🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa055)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html","crawl_time":1772662471,"first_indexed_time":1436436174,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Do You Need All That Water to Boil Pasta? - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["The nation can save the equivalent of half a million gallons of oil a year by cooking pasta with less water and energy."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nThe Curious Cook\nFeb. 24, 2009\nSOME time ago, as I emptied a big pot of pasta water into the sink and waited for the fog to lift from my glasses, a simple question occurred to me. Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say?\nAfter some experiments, I’ve found that we can indeed make pasta in just a few cups of water and save a good deal of energy. Not that much in your kitchen or mine  just the amount needed to keep a burner on high for a few more minutes. But Americans cook something like a billion pounds of pasta a year, so those minutes could add up.\nMy rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or $10 million to $20 million at current prices. Significant numbers, though these days they sound like small drops in a very large pot.\nThe standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta. The usual rationales are that abundant water quickly recovers the boil when the pasta is added, gives the noodles room so that they don’t stick to one another, and dilutes the starch they release, so they don’t end up with a “gluey” surface.\nTo see which of these factors are really significant, I put a pound of spaghetti into a pot, added just 2 quarts of cold water and 2 teaspoons salt and turned on the heat. The water took about 8 minutes to reach the boil, during which I had to push the noodles around occasionally to keep them from sticking. They took another 10 minutes to cook through.\nWhen I drained the pasta, it had the texture and saltiness I expected, seemed about as sticky as usual, and when tossed with a little oil, seemed perfectly normal.\nSo I tried reducing the water even further, to 1 1\/2 quarts. I had to stir often because that’s not quite enough to keep all the pasta immersed all the time, but again the spaghetti came out fine.\nWhy can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they’re lubricated by sauce or oil.\nI described my method in e-mail messages to two of this country’s best-known advocates of Italian cuisine. Lidia Bastianich told me: “My grandmother would have thought of the idea surely as blasphemous. I think it is curious.” And Marcella Hazan said, “I am a very curious person, and I’m glad people are exploring new ways.” Both of them gave it a try.\nMs. Bastianich responded with a controlled experiment. She started spaghettini in pots of cold water and boiling water (4 quarts each instead of her usual 6) side by side and found the cold-water version lacking in the gradation of texture she looks for. As for the flavor, she said “I felt that the cold-water pasta had lost some of the nutty flavor of a good semolina pasta cooked properly.”\nMs. Bastianich agreed that using less water is O.K. “Yes, I think it’s doable to reduce the cooking water by one third,” from 6 quarts per pound to 4. “But please ‘butta la pasta’ in boiling water.”\nMs. Hazan tried starting a batch of shell pasta in a somewhat reduced amount of cold water, and found that it needed constant stirring to avoid sticking. “Maybe you save heat energy, but you also have to work a lot harder,” she told me in a follow-up call. “It’s not so convenient. I don’t know if I would cook pasta this way.”\nHeartened by the experts’ willingness to experiment, I went back to work, this time starting with hot water. I found that it’s possible to butta la pasta in 1 1\/2 or 2 quarts of boiling water without having the noodles stick. Short shapes just require occasional stirring. Long strands and ribbons need a quick wetting with cold water just before they go into the pot, then frequent stirring for a minute or two.\nExcept for capellini, which cooks too quickly, I find that both the cold and hot versions of the minimal-water method work well with the common shapes I’ve tried, with whole wheat pasta, and even fresh pasta, as long as any surface flour is rinsed off first.\nI prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced. It’s true, though, that no matter what temperature you start with, this method requires more attention. That’s a disadvantage when you’re cooking several things at once.\nIf you cook pasta often, try experimenting with different starting temperatures and amounts of water. You can even cook pasta in the manner of a risotto, adding the liquid in small doses and stirring constantly. Be sure to use a pot broad enough for the noodles to lie flat on the bottom, and to reduce the salt for smaller volumes of water.\nThere’s one other dividend to cooking pasta in minimal water that I hadn’t anticipated: the leftover pasta water. It’s thick, but you can still easily ladle it out by tilting the pan. And it’s very pleasant tasting: not too salty, lots of body, and lots of semolina flavor. Whole-wheat pasta water is surprisingly delicious.