Help the Sauce Lock Onto the Pasta With a Little Oil
Spaghetti is a simple dish that almost anyone can make. Boil some pasta, heat up some sauce (or cook it from scratch), pour the sauce over the pasta. This will end up with an edible bowl of spaghetti, but it will also leave small pools of liquid and sauce that won’t quite stick to your noodles. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not great either.
Luckily, you only need two things to prevent clumping and help the sauce stick to the pasta – some butter and some starchy water left over from the pasta. Mixing marinara (or other sauce) and al dente noodles with these two creates a velvety emulsion that sticks to the pasta, imparting its flavor and preventing ugly little puddles from forming. You can also use olive oil, but it is a pure liquid fat and requires much more shaking than butter, which is a water-in-oil emulsion where milk proteins act as emulsifiers. (I tried a side-by-side comparison of the method below with olive oil and it came out very watery.)
You can change the order of operations to your liking, but I prefer to add the pasta water to the sauce while it is still simmering, and then gradually add the sauce – ladle by ladle – to a large saucepan of butter and drained al dente. pasta, stirring vigorously after each addition, until covered with a nice sticky base coat. (This is also how Ralphie from The Sopranos sauces his pasta. Take it however you like.) Then I add more sauce on top and that sauce now stays in place (until I put it in my mouth). You can also add the noodles, water and oil directly to the pot, but that depends on making the exact amount of sauce to match the amount of pasta you cook, which I simply cannot do.
This method can be applied to any tomato based sauce or any other sauce that is naturally low in fat, but I will use a simple store bought marinara (with a little wine added) as a basis to give you an idea of the ingredients involved. ratios. Once you get the hang of it, you probably won’t even need to take measurements. To make it you will need:
- 6 ounces of spaghetti (or any other paste)
- 2 cups of marinara bought at the store
- 1/2 cup red wine
- 2 tablespoons butter
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil (use the amount of water indicated on the package directions) and add the pasta. Add wine and sauce to a saucepan and bring to a boil. Let the sauce heat up and reduce it while the pasta is cooking, stirring occasionally to avoid sticking to the bottom. When the pasta has cooled down al dente for a couple of minutes (refer to package directions for timing), gently pour a cup of pasta water, then add 1/4 cup to the sauce. (Set aside any excess in case you need it later. You can also use it to warm up leftovers .)
When your pasta is close to al dente or in al dente state (and in the center of the spaghetti strand when you bite off a tiny or small white point, depending on how much you like to chew the pasta), turn off the heat, drain the pasta and add the oil to the still hot pasta pan. Add the noodles and a ladle of sauce, stir and stir on the burner off but still fairly hot until the sauce completely covers the pasta. (If you have a gas range, set it to about medium.)
Repeat this with a couple more spoons of sauce until your pasta is the sauce you like. You can add all your sauce, or you can add 2-3 scoops and then serve a little more on top. If you accidentally thicken the sauce, add some water from the leftover pasta to thicken it.
Updated at 3:33 PM EST on April 21 to add a little more information on when to drain the paste.