Pasta comes out perfect if boiled for this amount of time – not what it says on packet
Marco Pierre White, once the youngest chef to earn three Michelin stars, has some firm advice on making the perfect plate of pasta - and how to avoid overcooking it
Pasta, of all shapes, can be tricky to cook. Spaghetti and linguine can be particularly treacherous. Underdone spaghetti is unpleasantly hard, and won’t complement a sauce at all well, while cooking for a minute too long will leave you with a gloopy mess.
Marco Pierre White, who won coveted Michelin stars early in his career for restaurants such as Harveys and The Restaurant Marco Pierre White in London’s Park Lane, has a few simple rules for anyone seeking to attain that perfect al dente firmness that will earn the approval of any visiting Italians.
The first, he says, is to make sure you’re using a big enough pan: “The secret when you cook pasta is deep water,” he says, adding that step two is to include a “generous amount of salt".
Most Italian chefs will recommend at least five litres of water for every pound of pasta, which is why you will see such enormous pans in their kitchens.
Rather than a simple sprinkle, Marco throws a great fistful of sea salt into his pan of boiling water – “there’s no need for olive oil,” he adds.
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But the vital secret, he stresses, is your cooking time. Less than a minute either way can spell the difference between triumph and disaster.
If the recommended cooking time for your pasta is eight minutes, Marco advises, cook it for seven: “You may ask why,” he says. “I take my pan of pasta, drain it, remove the water into the sauce, work the sauce through the pasta…
“By the time it gets to the plate it's cooked another minute. If you take it out of the pan when it's perfectly cooked,” Marco stresses, “it’s overcooked.”
It’s only when the pasta is out of the pan that Marco adds a generous splash of olive oil, along with another hefty sprinkle of salt.
He adds that despite what some purists with their own pasta machines might tell you, there’s no shame in buying ready-made pasta: "Why waste time making pasta in your kitchen? Put your energies where it counts.”
Marco also downplays the importance of pasta sauces: “Remember the pasta is the hero not the sauce,” he says, advising not to overwhelm the pasta with sauce: “When you make pasta it should almost be like dressing a salad.”
He adds that the trick to maximising the flavour of your sauce is to “work it through” thoroughly, to ensure that every bite of pasta comes with least a little sauce.
When it comes to adding parmesan as a finishing touch, though, Marco is not one to be frugal. Suggesting you use “a bit of” the classic Italian hard cheese to finish off your pasta dish, the seasoned chef illustrated his preferences by dumping an enormous fistful of the stuff on top of his pasta.
Marco garnished his pasta dish with some chopped fresh basil and, again, there were no half-measures. He used an absolute pile of Genovese basil – the essential component of a pesto – to give his pasta that authentic Italian touch.
