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Cooking Pasta in advance

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According to senior food editor Rick Martinez, you can cook your penne or gemelli or bucatini up to 48 hours before you want to serve it, but really, any time that day is fine. Once your noodles are finished boiling (al dente), you can take them out of the pot, while reserving some pasta water for whatever beautiful sauce you’ll be making later that night. Martinez say you should take one or two tablespoons of olive oil and drizzle it onto your noodles, tossing them to make sure they are all coated. Once your noodles cool for about 15 minutes, dump them in a large Ziploc bag and put the sealed bag in the refrigerator.

Coating your noodles in olive oil is the key to this entire process. Not only does the oil give them a subtle flavor, it also helps to control moisture in the bag. Dry noodles are bad for business. When the moisture leaves the pasta, the noodles get sticky and clumpy. A coating of olive oil provides a barrier, keeping the moisture in, the air out, and your pasta fresh and separated.

At this point, your noodles have been off-duty in the fridge for a while, but now it’s time to get them back in action. Serving time is near. Set your pasta pot on the stove and bring salted water to a boil. Now, you want to shock the pasta you’ve already cooked in the boiling water. Martinez cautions that you shouldn’t cook your noodles any more than they’ve already been cooked, so a 30 second soak is all you need. While talking to Martinez, he explained that the point here is to warm the pasta to serving temperature and remove most of the oil. Once your noodles have been warmed and strained, you can continue cooking them as if they were just brought out of the pot for the first time.

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Ingredients

  • pasta
  • 2 T. oil
  • pasta water, reserved

Details

Preparation

Step 1

According to senior food editor Rick Martinez, you can cook your penne or gemelli or bucatini up to 48 hours before you want to serve it, but really, any time that day is fine. Once your noodles are finished boiling (al dente), you can take them out of the pot, while reserving some pasta water for whatever beautiful sauce you’ll be making later that night. Martinez say you should take one or two tablespoons of olive oil and drizzle it onto your noodles, tossing them to make sure they are all coated. Once your noodles cool for about 15 minutes, dump them in a large Ziploc bag and put the sealed bag in the refrigerator.

Coating your noodles in olive oil is the key to this entire process. Not only does the oil give them a subtle flavor, it also helps to control moisture in the bag. Dry noodles are bad for business. When the moisture leaves the pasta, the noodles get sticky and clumpy. A coating of olive oil provides a barrier, keeping the moisture in, the air out, and your pasta fresh and separated.

At this point, your noodles have been off-duty in the fridge for a while, but now it’s time to get them back in action. Serving time is near. Set your pasta pot on the stove and bring salted water to a boil. Now, you want to shock the pasta you’ve already cooked in the boiling water. Martinez cautions that you shouldn’t cook your noodles any more than they’ve already been cooked, so a 30 second soak is all you need. While talking to Martinez, he explained that the point here is to warm the pasta to serving temperature and remove most of the oil. Once your noodles have been warmed and strained, you can continue cooking them as if they were just brought out of the pot for the first time.

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