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Add a dash of olive oil to the boiling water. It won't fucking help, but at least you can fuck up pasta in new and interesting ways.
Add salt to the water first
ITT: I learn that a disturbing amount of people can't even boil pasta correctly.
What the fuck is wrong with people? It's the most basic shit, I don't understand how anyone could fail to do it wrong.
Just use whole wheat pasta.
Stir literally once. No salt, no oil, no additional stirring.
What psychopath doesnt salt their pasta.
Afraid of a little NaCl?
Your pasta stick because of starch. Luckily, they release the large majority of their starch in the first minute of cooking, so stir well during the first minute and make sure there's enough water in your pot.
Stir well once. I never need to interact more than 4 times / 20 seconds with the pot:
- Put water in and turn on heat
- Wait until water boils, then put pasta and salt into water (lower heat now so it doesn't boil over later)
- Wait 30 seconds, then stir once (i.e. make all the pasta stop touching for a moment)
- Wait until done, then take pot off and pour out
In addition to that, if you don't have a feeling for how long the pasta needs to boil / how done pasta looks, you need to sample a noodle now and again.
Serious comment on a shitpost community, but the easiest fix I found to pasta that sticks too much was to just buy better quality noodles. The cheapest stuff would stick like nothing else, while Barilla or any pasta cut on bronze dies never did.
Barilla isn't a better quality pasta. Change my mind
Italian here. Barilla is considered the bare minimum. Its not a high quality pasta, although they have a bronze cut kind which I never tried.
The Al Bronzo brand of Barilla does taste better, imo, but not worth the extra cost. I've never had a problem with the regular stuff sticking as long as I salt the pot and stir occasionally.
Oh no, absolutely. I realize in hindsight my wording implies that. As someone else commented here, I also consider them the bare minimum. Anything less than that and it's awful noodles with no sauce adhesion or starch released.
You stir your pasta?
Didn't catch that. Could you repeat?
- get water boiling
- add salt+oil or stock
- then add pasta
- boil until it's not yet mush
= no sticky
The oil does nothing other than float on top of the water
Use a decent quality pasta, stir once. No oil needed.
I use cheap pasta, never stir and it almost never sticks. I'd hazard a guess that people who are having this happen are not using salt, and probably not using enough water or a big enough pot.
TIL the cheapest pasta in Aldi is decent quality.
Adding oil is a great way to lubricate your pasta so the sauce won’t stick to it…
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