\nItalian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one.\nRestaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.”\nMr. Buford suggests that the muddy pasta water should be bottled and sold, because home cooking never produces anything like it. Cooking one batch of pasta in minimal water can’t smooth out the starch as completely or generate those long-cooked flavors. But it does make pasta water good enough to sip.\nRelated Content\nMore in Food\nChristopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.\nJoseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.\nErin Brethauer for The New York Times\nJoseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.\nEditors’ Picks\nEmma McIntyre\/Getty Images\nAlexandre Juillet\/Chamonix-Mont Blanc\nTrending in The Times\nNick King\/Lansing State Journal, via Imagn\nThe Estate of Edmund Teske, via Getty Images\nJanet Mac\nAmanda Shae Home Team Realty Group\nPhoto Illustration by Tam Stockton for The New York Times\nJuan Barreto\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\nPhoto Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\nLiam Kennedy for The New York Times\nAleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times\nCourtesy of Netflix\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Food](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/food)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2009%252F02%252F25%252Fdining%252F25curi.html&asset=masthead)\n\nWednesday, March 4, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\n[Food](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/food)\\|How Much Water Does Pasta Really Need?\n\nhttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html\n\n- Share full article\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html#after-sponsor)\n\nThe Curious Cook\n\n# How Much Water Does Pasta Really Need?\n- Share full article\n\nBy [Harold McGee](https:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/m\/harold_mcgee\/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=Harold%20McGee&st=cse)\n\n- Feb. 24, 2009\n\nSOME time ago, as I emptied a big pot of pasta water into the sink and waited for the fog to lift from my glasses, a simple question occurred to me. Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say?\n\nAfter some experiments, I’ve found that we can indeed make pasta in just a few cups of water and save a good deal of energy. Not that much in your kitchen or mine  just the amount needed to keep a burner on high for a few more minutes. But Americans cook something like a billion pounds of pasta a year, so those minutes could add up.\n\nMy rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or \\$10 million to \\$20 million at current prices. Significant numbers, though these days they sound like small drops in a very large pot.\n\nThe standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta. The usual rationales are that abundant water quickly recovers the boil when the pasta is added, gives the noodles room so that they don’t stick to one another, and dilutes the starch they release, so they don’t end up with a “gluey” surface.\n\nTo see which of these factors are really significant, I put a pound of spaghetti into a pot, added just 2 quarts of cold water and 2 teaspoons salt and turned on the heat. The water took about 8 minutes to reach the boil, during which I had to push the noodles around occasionally to keep them from sticking. They took another 10 minutes to cook through.\n\nWhen I drained the pasta, it had the texture and saltiness I expected, seemed about as sticky as usual, and when tossed with a little oil, seemed perfectly normal.\n\nSo I tried reducing the water even further, to 1 1\/2 quarts. I had to stir often because that’s not quite enough to keep all the pasta immersed all the time, but again the spaghetti came out fine.\n\nWhy can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they’re lubricated by sauce or oil.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/09\/21\/t-magazine\/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-copy-copy\/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-thumbLarge.jpg)Our Favorite Living Rooms](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/t-magazine\/best-living-room-design.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/03HS-SCI-ALIEN-MICROBES-7543-cover\/03HS-SCI-ALIEN-MICROBES-7543-cover-thumbLarge.jpg)Experiment Shows Possibility of Martian Microbes Hitching a Ride to Earth](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/science\/microbes-mars-life-asteroid.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/03cul-ask-vinyl-still\/03cul-ask-vinyl-still-thumbLarge.jpg)Should I Get Into Vinyl Records?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/music\/vinyl-records-collecting.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nI described my method in e-mail messages to two of this country’s best-known advocates of Italian cuisine. Lidia Bastianich told me: “My grandmother would have thought of the idea surely as blasphemous. I think it is curious.” And Marcella Hazan said, “I am a very curious person, and I’m glad people are exploring new ways.” Both of them gave it a try.