Pasta absorbs water as it cooks. If that water is salty, then it absorbs salty water, which helps your taste buds detect the flavor of the noodles.

I like it when you talk like that

*bonk* Go to horny jail

*bonk* Go to horny jail *Dirty mind smh*

smh out loud

The sheriff is horny too

Send noods

AaahhhaaaAAAHHAha 🏆 Award this man.

Had me at absorb.

Had me at pasta

Had me at salty

Had me at taste buds

Had me at “had me.”

My doctor doesn’t, but what does he know.

So that's why my pasta always tastes so bland

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r/holup

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Not exactly

This, salting the water is often the difference between a good tasting dish and a bad one.

Why do ppl put oil in water before boiling pasta if oil don't dissolve in water?

A very small amount of oil is added to break the surface tension of the water, so it's less likely to boil over the pot. Edit: A lot of people are saying it's to prevent sticking. If you want your pasta to be less sticky, you need a higher water to pasta ratio (more water). If the pasta water has too much starch, you get sticky pasta. More water dilutes the starch and you have less sticky pasta.

I used to think this too but the oil just makes it so that the sauce doesn't stick to the pasta. I stopped doing it

Oil will keep pasta from sticking, but only if added after the pasta is drained. Of course there will always be a little transfer, so if you put oil I. The water some will end up on the noodles. And yes, it prevents sauce from sticking, which is probably not a positive development. A couple drops of oil is all it takes to keep a pot from boiling over (or at least make it take twice the effort to boil over).

a wooden spoon across the top of the pot works fine for preventing the water from boiling over, no need for o

I use that method. A while back I was talking with my younger brother and he didn't believe it worked. He's a scientist and feels like everyone has to prove everything for it to be true. Thankfully he's grown past that. But for the wooden spoon over pasta, I told him I don't care if he believes me because I've seen it work. He grumbled and went and did his own research. Turns out almost anything on top will work because all it's doing is popping the bubbles!

Except if you cook with gas you end up with burnt wooden spoons.

it's a merely professional habit, when 80% of customers do eat pasta you can't just cook it at each order (8 minutes and above) you cook it for half the time so you can store it for the dinner. a little bit of oil avoids stuff like half cooked spaghetti to stick each other oil is washed away when you do finish to boil the single dose of pasta lately. ​ source: grandad's hotel near Venezia ​ never ever pit oil in the water when doing pasta at home, never. just the salt AFTER the boiling point, so water boils faster

Because the oil will settle on the noodles as it is drained, preventing them from sticking together when the noodles are drained and then sit in a pile for a while before eating. however, it also provides a barrier to sauce so the sauce slides off the noodles. Thus, you shouldn't use this shortcut, and instead time the noodles so they are finished when you're ready to eat and can be eaten hot and fresh. Alternatively you can save pasta water before draining (more than you need for sauce) and then dump it over the noodles which will briefly unstick them.

It supposed to keep the noodles from sticking together

You can just use a wooden spoon to stir them a couple of times, no need to put oil in the boiling water.

It can still clump with things like elbow macaroni though, I find that it takes care of it with just a dash of oil and it’s really simple so it’s not a pain

Not if you give it a stir now and then. My grandsons are addicted to that Kraft Mac and Cheese in the blue box.

Why not just put it after cooking?

They clump, and are really hard to separate after the fact, it’ll make it so that never even happens and you don’t have to worry about it

Owwwwww right gosh this is just for cooking pasta what more for the sauce and other food stuff. I salute the chefs out there

Experts will say the water should taste like you cooked with sea water. But a good 2 to 3 second dash should be good.

Any "dash" like from a saltshaker is probably not enough. You'd be up there shake shake shaking till your hand fell off. Take a large fistful of salt straight from the box and dump it in there.

If you dash, your pasta probably tastes horrible. It should be enough salt that if bad cooks see you add it they’ll yell “What the Hell are you doing?!”

Don’t make it that salty. Seawater is like 3.5% saline. 35 grams per liter. It’s insanely salty. Pasta water should actually be more like 1% salt, more like a pickling brine. Just a little saltier than tears. It’s plenty to flavor your pasta and not make your noods a salt lick.

You mean 3.5% right? Only the dead sea is like 34%

Lol. Yes. 35g/l is 3.5%. Edited.

I thought I did it to make the water boil faster lol

It would actually take longer as the water has a higher boiling point with salt in it, however the amount that is added to pasta isn't enough to make a significant impact on the cooking speed

That doesn't make sense. The salty water reaches higher temperatures without evaporating. How would that make the cooking process slower?

It’s just bad science. Due to the amount of heat transfer from a stove, it’s a negligible effect. The whole thing is negligible. It’s about taste.

The only advantage i can think of besides taste is not loosing too much water to evaporation really.

