Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Less water, better pasta?

Another interesting article in the NYT by the man whose job I almost envy above all others, food scientist/guru Harold McGee. He is proposing, to the tsk-tsking of Italian grandmothers everywhere, that maybe we all could cut back on the amount of water we use to boil pasta. His experiments seem to point out that using as little as 1-1/2 quarts of water does just as good a job as the usual 4-6 quarts we all usually use. Now when he actually presented his findings to über-Italian cooking grandmothers Lidia Bastianich and Marcella Hazan they reacted with lukewarm enthusiasm. Still very interesting info contained herein, with the point that not only do you get good results, but the energy savings are not insignificant. A rather delicious way to burnish your "going green" cred.

2 comments:

Kiezie said...

I have always used less water -- I tend to use a 2 qt saucepan -- and I've always had good pasta too!!! I tried a large stock pot once on the advice of some cooking show and all I got was a steam burn! LOL!!

bb said...

CB....unlress the pasta is REALLY good is isn't worth burning oneself over. Way to be ahead of the water use curve!