Every time my mom makes pasta the noodles clump like this. What’s the best way to prevent this? Olive oil? Do I put it in the water when it’s cooking or drizzle it on after it’s drained? It’s very unpleasant reading clumpy spaghetti 🙁
by WarehouseWarden
37 Comments
After cooking the pasta, drain it and toss it with a little oil. I’ve never found that adding oil to the water is effective at making the pasta not clump, but tossing it in oil after it’s out of the water is.
We cook a lot of pasta at work and we boil the pasta in heavily-salted water, cook it very al denté, drain it and then out it on sheet pans that have been doused in olive oil. The pasta gets tossed again on the pan to ensure it’s completely cooled and then allowed to cool at room temperature. If you’re using it right away after cooking, just put it directly into the sauce and toss to coat, possibly with a bit of the water you cooked the pasta in.
Water. A lot of water. And if you take out and won’t use right away, wash in cold water to stop cooking.
What makes it clump like this is just not having enough water during the boil process or after you took out of the water you didn’t cooled it down so they stick together.
If you add oil to the pasta or pasta water, it will cost the noodles and not allow sauce to stick as well.
Stir the noodle while cooking, add add noodles directly to sauce after a quick drain. If your noodles are served naked, use butter, it will emulsify easier than oil and should yield less clumps.
use a larger pan
dont leave the pasta resting for too long. in fact, try to use the pasta as soon as you can after you cook it.
What is the pasta being used for? If it’s being sauced, it would be normal Italian practice to drop the pasta directly into the sauce pan and toss until well mixed, possibly adding some pasta water to ensure a creamy sauce, then serve. In my parent’s generation, it was normal to put the dry pasta on the plate and put sauce on top, but chefs from Alton Brown to Chef John have been teaching us not to do this since the 90s.
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Are you dumping them in a colander and just letting them sit? If so, they’ll stick every time. You can add oil or butter, but if you’re not doing an oily sauce, it’ll cause the sauce to not stick to the noods. Your best bet is having them finish right before you eat and then saucing
Contrary to popular belief, oil isn’t required in the pasta water. The reason is that the ideal way to go about making pasta is to take the pasta directly from the pot and mix it with your sauce of choice. It never gets a chance to dry out and clump this way.
You need a rather large pot quite full. Salt the water more than you think you need to. Get your pasta in and while it’s cooking you can make/warm the sauce in a sauté pan (editing to add if you decide to use fresh pasta, have the sauce done first, because fresh pasta only takes 1 1/2-2 minutes to cook, generally). When the pasta is cooked, you can just take it out of the pot with tongs and put it in the pan with the sauce. Toss it around a bit with the tongs and you’re all set. If the sauce seems a little thick, add some of the leftover pasta water to it – maybe like a tablespoon or so at a time – until it coats the pasta evenly. Say goodbye to dry and clumpy pasta! Lol
One of the reasons or a bonus reason we cook noodles in very salt water is to add to our sauce if it becomes too thick. Boiling in salty water, draining, then adding to sauce is the ideal method. However if batching noodles for later I find running cool water over them in the strainer allows them to stop cooking and not stick. Then reheat with the sauce to coat the noodles. An Italian by heritage not by hand me down granda recipes.
Add sauce.
How to use left over clumpy pasta. Pan fry the pasta with butter until crisp. You will say thank you.
Olive oil.
Oh, but Clump is quite a nice dish too 😂
Oil in pasta water is a waste of oil. Even at a full boil it stays on the surface and doesn’t interact with the pasta at all.
Unless you need the pasta water to be extra starchy, use a lot of water and keep stirring so it’s in motion as much as possible, and do not overcook.
That’s because you should mix the pasta with the condiments in the pan where you prepare the sauce or whatever you eat pasta with. Dried cooked pasta gets gluey so mix it before serving
Lil bit of butter or olive oil 🙂
Put the pasta directly into the sauce
Put a bit of sauce on the noodles and stir it around. Like literally just a spoon of it
Leave some water when you strain it. The pasta reabsorbs water as it dries and if there isn’t any water, it gets sticky.
The top few comments are absolutely correct but if you can’t add it to a sauce to finish cooking give it a quick rinse with cold water to wash the starches off. Doesn’t take much.
Cook one spaghetto at a time
The point at which the pasta is most likely to stick together is after being drained. It’s at this point that you must not leave it sitting in a pile or it can all stick together (especially if cooked in a smaller amount of water, whish is therefore more starchy and sticky).
Try not to overcook it – eg boil spaghetti quite vigorously in a large quantity of well saled water for 8-9 minutes, stirring once at the beginning and at least once more while cooking.
If you want to set the pasta aside before serving then cook it al dente (so a little ‘spring’ left in it), and after draining return to the dry saucepan off the heat and stir quite vigorously with a wooden spoon or tongs, and toss/lift to separate and make sure all the strands are not sticking. Do this for 20-30s until most of the steam has cleared, then add olive oil and stir through. You should have non-sticky spaghetti that can be served with tongs, to further avoid it clumping.
i found some pasta that does not stick next day or even after two days. but what i saw people say, you need big bowl and stir hard first 30 seconds, so starch does not stick
Olive oil
Wow. So many people here don’t know how to cook pasta.
You’re over boiling it and then you’re just letting it be without any fat or sauce. Like it looks like it been sitting there for a good ten minutes or so. Exactly what you should do for clumpy pasta.
Cook it for like 3-4 minutes less and finish in the sauce. Or cook for like 1-2 minutes less and add some butter and/or olive oil.
Just make sure the sauce is ready at the same time the pasta is and put it on the pasta as soon as you drain it. Then it won’t clump.
Does she have a habit of straining the pasta water and leaving the pasta to sit? Thats the only time I’ve had this happen. Pasta should be put straight into sauce to prevent this, thats why the timing of putting pasta to boil is important – so it wouldnt sit.
This is not a cooking problem, it is a waiting problem. Pasta does this when it its left to sit, even just a few minutes. There is nothing special to do, just use it immediately, straight from pan to dishes.
Oil, both in water and after it comes out unless you dump it in the sauce straight away
So, you make pasta and (hopefully) some kind of sauce to go with it. Now your life is troubled with two very hard choices:
1) mix the sauce throughly with the pasta by throwing the pasta in the sauce pan
2)act retarded, throw the unsauced pasta in a dish and pour a bunch of sauce on top
You chose the retarded choice and you got a retarded result
When boiling it, put some olive oil in the water
The only information you need is:
1. Follow the instructions in the package.
2. If you wanted al dente, cooked 1 minute less that package indication.
3. From the water to the sauce.
The most important piece of advice that i received in this matter was:
“The sauce awaits for the pasta and no the other way”
Have the sauce ready! Then once you drain it, it goes straight into your pot of sauce. Pasta doesn’t wait for anyone!
leave some water from the boiling
Butter
Don’t drain it. Just add it to whatever sauce you’re using a minute or two before you even finish cooking it unless it’s a cold sauce. Then you just want to sauce it literally as soon as you can. Be ready with the sauce before the pasta is even drained.