pizzeria. We've all heard the term al dente and know that it's what we're supposed to do with pasta. But it's less straightforward than it may seem because, until you've experienced it, it's hard to conceptualise.
Literally translating as "to the tooth", it means that the right way to cook pasta is so that it retains a little springy, chewiness and, most importantly, is not cooked to the point of being a soggy mush. But, the nuances are more difficult because there is an important world of difference between al dente and undercooked.
I think the best way I ever heard it summed up was by a stylish contessa (I kid you not) who served us a magnificent meal in her castello whilst on a whistle-stop photoshoot trip in Tuscany some years ago. Obsessed with playing an active role in the kitchen of her chichi heritage, noble agriturismo, she told me that, "Perfectly cooked pasta should insist that you bite, but not bite back. If you can taste any of the individual ingredients, such as the flour, it's undercooked."
I really don't think I can add anything more useful to this summary. There are a few other tricks I've learned over the years, such as adding a few tablespoons of olive oil to the boiling water to prevent the pot from boiling over if it's prone to doing so, but the basis of how you reach your perfect al dente pasta is down to tasting it and trial and error.
Make a point of pulling out a piece of pasta from the pot a few minutes before the recommended manufacturer cooking time and tasting it. If it's done, you need no longer. And, if when you repeat the same exercise at exactly the time the manufacturer suggests it should be done and find it short of perfectly cooked, boil it for a little longer, re-testing every minute of so.
Eventually, you'll get to understand how your cooking set-up works in relation to pasta and it will all become second nature.
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