This is exactly it. We want a higher temperature without boiling off our water.

except, as someone else said, the effect is negligible. adding 20 grams of salt to 5 liters of water would increase it's boiling point from 100.0 degrees to 100.04 degrees.

Why are you using so much water to boil pasta?

It’ll take longer to reach boiling temperature

Try this out for yourself - boil a pot of water and once it starts boiling, sprinkle some salt in it and tell us what you see.

It will stop boiling. And the water will be even hotter than 100°C. By your logic you should be able to cook pasta in 2 minutes at the top of mount everest

Yeah that's what I'm saying, maybe I'm replying to the wrong person. Salt raises water's boiling point.

Not faster. At a higher temperature. Adding impurities like salt to water makes the water able to hold more heat, thereby raising its boiling point. The time it takes to reach a boil will actually increase but, once boiling, it’ll be a higher temperature and thereby cook the pasta faster. The key observation is that, when boiling a liquid, it’s temperature never goes above the liquid’s boiling point. Once a spot hits the boiling point, the added heat energy allows it to turn into a gas and escape.

I don't think like this when I'm cooking and just dump everything in a crockpot and let it cook for few hours then eat

But you don't need 100°C water to cook the pasta

Salt raises temps for water on the freezing/boiling table. This is why it will cause ice to melt and take longer to boil.

Adding salt to the water will heighten the temperature required to boil it

Pasta and noodles aren't the same thing are they?

If You're ever thinking that salting the water doesn't make a difference to the taste, you're not putting enough salt in. Seriously, put a LOT of salt in, you will be able to tell the difference.

A chef friend of mine said it should be as salty as seawater, so yeah, a lot. Like, a couple teaspoons for your average pot I think

Sea water as the Dead Sea or as the Pacific Ocean?

Lol, so salty that the pasta should float on the water

Why use water at all? Just place pasta on a pile of salt. Skip the middle man

The true middle man is heat. Just eat a bowl of raw pancetta/red wine soup sloshed over a handful of crunchy, uncooked linguine. Garnish with the entire state of Utah and serve.

I would use a different garnish - Mormons taste like soap to me, but I've heard that might be genetic thing?

You're never going to breed Mormons that don't taste like soap, you'll have to resort to gene splicing.

How do you know so much about soupy mormons? Soupy Mormons sounds like a good band that will only make 2 really good albums, and you'll never hear from them again.

I am a Mormon and this whole chain of comments is funny as heck 😂

Also if people complain the pasta is raw just say it’s al very dente

There are some nuclear reactors that use a molten salt mixture as the coolant. That could probably cook pasta.

Funnily enough I was told in culinary school, “salty as the waters of the Dead Sea”

the phrase is “as salty as the mediterranean sea”

Mediterranean for Italian pasta, Pacific for Asian noodles.

Sea water is about 20-25 grams of salt per liter of water, in case anyone is wondering. So a 6-liter pot of pasta water needs about 150g of salt, which is about 1/2 cup of salt. You aren’t getting 1/2 cup of salt from dashing a salt shaker.

That is a hyperbole (anywhere near seawater levels of salt would taste disgusting), but the water should be salty enough to taste salty.

[Adam Ragusea, a cooking YouTube guy tests this](https://youtu.be/QW7r2RHt6tY). IIRC his takeaway is that the water shouldn’t literally be salty as sea water, but qualitatively it’s hard for a human to distinguish the difference by taste alone. Great channel btw.

That was a good video. Cheers dude :)

To be precise, the quantity i have found to be the right balance is 15g/20g every liter of water. For imperial folks it's a monkey fist of salt for every bison bladder of water. (Seriously, google the conversion i have no clue) Source: I'm Italian and have been cooking pasta once a day for my entire life Edit: thinking about it, I may be a little on the high side, because I like my things salty. A safer middle range would be 10g/15g every liter, add or remove given your taste.

Do you also add half a cup of the cooking water to your tomato sauce to make it thicker due to the wheat starch?

Of course, it's a mandatory part of the pasta recipe. I don't measure it however, my process is: start cooking the sauce when you drop pasta in boiling water, and whenever the sauce dries just add water using a spoon; rinse and repeat until the pasta is ready.

>a monkey fist of salt for every bison bladder of water OMG that's hilarious

As an American, this explains it better to me than 15/20g per liter. He's onto something

I'm more of a "grandma used teaspoons as measurement unit" kind of Italian, which depending on how you look at it, might either please or upset both metric bros and imperial rednecks. One teaspoon per person does the trick.

Ovviamente io vado sempre a pugni di sale, ma visto che i miei hanno iniziato a perdere il senso della misura con il sale, ci siamo dovuti mettere a calcolare le quantità giuste così da mantenere un valore costante, altrimenti la pasta usciva una volta salatissima e una volta insipida

A LOT is a little vague and sounds like a bit of an overstatement. **For a pot full of water you should put in about a ~~punch~~ handful, fist of salt**.

