sui020%8 The Best Siow-Cooked Tomato Sauce Recipe | Serious Eats
The Right Way to Sauce Pasta
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[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]
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‘The Best Siow-Cooked Tomato Sauce Recipe | Serious Eats
“I'll have a glass of the grappa, please," | said to the bartender
at the Italian restaurant down the street from my house.
“You are the first person | have ever seen order that," she
exclaimed in response. | asked her how long she'd been
working there, figuring it might be her first week or two. "Almost
two years now," she said.
You see, this isn't the kind of Italian restaurant where one would
go to order grappa. It's the kind of Italian restaurant where the
house wine comes in a box and the Parmesan comes pre-
grated in a shaker on the table. It's the kind of Italian restaurant |
imagine Billy Joel crooning about. | actually kinda like these
sorts of restaurants, in a cheesy way (literally and figuratively). |
like ripping off chunks of overly soft and saturated garlic bread,
and the waiters who come around with the oversize pepper mill,
as if it can rescue limp baby spinach (with dressing always
served on the side). And then there are the meatballs as big as
your face, and the extra-extra-fried calamari with its ramekin of
tomato sauce for dipping.
The one thing | don't like about them? The way they serve
pasta. It's almost inevitably a plate with a nest of reheated
noodles that have been tossed in oil to prevent them from
sticking to each other, with a big ladleful of sauce poured over
the center. What exactly is the problem? Aren't you getting
pasta and sauce on your plate anyway? Who cares if it's been
tossed together beforehand, right?
The problem is that pasta heated in the skillet with sauce has a
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vastly different and superior flavor and texture compared with
pasta that is simply sauced on the plate (and we've done the
taste tests to prove it). Fact is, no matter how great a sauce you
can make, if you don't sauce your pasta correctly, you're
missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures. Conversely,
even a so-so, store-bought, jarred marinara sauce can be
improved upon by finishing it off right.
Here's how to properly sauce your pasta, step by step.
STEP 1: HEAT YOUR SAUCE
SEPARATELY
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With few exceptions (such as when you're making a
or a simple Roman-style cheese sauce,
like or »), pasta should be tossed with
sauce that is already hot and ready. You don't want your cooked
pasta to heat up in a cold pan of sauce, slowly absorbing more
water and becoming mushy.
| use either a wide saucier—the sloped sides of a saucier make
it easier to use for tossing pasta than a straight-sided saucepan
—or a large skillet for my sauce.
STEP 2: COOK YOUR PASTA AL
DENTE (REALLY)
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In a separate pot, bring a couple of quarts of salted water to a
boil. Remember: You do not want your pasta water as salty as
the sea. One to two percent salinity is what you should aim for,
which translates to around 1 or 2 tablespoons of kosher salt per
quart or liter. You also don't need a huge amount of water—just
enough to be able to keep the pasta moving. With small shapes,
like penne or fusilli, | use a saucepan or a saucier. With long,
skinny shapes, like spaghetti or bucatini, | use a 12-inch skillet.
There was a time in this country when the default for pasta was
cooked-to-mush. These days, it seems like we have the
opposite problem: Folks are so scared to overcook pasta that
most of the time, it's undercooked. Pasta should* be cooked a/
dente—"to the tooth"—which means just until it's cooked
through. If your pasta has a chalky or brittle core, it's
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undercooked, Let it go longer!
* Actually, so long as you don't mind being branded a heretic by people who
probably have more important things to be worried about than how other people
cook their pasta, it should be cooked however the heck you want it. Mushy,
chalky, whatever floats your tortellini
Your other option is to purposely undercook the pasta by a few
minutes before adding it to the sauce to let it finish. Cooking
pasta in the sauce instead of in boiling water will increase the
amount of time it takes to cook through. It's a good technique to
use if you want to delay serving your pasta for a few minutes.
Make sure to keep the sauce thinned out with pasta water as
the pasta finishes cooking if you use this method
Finally, whatever you do, don't toss cooked pasta with oil—it
makes it much more difficult to get sauce to cling to it down the
line.
STEP 3: TRANSFER COOKED PASTA
TO SAUCE
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F
There are a couple of ways to get your pasta from the pan to the
sauce. The easiest is to grab a set of tongs for long, skinny
pasta, or a metal spider to fish out short pasta shapes, and
transfer them directly to the pan with the warm sauce.
Alternatively, you can drain your pasta through a colander or
fine-mesh strainer, making sure to save some of the pasta
water.
