Cooking Pasta: Here's How You Should Really Salt The Water
Created: 01/13/2022, 02:18 PM
By: Anne Tessin
Pasta water has to be salted, but when?
© Valerio Rosati / Imago
The question is perhaps as old as the pasta itself: should you salt water when it is still cold or only when it is already boiling?
If you want to cook faster, you should follow this rule.
Pasta, potatoes, vegetables and the like are boiled in salted water * so that they don't taste bland.
That sounds easy, but it does raise a question that amateur cooks disagree about: is the water salted before it boils or only when it is hot?
Allegedly, unsalted water is supposed to boil faster and this saves time and energy, but is that really true?
In fact, there is a correct order here, and while it has nothing to do with time or energy, it still saves you money.
Cook faster: when should the pasta water be salted?
The Federal Center for Nutrition (BZfE) has clearly positioned itself in the "dispute": It doesn't matter when you add salt to the water. Normally, water boils
at 100 degrees Celsius
. The more salt you add, the higher the temperature the water needs to be to boil. With 30 percent salt in the water, the boiling temperature is already 108 degrees. You don't use that much salt in the kitchen at all, so the boiling point is only slightly increased. In addition, the salt also increases the heat storage capacity of the water. These effects also partially cancel each other out. From a time and energy saving point of view, it does not
matter whether you salt the water beforehand or while
it is boiling .
Basically, however, you should
salt the cooking water of pasta and
the like, as you create an isotonic solution that ensures that the aromas and flavors in the product and not through osmosis are washed out into the cooking water.
The result would be watery, bland noodles and tasty cooking water, upside-down world ...
Kitchen tip:
With this ingenious trick you can dice onions in record time
Still, it is better to salt the water when it is already boiling
The fact that it makes no difference when you salt the cooking water for reasons of time and energy does not end the discussion.
There is another reason why
it makes sense to only add the salt to the cooking water when it is already boiling
.
This prevents the salt crystals from sinking to the bottom and causing unsightly
corrosion
stains on stainless steel pots .
So you prevent pitting, through which mini-holes form in the bottom of the pot, which do not go through, but still damage the surface of the pot.
Manufacturers of stainless steel cookware therefore usually recommend adding the salt to the boiling water.
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