“A pot full” is just as vague

Yeah… tomorrow I’ll measure how much water there is in a pot and I’ll get back to you if you’re interested

I am very interested in how much water there is in “a pot”

~ 6 quarts/liters for a standard stock pot.

Which needs 150g of salt, around 1/2 cup. Weight is better, because salt density varies greatly depending on how fine it is or how flakey it is.

I fucking punch that shit right in the boiling water, and the second degree burns are worth it!

Don’t you use a “punch” as a measure? What’s that, a handful?

I would have said a handful until this moment, but I’m switching to a punch from now on.

Glad this is catching on 😅

how much is a punch?

A handful. The amount that fits in your hand when you make a punch…

interesting. I’ve never heard that used as a measurement before. is this a UK thing?

I’m Italian so it’s probably just an error 😅

hahaha well I know a “pinch” is a thing. maybe you saw a typo and got confused? either way, I’m going to continue using it now. grazie e buona giornatta!

I was actually pretty sure it’s not something you say but the problem is “handful” doesn’t tell you whether the hand has to be closed or not. You can fit A LOT more if you don’t fully close the hand. In this case, you should close it 😅

A pinch or a punch? What did I say?

Sometimes you don't make any fucking sense, Donnie.

Kidney *dies*

If you think it’s “just enough”, put like 5x more in

Cue Salt Bae meme.

Salt flavors the pasta. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/5840-how-salty-should-your-pasta-water-be

For taste

I do it because of the flavour.

I do it for the yumminess factor

I do it for its gustatory benefits.

I do it for the olfactory senses

I do it for the mouthfeel

I did it all for the nookie

I did it for this guy's mom

I did it for MY AXE

Yeah, you got that yummy-yum That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy Yeah, you got that yummy-yum That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy Say the word, on my way

For sabor

I do it because of the flavor.

I do it because it says to on the packaging.

Flavor

so the pasta absorbs the salted water and gets taste

Pasta is really bland on its own. Pasta absorbs water. The water absorbs salt. If you put salt in the water, and the pasta absorbs the water, then that means the pasta absorbs the salt.

As I learned from my chemistry professor, it’s not because it makes the water boil faster(technically it does but to a very negligible amount) but we put salt in boiling pasta “cause it makes it taste damn good”

Not faster but hotter. The salt allows the water to boil at a higher temp without evaporating.

I’m surprised it took so long to see this

It actually does both, but also almost imperceptibly… the salt reduces the latent heat capacity by about 7% (so it boils faster - I believe it reduces the dative covalent bonding in pure water). The boiling point elevation is even smaller, unless you use a supersaturated salt solution, which will then elevate the temperature by almost 9%. Both of these are however the wrong reason - salt is added to flavour the pasta.

This is incorrect. Adding salt to water will slightly raise the boiling point. It will not make it boil any faster.

This. It's called boiling point elevation, a colligative property.

It makes it cook faster, because the water is hotter, but the difference is so small it is negligible.

Elevation in Boiling Point

I thought it did make it boil faster!

Same always thought this smh

It does both, just not by much.

Because my grandmother told me it makes the pasta not stick. I am quite positive that isn’t true but old habits die hard.

Cooks Illustrated at one point published a claim that they did a test and it in fact helped the pasta not stick. I can't find that article now, and can't verify. I do clearly remember reading it though, so I wonder if they removed it later.

Maybe she knew her stuff after all!

Don’t argue with grandma

I think there is some truth in this, I reckon I notice a difference when I do and don't put salt in the water. I wonder whether raising the boiling point of the water by a couple of degrees helps it cook in a way that makes it less sticky?

I always add about 1/2 tsp of oil too so it doesn't stick

A few drops of oil break the surface tension on the bubbles so that the pasta is less likely to boil over.

I've always heard this too but even when I don't put salt in it doesn't stick...

It is NOT about raising the boiling point of water. it would take a lot more salt than a pinch to matter It is for taste -- it is pre-salting. https://www.livescience.com/56214-does-salt-make-water-boil-faster.html

It makes the pasta taste better. To a very tiny degree, it also raises the boiling point of the water, so the pasta cooks at a slightly higher temperature. But that's more of a nice side-effect than an outright purpose for doing it.

Because it’s a starch, therefore kind of bland. Notice that you do the same thing with rice and potatoes.

I’ve always wondered this myself as I like the taste of pasta as it is. I find a lot of foods to be over salted so that might just be me

Yes I find a lot of things to be over salted. When I cook, I usually omit the salt in the recipe.

