Cooking the perfect pasta requires mastering techniques from boiling lasagna sheets to pan-frying pierogies. From making sea shell pasta from scratch to finding low-fat substitutes for Alfredo sauce, explore versatile pasta recipes.
How long you cook pasta can make or break your meal. The taste of perfectly cooked pasta is hard to beat, and removing it from the boiling water at just the right moment is the trick to achieving the desired flavor.
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Spaghetti is one of the easiest meals to make. Even though it’s one of the quicker meals to throw together, sometimes the extra 20-minute wait to boil water is time you simply don’t have the patience to endure. Solve the problem by preparing noodles a day or so in advance to reheat at your convenience.
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The mouthfeel of longkou noodles stands out when you first try them. Slippery and almost weightless on the tongue, longkou, also called cellophane noodles, feel more like a garnish than a substantial part of a soup or stir-fry. What they lack in heartiness, though, they compensate for in flavor absorption.
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There are two types of shirataki noodle. One is a calorie-free — and thus carbohydrate-free — noodle made from water and the fibrous flour of devil's ear yams.
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First popularized in the United States by President Thomas Jefferson, who would serve this luscious dish to dignified guests at the White House, macaroni and cheese has become an American staple. The basic ingredients found within the dish, pasta, cheese and milk, lend themselves to freezing well.
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Gauging exactly how much pasta to cook can be a challenge. You don't want to get to the dinner table only to find that you didn’t make enough, which leads to cooking too much.
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Frozen cheese ravioli is a quick and economical alternative to expensive fresh ravioli or making ravioli from scratch. Choose a frozen ravioli brand with low-fat cheese to keep your saturated fat and cholesterol intake low. For additional nutrition, look for cheese ravioli made from whole grain flour.
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Any food can lead to weight gain if you consume too much of it, since you gain weight when you eat more calories than you burn through your daily activity. Pasta is no exception. However, pasta can fit into a healthy diet, especially if you choose the right type of pasta and healthy toppings to go with it.
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Angel hair pasta, also known as capellini or capellini d'angelo, is a thin, delicate pasta that cooks quickly. When cooked correctly, it's light and flavorful and can be paired with tomato, pesto or garlic sauce, either as a side dish or main course.
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Spaghetti with beef sauce; it's an American twist on the traditional Italian bolognese sauce. Often spotted on serving tables at church socials, in school lunchrooms and in family kitchens across the land, it's a simple and easy meal to cook.
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Learning how to cook pasta is likely the first lesson most away-from-home college students learn as a matter of survival. Sometimes, culinary experimentation is pursued, owing to enthusiasm or sheer boredom. The discovery that pasta can be cooked in liquids other than water is liberating to both chef and palate.
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The colander insert you find along with pasta pots is supposed to make draining the pasta much easier than holding the pot over a sink. Instead of trying to simultaneously drain the water and stop the pasta from falling into the sink, all you have to do is lift up the colander insert.
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Whether you're trying to cut back your calorie intake or just eat more vegetables, spaghetti squash can make a healthful addition to your diet.
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Costco, the members-only wholesale club, sells two types of frozen lasagna under their store brand, Kirkland's Signature, and occasionally offers a fresh version in the deli. These preassembled dinners save time spent precooking the filling and assembling a lasagna from scratch.
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Al dente, which means “to the tooth” in Italian, is a degree of doneness applied to pasta, rice and vegetables that means the food should be cooked until it retains enough firmness to offer a little resistance to the bite. The center of al dente pasta should not be hard, too soft or mushy.
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For everyday cooking, few methods are faster or easier than cooking in a wok. A wok is a Chinese skillet with a narrow base and high steep sides. Not only can you cook vegetables and meat in a wok, you can also cook noodles.
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When choosing pasta, size often matters -- your recipe may call for pasta for use as a broad base for thick sauces or melted cheese, or it may call for smaller pasta for use in soups. One such small pasta known as orzo resembles large grains of rice. You can find orzo for sale in your local grocery store.
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Traditional pasta carbonara uses raw egg, pancetta, parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper to create a sauce. This classic bacon-and-egg dish is an Italian cuisine staple and is a favorite across continents.
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Spinach pasta is a popular addition to many Italian-style dishes. Spinach pasta is low in calories and relatively low in carbohydrates, making it a good alternative to traditional wheat pastas.
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Pesto means paste, and interestingly, so does the word pasta. Pesto refers to a paste of herbs, nuts and oil used to flavor foods. Pasta refers to the dough or paste used to make spaghetti, rigatoni and other dried and fresh pastas.
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