\n\nMs. Bastianich responded with a controlled experiment. She started spaghettini in pots of cold water and boiling water (4 quarts each instead of her usual 6) side by side and found the cold-water version lacking in the gradation of texture she looks for. As for the flavor, she said “I felt that the cold-water pasta had lost some of the nutty flavor of a good semolina pasta cooked properly.”\n\nMs. Bastianich agreed that using less water is O.K. “Yes, I think it’s doable to reduce the cooking water by one third,” from 6 quarts per pound to 4. “But please ‘butta la pasta’ in boiling water.”\n\nMs. Hazan tried starting a batch of shell pasta in a somewhat reduced amount of cold water, and found that it needed constant stirring to avoid sticking. “Maybe you save heat energy, but you also have to work a lot harder,” she told me in a follow-up call. “It’s not so convenient. I don’t know if I would cook pasta this way.”\n\nHeartened by the experts’ willingness to experiment, I went back to work, this time starting with hot water. I found that it’s possible to butta la pasta in 1 1\/2 or 2 quarts of boiling water without having the noodles stick. Short shapes just require occasional stirring. Long strands and ribbons need a quick wetting with cold water just before they go into the pot, then frequent stirring for a minute or two.\n\nExcept for capellini, which cooks too quickly, I find that both the cold and hot versions of the minimal-water method work well with the common shapes I’ve tried, with whole wheat pasta, and even fresh pasta, as long as any surface flour is rinsed off first.\n\nI prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced. It’s true, though, that no matter what temperature you start with, this method requires more attention. That’s a disadvantage when you’re cooking several things at once.\n\nIf you cook pasta often, try experimenting with different starting temperatures and amounts of water. You can even cook pasta in the manner of a risotto, adding the liquid in small doses and stirring constantly. Be sure to use a pot broad enough for the noodles to lie flat on the bottom, and to reduce the salt for smaller volumes of water.\n\nThere’s one other dividend to cooking pasta in minimal water that I hadn’t anticipated: the leftover pasta water. It’s thick, but you can still easily ladle it out by tilting the pan. And it’s very pleasant tasting: not too salty, lots of body, and lots of semolina flavor. Whole-wheat pasta water is surprisingly delicious.\n\nItalian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one.\n\nRestaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.”\n\nMr. Buford suggests that the muddy pasta water should be bottled and sold, because home cooking never produces anything like it. Cooking one batch of pasta in minimal water can’t smooth out the starch as completely or generate those long-cooked flavors. But it does make pasta water good enough to sip.\n\n- Share full article\n\n***\n## More on Food and Dining\n### Keep tabs on dining trends, restaurant reviews and recipes.\n***\n- **Pizza** **Hut** **of Yore:** With heaps of nostalgia but little promotion by their parent chain, Pizza Hut Classics [take their fervent fans on a time trip back to a simpler, warmer era](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/dining\/pizza-hut.html).\n- **Soup for Breakfast:** Social media influencers have picked up on the age-old tradition of having soup in the morning. [It’s one you can enjoy too](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/dining\/healthy-breakfast-soup.html).\n- **Should You Order the Fish?** Seafood Watch, long a source of advice on sustainable choices, [is working to get restaurants to adopt its color-coded recommendations](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/dining\/monterey-bay-aquarium-seafood-watch.html).\n- **Top-Rated Chicken Breasts:** Fuss-free and blank canvases, chicken breasts are a weeknight lifesaver. [Here are 17 of our most popular recipes](https:\/\/cooking.nytimes.com\/article\/reader-favorite-boneless-chicken-breast-recipes).\n***\n**Eating in New York City**\n\n- **Tortillas Cooked on a Wok?:** At the Mexican restaurant Corima, Fidel Caballero [keeps an eye on experimentation](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/dining\/corima-chinatown-restaurant-review.html) (and China), without losing sight of simple pleasures.\n- **Where to Eat****:**In these three banyas, [you can squeeze in a great meal](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/26\/dining\/where-to-eat-and-have-a-shvitz.html) with a great sweat.\n- **Restaurant Reviews****:** Our latest batch [includes a French spot that mines old cookbooks](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/dining\/le-chene-chalong-restaurant-reviews.html), an ambitious Southern Thai restaurant and a Hudson Yards destination.\n- **Off the Menu****:** Gabriel Kreuther fires up Alsatian cooking, Baohaus makes a return [and more restaurant news](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/dining\/nyc-restaurant-news.html).