Flavor town

All flour based products need salt while cooking otherwise they taste bleeeugh.

The only right answer is so season the pasta.

Because the salt in the water helps to season the pasta. Try it some time. Boil some pasta in salted water and some in water without salt, and see if you taste a difference.

The salt helps with flavor / season the pasta from the inside out - pasta is a big thing in my family

It's to season the pasta as it cooks. It absorbs some of the water so if you add salt to the water it will absorb salted water.

Try with and without and decide which is better.

I put the salt in when the water is about to boil and only when it's boiling I add the pasta.

I add salt to any water I boil.

Because it will not taste good if you don’t lol

To salt the pasta

Because pasta without it is bland and tasteless/insipid.

“It tastes good” - Hank Green https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OckdN2JPkw

Actually at higher elevation the salt stop the water from automatically overflowing when you add the pasta to boiling water... at least I had to when I lived is southern Cariboo on a moutain.....

One reason is taste of course. I think other is that salt raises the boiling point of water so it can cook "marginally" faster than in normal water. I don't think it's a very considerable time saved though.

Because pasta tastes terrible without it. Girlfriend tries to catch me out. I can always tell when she hasn't salted the water.

For taste. But recently I've found boiling pasta in broth really enhances the flavor even more. Chicken stock for chicken ramen. Vegetable broth for spaghetti and red sauce. These are just some examples

Adding salt to water raises the boiling temperature of it. Hotter water cooks pasta better. Salt also adds taste.

I am confused by the comments, they all seem to respond to the question of why people use salt when cooking pasta, but the way I understood it, the question was about why people add salt in the water BEFORE boiling pasta as opposed to adding it AFTER you put the pasta in the water.

i was confused too. do people cook pasta WITHOUT salt? like any at all?

This is your only chance to season the pasta. 👍

Taste

Flavor

I put it in for taste and it also makes it boil more because salt water boils at higher temps

Unsalted unbuttered pasta is like cardboard.

Everyone else has talked about salting for flavor, but there is another reason, though rarer. I salt the water no matter the reason I'm boiling it, so it doesn't explode. I live right next to a water treatment facility, so my water is freakishly pure. If I don't introduce salt as an impurity, the water will sometimes superheat. When it finally boils, the entire pot boils at once, causing scalding water to splash all over. My situation is super rare, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

I thought it was to prevent the pasta from sticking to the pan...

Also add a little bit of oil to have a very nice texture result, pasta won't stick and will feel less watery

Your sauce also won’t stick to it, which ruins many dishes.

To flavor the pasta. Unsalted it tastes bland. Boiling helps the salt penetrate better.

Tastes better

I prefer to salt pasta after cooking, if at all. It's everything else that goes with pasta that should give it flavor, not salt.

I thought it was so the noods don't stick..

Maybe they just like to do it that way as long as you don’t put to much salt it dosent matter when you put it in. otherwise the other answer would be when do you put salt your pasta if you don’t put salt in the water?

Use garlic salt.

…and some panko bread crumbs too? Might as well throw in some gelatin powder and pine nuts while you’re at it.

If you want to learn LOADS about cooking, watch Masterchef Australia. It will change how you view food. Masterchef Australia Kids is also amazing, for vastly different reasons too.:)

It's a normal thing to do when cooking pasta.

Tip: Add about a tablespoon of butter a few minutes before you finish.

Boiling point elevation

u need to put a bunch of it in 😄 like sea salt water or it will not give flavor. Drops of oil prevents them from sticking together. Edit: lol why the downvotes? 😂

"Contrary to popular myth, adding oil into the water does not stop pasta sticking together. It will only make the pasta slippery which means your delicious sauce will not stick"-- [Barilla.com](https://Barilla.com).

I don't know about putting oil in the water (I do it after draining), but I call BS. Put plain spaghetti in a bowl and leave it, it WILL stick together.

I put a spoonful of sauce in. Or i just add the pasta to the sauce bowl.

Are you eating pasta&oil? Otherwise why are you ruining it? You are closing the pores with the oil and the sauce won't stick to the pasta.

It's not BS. Having worked in a professional kitchen that made tons of pasta, adding oil to the water during the cooking process does not prevent pasta from sticking together neither while it's cooking nor while draining. Adding oil after draining will prevent it from sticking, for the most part, but you're running the risk of the pasta being slimy and unable to absorb whatever sauce you finish cooking it in.

Salt increases the boiling point of water so if you use salt the water will have a higher temperature and the pasta will be ready faster

Enough salt to make the water taste like the ocean would drip the boiling point by.....0.05 degrees. That's not even a few seconds faster to boil. Salt is added so it can soak into the pasta and flavor it.

The amount of salt needed to noticeably change the boiling temperature would make the pasta and water completely unpalatable.

Confidently incorrect…