STEP 4: ADD PASTA WATER
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Once the pasta is in the sauce, add pasta water. This is the
most vital step in the process. Starchy pasta water doesn't just
help thin the sauce to the right consistency; it also helps it cling
to the pasta better and emulsify with the fat and cheese you're
going to be adding. No matter what sauce you're making—
whether it's a chunky , a rich and hearty
, or a simple 1—it should acquire a creamy
texture that clings to the noodles.
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| start by stirring in a couple of tablespoons of pasta water per
serving of pasta and sauce. We'll add more down the road to
adjust consistency.
STEP 5: ADD FAT
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If you have a very low-fat sauce (like a tomato sauce, for
instance), now is the time to add extra fat. A small amount of fat
—extra-virgin olive oil or butter—is essential to good pasta
sauce texture. Without fat, you have at best watery sauce
(nobody has ever said, "Waiter, my pasta is not quite wet
enough"), and at worst sauce that over-thickens with starch
alone and takes on a pasty texture.
With extra fat, you can get an emulsion that leaves the sauce
creamy, but still loose. Fat also brings flavor of its own, as well
as helping fat-soluble flavor compounds in the sauce reach your
tongue. | add a little glug of really good extra-virgin olive oil or a
pat of butter (depending on my mood and the specific sauce).
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STEP 6: COOK HARD AND FAST
Once everything is in the pan together—cooked pasta, hot
sauce, pasta water, and extra fat—it's time to simmer it.
Simmering not only reduces liquid (and thereby thickens the
sauce), but also contributes to mechanical stirring, helping that
starchy pasta water do its job of emulsifying the sauce with the
fat and getting it to coat the pasta. The hotter your pan, the
more vigorously the sauce will bubble, and the better the
emulsion you'll form. | crank my burner up to maximum heat and
cook, stirring and tossing the pasta constantly (to ensure that it
doesn't stick to the bottom), adding more pasta water as
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necessary until it gets that perfectly saucy texture:
Finishing pasta, you'll notice, is a game of constant adjustments.
Pasta water gets added throughout the process in order to
adjust consistency. Don't be afraid of it!
STEP 7: STIR INCHEESE AND
HERBS OFF HEAT
Once the pasta and sauce are where you want them, remove
the pan from the heat and stir in any cheese or chopped herbs
you may be using. With thicker, well-emulsified sauces, it's
generally safe to add the cheese directly over the heat, but with
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a thinner sauce or one that doesn't have much besides the
cheese, adding cheese while it's still on the burner can cause it
to clump.
STEP 8: ADJUST CONSISTENCY
You thought you were done with that pasta water? Not quite yet!
You're just about to serve the pasta, which means that now is
your last chance to adjust texture. (And you'll probably need to:
The cheese has thickened up the sauce a bit, the pasta has
continued to absorb water from the sauce, and some of that
water will have evaporated.) Once the cheese has been
emulsified into the pan, it's safe to add more pasta water and
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reheat the sauce over a bumer until everything is exactly as you
want it
STEP 9: GARNISH AS NECESSARY
Transfer the cooked, sauced pasta to a warmed serving bowl or
individual plates, then add the final garnishes, if you're using
any. These can be anything from chopped fresh herbs to grated
cheese to a big grind of black pepper. | like to drizzle on some
fresh extra-virgin olive oil at this stage as well. Making sure that
all of your serving plates are hot is key to great pasta texture:
What looked perfect in the pan will seize up and turn overly thick
if you dump it into a cold bowl.
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STEP 10: SERVE IMMEDIATELY
Pasta don't wait around for nobody. Once the pasta is in the
‘sauce, there's a countdown timer that's automatically started
and cannot be paused. Pasta will continue to cook and soften
as it sits. The sauce will start to cool down and thicken.
The only solution is to serve it immediately and to eat it with
gusto.** If you've done everything right, that shouldn't be a
problem.
“That's Italian for ‘with enough speed to speckle one's tunic with splatters of
sauce."
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J. KENJI LOPEZ-ALT MANAGING CULINARY DIRECTOR
PROFILE TWITTER FACEBOOK EMAIL
J. Kenji Lépez-Alt is the Managing Culinary Director of Serious
Eats, and author of the James Beard Award-nominated
column The Food Lab, where he unravels the science of home cooking. A
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restaurant-trained chef and former Editor at Cook's illustrated magazine, his first
book, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science is a New York
Times Best-Seller, the recipient of a James Beard Award, and was named
Cookbook of the Year in 2015 by the International Association of Culinary
Professionals.
Order your copy of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science today!
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