\n- **Favorite Rest****aurants****:** From \\$\\$\\$\\$ tasting-menu splurges to a celebrated Brooklyn sandwich shop, here are the places from our [2025 list of the 100 Best Restaurants](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2025\/dining\/best-nyc-restaurants.html) in New York City that [Times readers](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/dining\/reader-favorite-nyc-restaurants.html) and [local](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/06\/dining\/chef-nyc-best-restaurant-picks.html) [chefs](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/06\/dining\/chef-nyc-best-restaurant-picks.html) prefer.\n\n## Related Content\n### [More in Food](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/food)\n- [For Actually Good Chicken Breast, Try One of Our Top-Rated Recipes](https:\/\/cooking.nytimes.com\/article\/reader-favorite-boneless-chicken-breast-recipes)\n  \n  ![Yasmin Fahr’s honey-garlic chicken breasts.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt\/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.\n- [Paddington Would Love This Chicken](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/dining\/paddington-would-love-this-chicken.html)\n  \n  ![Melissa Clark’s spicy marmalade chicken and sweet potatoes.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/25Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-copy\/25FD-APPETITEREX2-MC-Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.\n- [Should You Order That Fish? Menus Have a New Way to Help.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/dining\/monterey-bay-aquarium-seafood-watch.html)\n  \n  ![William Dissen, the owner of the Market Place Restaurant in Asheville, N.C., serves farmed trout from a local fishery.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04FD-seafood-choice-01-vfkq\/03FD-seafood-choice-01-vfkq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Erin Brethauer for The New York Times\n- [A Creamy Salad Dressing That Will Change Your Life](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/26\/dining\/silken-tofu-salad-dressing-rvr-los-angeles.html)\n  \n  ![Silken tofu gives this salad dressing a light yet satisfying creaminess.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/26\/multimedia\/26FD-KO-2-tpzb\/26FD-KO-2-tpzb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.\n\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [Are Zendaya and Tom Holland Married?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/style\/zendaya-tom-holland-married.html)\n  \n  ![Husband and wife?](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Emma McIntyre\/Getty Images\n- [A Crisis in the Alps: Airbnb, Climate Change and Americans](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/travel\/french-alps-problems-overdevelopment-climate-change.html)\n  \n  ![A view over the Chamonix valley from the Balme-Vallorcine ski area. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Alexandre Juillet\/Chamonix-Mont Blanc\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [Trader Joe’s Recalls 4 Frozen Food Products That May Contain Glass](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/us\/trader-joes-recall-frozen-asian-food.html)\n  \n  ![Chicken fried rice packages in a refrigerator at Trader Joe’s in Meridian Township in Michigan in 2024.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/lens\/04xp-traderjoes\/04xp-traderjoes-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Nick King\/Lansing State Journal, via Imagn\n- [John P. Hammond, Pioneer in 1960s Blues Renaissance, Dies at 83](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/arts\/music\/john-p-hammond-dead.html)\n  \n  ![John P. Hammond in 1962. “When I first heard blues, I was completely turned on to it and it became larger than life,” he said. “And then it became my life.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/00Hammond-02-hlzg-print1\/00Hammond-02-hlzg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The Estate of Edmund Teske, via Getty Images\n- [Opinion: The Reason Gen Z Isn’t Dating](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/03emba\/03emba-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Janet Mac\n- [\\$550,000 Homes in Kentucky, Florida and Maryland](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/realestate\/florida-maryland-kentucky-home-sales.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/realestate\/04re-wyg-Louisville\/04re-wyg-Louisville-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group\n- [Opinion: How to Think About Trump’s War With Iran](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/opinion\/trump-iran-war-future.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/02friedman-lvgk\/02friedman-lvgk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Tam Stockton for The New York Times\n- [Sea Levels Are Already Higher Than Many Scientists Think, New Study Shows](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/climate\/sea-level-underestimated.html)\n  \n  ![A stretch of coast in Suriname, one of many places affected by sea level rise and erosion caused by climate change](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04cli-sea-level-rise-bmch\/04cli-sea-level-rise-bmch-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Juan Barreto\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- [Reporters Seek Comment. What Happens Next May Surprise You.