Member-only story
The Definitive, Best, Incredible, Total, Complete & Amazing Guide to Buying Raw Pasta … arguably!
Food
My Credentials :- I’m an expert – I’ve even made fresh pasta … once.
Pasta is incredibly versatile and cheap. It’s easy to cook, but in truth, cooking exceptional pasta is quite hard to perfect.
Knowing when to remove from water and add to the sauce, is a skill. You want to finish the cooking with a sauce that clings to your pasta, a sauce that has soaked up into the pasta, and it must have a bit of a bite to it — “AL Dente” — it shouldn't be soft and sloppy.
Like eggs — anybody can cook an egg … few cook them brilliantly.
Many people talk about the “how to cook” pasta, or the “sauce on pasta”, but few talk about “THE WHAT” — WHAT to look for in raw pasta and how best to choose the shape.
For dry pasta - by the look and colour.
The more yellow it is — the lower the quality. The more “creamy white” and “rough looking” it is — the better the quality. It has been left in the sun or equivalent for longer to “cure” and dry out slowly.
The yellow pasta has been dried quickly, mechanically and the gluten has not properly “developed”…