The old saying “your pasta water should taste like the sea” is true – although perhaps with the current polluted state of our coastal waters, we should take this with a pinch of salt.
Although you'll need a lot more than a pinch of salt when you salt your pasta water, otherwise your entire dish will taste under seasoned. As a rough guide, for every 500g pasta – you'll want a tablespoon and a half of salt. It sounds a lot, but in a big pot of water, the salt will season the food while it cooks and can slightly improve the texture by firming up the pasta shapes and helping it achieve a better "al dente" consistency.
While it's important to cook your pasta in plenty of water, you also don't want to drown it. Use a large pot so the pasta has plenty of space to move around and not stick to the pan. And as a rough rule, use about 500ml of water to each 100g of pasta – the main reason for this is you want to have lovely salty pasta water left over which you then use to thicken your sauce.
It's important to never add salt to cold water – it'll just sink to the bottom of the pan and won't season your food evenly.
The chef's trick is to add salt to the pan of water when it’s at full, rolling boil – and you'll notice when you throw in your handful of salt that it bubbles up. That's because salt raises the temperature of boiling water and makes pasta cook faster. By the way, table salt is fine – I wouldn't waste expensive posh Himalayan sea salt crushed on the thighs of maidens on pasta water.
At this point, you throw your spaghetti or pasta shapes into the pan, and give them a good stir. You don't need to add oil to your pasta water – this doesn't stop it sticking, it just makes your water oily. Pasta will only stick to the bottom of the pan if you overcook it or don't give it a stir every so often.
The trick to keeping your pasta ‘al dente’ is to turn the heat off at the exact moment it's ready, and then using a small sieve or tongs lift your pasta out of the water and onto a colander to air dry. I have been known to spend much longer than is necessary chasing a slippery piece of tagliatelle around the murky water – so don't be like me.
The main thing is you NEVER throw out the pasta water – you'll need that for thickening your sauce. If you insist on draining the pasta by pouring it out into a colander, then at least save a cupful of the starchy pasta water. This is liquid gold, and if you don't find your water is starchy enough, then you've used too much water in the first place.
Italian chefs can make a simple pasta sauce just with this starchy liquid and handfuls of parmesan and pepper, but I've yet to manage that trick – mine just turns into a lumpy mess. But adding leftover pasta water to my tomato or creamy pasta sauces really elevates them restaurant level as they emulsify and thicken and stick to the pasta better.
I've even been known to keep leftover pasta water in old plastic soup tubs in the fridge, along with tubs of stock (which is a whole other post for another time). My teenager once needed trauma counselling after mistaking a pot of cloudy white leftover pasta water for chicken soup after she heated it up in the microwave., tasted it, realised her mistake and screamed, “Why is there birthing fluid in the fridge?”
• The Mirror’s Siobhan McNally writes about easy chef skills everyone can learn to make cooking from scratch simple.
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