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/insider\/journalism-reporting-seeking-comment.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/21\/pageoneplus\/21insider-comment\/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\n- [Why Do People Wear Shorts in Winter?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/fashion\/shorts-winter-cold-weather.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27openthread-askvanessa-hwcl\/27openthread-askvanessa-hwcl-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Liam Kennedy for The New York Times\n- [Opinion: Nine Law Firms Surrendered. 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Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say?\n\nAfter some experiments, I’ve found that we can indeed make pasta in just a few cups of water and save a good deal of energy. Not that much in your kitchen or mine  just the amount needed to keep a burner on high for a few more minutes. But Americans cook something like a billion pounds of pasta a year, so those minutes could add up.\n\nMy rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or \\$10 million to \\$20 million at current prices. Significant numbers, though these days they sound like small drops in a very large pot.\n\nThe standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta. The usual rationales are that abundant water quickly recovers the boil when the pasta is added, gives the noodles room so that they don’t stick to one another, and dilutes the starch they release, so they don’t end up with a “gluey” surface.\n\nTo see which of these factors are really significant, I put a pound of spaghetti into a pot, added just 2 quarts of cold water and 2 teaspoons salt and turned on the heat. The water took about 8 minutes to reach the boil, during which I had to push the noodles around occasionally to keep them from sticking. They took another 10 minutes to cook through.\n\nWhen I drained the pasta, it had the texture and saltiness I expected, seemed about as sticky as usual, and when tossed with a little oil, seemed perfectly normal.\n\nSo I tried reducing the water even further, to 1 1\/2 quarts. I had to stir often because that’s not quite enough to keep all the pasta immersed all the time, but again the spaghetti came out fine.\n\nWhy can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they’re lubricated by sauce or oil.\n\nI described my method in e-mail messages to two of this country’s best-known advocates of Italian cuisine. Lidia Bastianich told me: “My grandmother would have thought of the idea surely as blasphemous. I think it is curious.” And Marcella Hazan said, “I am a very curious person, and I’m glad people are exploring new ways.” Both of them gave it a try.\n\nMs. Bastianich responded with a controlled experiment. She started spaghettini in pots of cold water and boiling water (4 quarts each instead of her usual 6) side by side and found the cold-water version lacking in the gradation of texture she looks for. As for the flavor, she said “I felt that the cold-water pasta had lost some of the nutty flavor of a good semolina pasta cooked properly.”\n\nMs. Bastianich agreed that using less water is O.K. “Yes, I think it’s doable to reduce the cooking water by one third,” from 6 quarts per pound to 4. “But please ‘butta la pasta’ in boiling water.”\n\nMs. Hazan tried starting a batch of shell pasta in a somewhat reduced amount of cold water, and found that it needed constant stirring to avoid sticking. “Maybe you save heat energy, but you also have to work a lot harder,” she told me in a follow-up call. “It’s not so convenient. I don’t know if I would cook pasta this way.”\n\nHeartened by the experts’ willingness to experiment, I went back to work, this time starting with hot water. I found that it’s possible to butta la pasta in 1 1\/2 or 2 quarts of boiling water without having the noodles stick. Short shapes just require occasional stirring. Long strands and ribbons need a quick wetting with cold water just before they go into the pot, then frequent stirring for a minute or two.\n\nExcept for capellini, which cooks too quickly, I find that both the cold and hot versions of the minimal-water method work well with the common shapes I’ve tried, with whole wheat pasta, and even fresh pasta, as long as any surface flour is rinsed off first.\n\nI prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced. It’s true, though, that no matter what temperature you start with, this method requires more attention. That’s a disadvantage when you’re cooking several things at once.\n\nIf you cook pasta often, try experimenting with different starting temperatures and amounts of water. You can even cook pasta in the manner of a risotto, adding the liquid in small doses and stirring constantly. Be sure to use a pot broad enough for the noodles to lie flat on the bottom, and to reduce the salt for smaller volumes of water.