Jamie Oliver’s tips for cooking great pasta

okay I’m going to give you some basic
principles on pasta they’re so simple
and so basic but you know what for all
the people that I’ve seen make mistakes
on pasta they are always the easy things
that they kind of mess up on first of
all boiling water from a kettle in a
large pan for cooking your pasta the
other thing is you know you need to
season your water with salt and people
really steer away from that you know
what I try to do is season the water
with just enough salt so you can just
taste it when you taste the water dip
your finger in some very quickly taste
it you want a little edge of salt there
and that’s perfect a lot of people kind
of think Oh health so and all that sort
of stuff remember most of this salt is
going down the drain when you drain the
pasta so it’s really to season just the
pasta now regardless of what pasture you
use you don’t it to stick together and
with linguini spaghetti and speck a
teeny one of the best way to do these
kind of long passes is just get it in
your hand out that get one hand on top
one hand on the bottom twist it like
that and then when it goes into the pan
and you drop it it’ll kind of lay in
such a way that it doesn’t really stick
half as badly as when you don’t do it
soon as the pasture goes in the
temperature will always go down I just
put a lid on literally 30 seconds to a
minute just to let the water come back
to the boil listen out for it you can
hear it or have a little look-see it’s
come back to the boil there and you can
see without even touching it the pasta
is falling naturally as the water
softens it up into such a way that it’s
not sort of sitting on top of each other
give it a good stir some people always
say you can put a bit of olive oil in
the pasta that won’t hurt it but to be
honest you don’t have to do that
sometimes I do it from cooking ravioli
which is quite helpful give it a good
mix let it cook according to the packet
instructions and one of the biggest tips
for pasta is always save a cup of the
starchy water you might not need all of
it but when you’re taught in that sauce
and the pasta together just a few little
swigs of that starchy water will help to
really loosen the pasta up to be elegant
and delicate and delicious as it should
be and as you get
Italy and you know most people will pour
all the water down the sink and they
might even let the pasta sit there in a
colander just steaming away for five
minutes three minutes two minutes sound
familiar so that’s what we want to avoid
because that way you’re going to get
really heavy miserable sort of English
style pasta which ain’t cool