Barbaric Kitchen Practices

Hey, I’m not going to criticize what you do behind closed doors. It’s all good, but we’ve got to draw the line somewhere, do we not?

And I draw that line at rinsing pasta.

There is no need to rinse your pasta before saucing — in fact, if you do rinse it, your sauce may not adhere to the pasta properly. Yes, I understand that this is not disaster level stuff, as if rinsing pasta is the culinary equivalent of faulty O-rings. Nobody will get hurt if your sauce slides off the penne — it’s just that foodie snobs will think you’re a rube.

We were eating at someone’s house and they dumped the pasta into a colander and reached for the faucet. Almost simultaneously, my wife kicked me in sharply the shin because she could tell I was about to say something to our gracious hosts.

“Ooof!”

“You OK over there, Rob?”

“Yup. Just getting hungry, that’s all.”

They were nice enough to have us for dinner, so I should have the good sense not to correct their abhorrent pasta washing. After all, isn’t life a series of choices, times when you reach that fork in the road and you either keep your mouth shut or say something you shouldn’t?

Take my advice, you’re much better off filling your mouth with rinsed pasta than with your foot.

15 thoughts on “Barbaric Kitchen Practices

  1. Not only shouldn’t you rinse the pasta, but you should save a cup of the pasta cooking water to put back into the pasta with the sauce. I really don’t know why but I think that’s also supposed to help the consistency of the sauce to stick to the pasta and puts more of the pasta flavor back in. My grandmother and mother always did it that way.

  2. So, friends and neighbors of Rob, remember! If he’s sitting next to his wife and you hear a brief scuffle followed by Rob yelping and screaming “OW, f@#$ THAT HURT!”, it just means he skipped lunch at work that day and is eager to sample your cuisine.

    Honest.

  3. I’m ashamed to admit that I only just learned three days ago a) not to use oil; b) to add a TON of salt when the water is boiling; and c) not to rinse it.

      1. I’m going to blame in on my Irish roots.
        Just look at corned beef and potatoes. It’s pretty much a whole mentality of “cook the hell out of it, then insert into mouth.”

  4. Eye,

    Did the rinsed pasta taste better after it had also been treated with the dish detergent and hand dried in a nice cotton towel, too?

    Rinsed pasta? You and the Missus dining with Les Nessman or something?

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