\n\nThere’s one other dividend to cooking pasta in minimal water that I hadn’t anticipated: the leftover pasta water. It’s thick, but you can still easily ladle it out by tilting the pan. And it’s very pleasant tasting: not too salty, lots of body, and lots of semolina flavor. Whole-wheat pasta water is surprisingly delicious.\n\nItalian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one.\n\nRestaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.”\n\nMr. Buford suggests that the muddy pasta water should be bottled and sold, because home cooking never produces anything like it. Cooking one batch of pasta in minimal water can’t smooth out the starch as completely or generate those long-cooked flavors. But it does make pasta water good enough to sip.\n\n## Related Content\n[More in Food](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/food)\n\n- ![Yasmin Fahr’s honey-garlic chicken breasts.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt\/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.\n- ![Melissa Clark’s spicy marmalade chicken and sweet potatoes.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/25Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-copy\/25FD-APPETITEREX2-MC-Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.\n- ![William Dissen, the owner of the Market Place Restaurant in Asheville, N.C., serves farmed trout from a local fishery.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04FD-seafood-choice-01-vfkq\/03FD-seafood-choice-01-vfkq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Erin Brethauer for The New York Times\n- ![Silken tofu gives this salad dressing a light yet satisfying creaminess.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/26\/multimedia\/26FD-KO-2-tpzb\/26FD-KO-2-tpzb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.\n\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![Husband and wife?](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Emma McIntyre\/Getty Images\n- ![A view over the Chamonix valley from the Balme-Vallorcine ski area. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Alexandre Juillet\/Chamonix-Mont Blanc\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![Chicken fried rice packages in a refrigerator at Trader Joe’s in Meridian Township in Michigan in 2024.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/lens\/04xp-traderjoes\/04xp-traderjoes-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Nick King\/Lansing State Journal, via Imagn\n- ![John P. Hammond in 1962. “When I first heard blues, I was completely turned on to it and it became larger than life,” he said. “And then it became my life.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/00Hammond-02-hlzg-print1\/00Hammond-02-hlzg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The Estate of Edmund Teske, via Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/03emba\/03emba-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Janet Mac\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/realestate\/04re-wyg-Louisville\/04re-wyg-Louisville-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/02friedman-lvgk\/02friedman-lvgk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Tam Stockton for The New York Times\n- ![A stretch of coast in Suriname, one of many places affected by sea level rise and erosion caused by climate change](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04cli-sea-level-rise-bmch\/04cli-sea-level-rise-bmch-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Juan Barreto\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/21\/pageoneplus\/21insider-comment\/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27openthread-askvanessa-hwcl\/27openthread-askvanessa-hwcl-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Liam Kennedy for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/03lawfirms-editorial-mqpj\/03lawfirms-editorial-mqpj-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times\n- ![Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in “Vladimir.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/arts\/02tvcol-vladimir\/02tvcol-vladimir-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Courtesy of Netflix\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/25\/dining\/25curi.html#after-bottom)","meta_canonical":null}

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Meta Title	Do You Need All That Water to Boil Pasta? - The New York Times
Meta Description	The nation can save the equivalent of half a million gallons of oil a year by cooking pasta with less water and energy.
