What makes pasta sticky

Although pasta seems very simple, the way you cook with it makes a huge difference. You can have perfectly cooked pasta and ruin it by not taking the right steps after boiling, leaving it to become a sticky lump of pasta mass.

To stop pasta from sticking, you need to use the right techniques. The list below goes through all the proven ways to stop your pasta from sticking. These apply specifically to dried pasta.

The first few minutes of cooking are extremely important as this is when the pasta is most likely to stick. This is so you can distribute the dissolved starch evenly in the water instead of it staying on the pasta. You need the pasta to be boiling heavily before you put the pasta in because the pasta will drop the temperature of the water, which can extend the cooking time.

After a few minutes, the pasta will be perfectly cooked, covered in sauce, and ready to eat. When I do this, I either use a large slotted spoon, spider, or tongs depending on the pasta type to pull the pasta directly out of that starchy water. This allows some of the starches to get into the sauce, which can help to thicken it slightly and allow it to adhere to the pasta better. Are you ready to hear the most straightforward solution ever? It's stirring! Believe it or not, this basic method is one of the best ways to achieve perfectly boiled and broken apart pasta.

You'll notice that when you add your pasta immediately to a pot of boiling water, it will settle and stay in one spot. By stirring it constantly, you not only prevent it from sticking together, but also from sticking to your pot nobody wants to scrub clean a pasta coated pot, right? Using dried pasta is one thing, but if you've decided to make fresh pasta with your pasta maker , a few more steps are required to keep your fresh linguine from becoming all lumped together.

Before you cut your fresh pasta pieces, dry them out for around 20 minutes. Even dusting a little bit of flour on your freshly cut pasta will help to prevent the pieces from sticking to one another.

One of the most common practices is to salt your pot of water before it boils. Contrary to a popular belief, this concept isn't a sure-fire way to prevent sticky spaghetti. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't do it! That salted water adds flavor to your pasta. So pass the salt, please! Some recommends to add salt before the water boils, while others claim that adding salt as the water bubbles away is best. To be honest, it doesn't really matter when you add the salt, as long as you get it in there for flavor.

Let me explain:. I, and every other trained cook I know, have been taught that when cooking pasta, you need to have a large pot of boiling water. If my wife turned out to be right, just think of the pasta bilities! Some serious testing was in order—I called downstairs and told my doorman that I hope he likes noodles, cause that's gonna be his lunch for a few days.

This actually wasn't the first time I had heard of this concept. His conclusion? It works, but requires constant attention. Stirring a pot of pasta constantly for 12 minutes isn't my idea of fun, so I mostly ignored his findings. But did I judge too soon? Do I really have to stir the pot? Here are the most common reasons I've heard for why you need to use a large volume of water:. Those are some bold claims indeed.

I decided to take a closer look at them, one by one. To do this, it's important to first consider exactly what happens to a piece of pasta as it cooks the traditional way, in a large pot of water.

Pasta is made up of flour, water, and sometimes eggs. Essentially, it's composed of starch and protein, and not much else. Now starch molecules come aggregated into large granules that resemble little water balloons. As they get heated in a moist environment, they absorb more and more water until they finally burst, releasing the starch molecules into the water.

That's why pasta always seems to stick together at the beginning of cooking—its the starch molecules coming out and acting as a sort of glue, binding the pieces to each other, and to the pot. After this stage, the starch eventually washes away into the water assuming that you separated the pieces of pasta by stirring , and the pasta pieces become individuals again. As the pasta cooks, the starches gradually absorb more and more water, becoming softer and more edible, while the proteins begin to denature, adding structure to the noodle something that is much more obvious when cooking soft fresh egg-based pastas.

When the stars are aligned, you'll manage to pull the pasta from the water just when the proteins have lent enough structure to keep the noodles strong and pliant, and starches have just barely softened to the perfect stage—soft, but with a bite—known as al dente. For my first test I used gemelli.

It's a nice, medium-sized pasta that I figured would give a good indication of how both thick and thin pastas would fare. I brought three separate pots of water to a boil. One with 6 quarts of water, one with 3 quarts, and one with a mere quart and a half. After the pots came to a boil, I added the pasta. Immediately, I noticed that despite claims that a large pot of water will hold its boil better, the difference in the time it took for each pot to come back to a full boil was no more than a few seconds at most.

In fact, the pot with 3 quarts actually came back to a boil faster than the one with 6 quarts! Fact is, when you are adding an equal amount of pasta to each pot, it may cause the temperature of the smaller pot of water to drop more drastically, but bringing the smaller volume back to a boil requires the exact same amount of energy as it does to bring the larger pot back to a boil.

Indeed, since a large pot of water has greater surface area and thus more places for it to lose energy to the outside environment , it may actually take longer to bring a large pot of water back to a boil. Granted, during the time it takes for the water to come back up to a boil, the smaller pot will be at a lower temperature than the bigger pot, but it's only for a short period of time—is that enough to make a difference in the finished pasta? Tasted side by side, all three noodles were indistinguishable from each other.

I've heard it said that cooking pasta at a higher temperature also ensures textural variance throughout the piece—a firm core supplying the al dente bite, surrounded by softer, more fully cooked layers around the outside.

I took a close cross-sectional look at a cooked noodle, and found that once again, in all three cases, the difference was unnoticeable. It's tough to make out in a photograph, but you can actually see the al dente core—it appears as a slightly chalky looking white ring right in the center of the noodle. To confirm what my mouth was already telling me, I also weighed each batch of pasta before and after cooking. Clearly, it's time to say "pasta la vista" to Reason 1.

So what about that other little problem—pasta sticking to itself or the pan as it cooks? Well, it's true. Drop the pasta in the water and just leave it there, and it will indeed stick to itself. But you know what? It'll do that even in a really big pot with lots of water. The problem is that first stage of cooking—the one in which starch molecules first burst and release their starch. With such a high concentration of starch right on the surface of the pasta, sticking is inevitable.

However, once the starch gets rinsed away in the water, the problem is completely gone.