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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Curious Cook Feb. 24, 2009 SOME time ago, as I emptied a big pot of pasta water into the sink and waited for the fog to lift from my glasses, a simple question occurred to me. Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say? After some experiments, I’ve found that we can indeed make pasta in just a few cups of water and save a good deal of energy. Not that much in your kitchen or mine just the amount needed to keep a burner on high for a few more minutes. But Americans cook something like a billion pounds of pasta a year, so those minutes could add up. My rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or $10 million to $20 million at current prices. Significant numbers, though these days they sound like small drops in a very large pot. The standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta. The usual rationales are that abundant water quickly recovers the boil when the pasta is added, gives the noodles room so that they don’t stick to one another, and dilutes the starch they release, so they don’t end up with a “gluey” surface. To see which of these factors are really significant, I put a pound of spaghetti into a pot, added just 2 quarts of cold water and 2 teaspoons salt and turned on the heat. The water took about 8 minutes to reach the boil, during which I had to push the noodles around occasionally to keep them from sticking. They took another 10 minutes to cook through. When I drained the pasta, it had the texture and saltiness I expected, seemed about as sticky as usual, and when tossed with a little oil, seemed perfectly normal. So I tried reducing the water even further, to 1 1/2 quarts. I had to stir often because that’s not quite enough to keep all the pasta immersed all the time, but again the spaghetti came out fine. Why can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they’re lubricated by sauce or oil. I described my method in e-mail messages to two of this country’s best-known advocates of Italian cuisine. Lidia Bastianich told me: “My grandmother would have thought of the idea surely as blasphemous. I think it is curious.” And Marcella Hazan said, “I am a very curious person, and I’m glad people are exploring new ways.” Both of them gave it a try. Ms. Bastianich responded with a controlled experiment. She started spaghettini in pots of cold water and boiling water (4 quarts each instead of her usual 6) side by side and found the cold-water version lacking in the gradation of texture she looks for. As for the flavor, she said “I felt that the cold-water pasta had lost some of the nutty flavor of a good semolina pasta cooked properly.” Ms. Bastianich agreed that using less water is O.K. “Yes, I think it’s doable to reduce the cooking water by one third,” from 6 quarts per pound to 4. “But please ‘butta la pasta’ in boiling water.” Ms. Hazan tried starting a batch of shell pasta in a somewhat reduced amount of cold water, and found that it needed constant stirring to avoid sticking. “Maybe you save heat energy, but you also have to work a lot harder,” she told me in a follow-up call. “It’s not so convenient. I don’t know if I would cook pasta this way.” Heartened by the experts’ willingness to experiment, I went back to work, this time starting with hot water. I found that it’s possible to butta la pasta in 1 1/2 or 2 quarts of boiling water without having the noodles stick. Short shapes just require occasional stirring. Long strands and ribbons need a quick wetting with cold water just before they go into the pot, then frequent stirring for a minute or two. Except for capellini, which cooks too quickly, I find that both the cold and hot versions of the minimal-water method work well with the common shapes I’ve tried, with whole wheat pasta, and even fresh pasta, as long as any surface flour is rinsed off first. I prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced. It’s true, though, that no matter what temperature you start with, this method requires more attention. That’s a disadvantage when you’re cooking several things at once. If you cook pasta often, try experimenting with different starting temperatures and amounts of water. You can even cook pasta in the manner of a risotto, adding the liquid in small doses and stirring constantly. Be sure to use a pot broad enough for the noodles to lie flat on the bottom, and to reduce the salt for smaller volumes of water. There’s one other dividend to cooking pasta in minimal water that I hadn’t anticipated: the leftover pasta water. It’s thick, but you can still easily ladle it out by tilting the pan. And it’s very pleasant tasting: not too salty, lots of body, and lots of semolina flavor. Whole-wheat pasta water is surprisingly delicious. Italian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one. Restaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.” Mr. Buford suggests that the muddy pasta water should be bottled and sold, because home cooking never produces anything like it. Cooking one batch of pasta in minimal water can’t smooth out the starch as completely or generate those long-cooked flavors. But it does make pasta water good enough to sip. Related Content More in Food Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. Erin Brethauer for The New York Times Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. Editors’ Picks Emma McIntyre/Getty Images Alexandre Juillet/Chamonix-Mont Blanc Trending in The Times Nick King/Lansing State Journal, via Imagn The Estate of Edmund Teske, via Getty Images Janet Mac Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group Photo Illustration by Tam Stockton for The New York Times Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary/Getty Images Liam Kennedy for The New York Times Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times Courtesy of Netflix Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Food](https://www.nytimes.com/section/food) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2009%252F02%252F25%252Fdining%252F25curi.html&asset=masthead) Wednesday, March 4, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) [Food](https://www.nytimes.com/section/food)\\|How Much Water Does Pasta Really Need? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html - Share full article Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#after-sponsor) The Curious Cook # How Much Water Does Pasta Really Need? - Share full article By [Harold McGee](https://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/harold_mcgee/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=Harold%20McGee&st=cse) - Feb. 24, 2009 SOME time ago, as I emptied a big pot of pasta water into the sink and waited for the fog to lift from my glasses, a simple question occurred to me. Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say? After some experiments, I’ve found that we can indeed make pasta in just a few cups of water and save a good deal of energy. Not that much in your kitchen or mine just the amount needed to keep a burner on high for a few more minutes. But Americans cook something like a billion pounds of pasta a year, so those minutes could add up. My rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or \$10 million to \$20 million at current prices. Significant numbers, though these days they sound like small drops in a very large pot. The standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta. The usual rationales are that abundant water quickly recovers the boil when the pasta is added, gives the noodles room so that they don’t stick to one another, and dilutes the starch they release, so they don’t end up with a “gluey” surface. To see which of these factors are really significant, I put a pound of spaghetti into a pot, added just 2 quarts of cold water and 2 teaspoons salt and turned on the heat. The water took about 8 minutes to reach the boil, during which I had to push the noodles around occasionally to keep them from sticking. They took another 10 minutes to cook through. When I drained the pasta, it had the texture and saltiness I expected, seemed about as sticky as usual, and when tossed with a little oil, seemed perfectly normal. So I tried reducing the water even further, to 1 1/2 quarts. I had to stir often because that’s not quite enough to keep all the pasta immersed all the time, but again the spaghetti came out fine. Why can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they’re lubricated by sauce or oil. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/09/21/t-magazine/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-copy-copy/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-thumbLarge.jpg)Our Favorite Living Rooms](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/t-magazine/best-living-room-design.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/02/03HS-SCI-ALIEN-MICROBES-7543-cover/03HS-SCI-ALIEN-MICROBES-7543-cover-thumbLarge.jpg)Experiment Shows Possibility of Martian Microbes Hitching a Ride to Earth](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/science/microbes-mars-life-asteroid.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/03/arts/03cul-ask-vinyl-still/03cul-ask-vinyl-still-thumbLarge.jpg)Should I Get Into Vinyl Records?](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/arts/music/vinyl-records-collecting.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#after-pp_edpick) I described my method in e-mail messages to two of this country’s best-known advocates of Italian cuisine. Lidia Bastianich told me: “My grandmother would have thought of the idea surely as blasphemous. I think it is curious.” And Marcella Hazan said, “I am a very curious person, and I’m glad people are exploring new ways.” Both of them gave it a try. Ms. Bastianich responded with a controlled experiment. She started spaghettini in pots of cold water and boiling water (4 quarts each instead of her usual 6) side by side and found the cold-water version lacking in the gradation of texture she looks for. As for the flavor, she said “I felt that the cold-water pasta had lost some of the nutty flavor of a good semolina pasta cooked properly.” Ms. Bastianich agreed that using less water is O.K. “Yes, I think it’s doable to reduce the cooking water by one third,” from 6 quarts per pound to 4. “But please ‘butta la pasta’ in boiling water.” Ms. Hazan tried starting a batch of shell pasta in a somewhat reduced amount of cold water, and found that it needed constant stirring to avoid sticking. “Maybe you save heat energy, but you also have to work a lot harder,” she told me in a follow-up call. “It’s not so convenient. I don’t know if I would cook pasta this way.” Heartened by the experts’ willingness to experiment, I went back to work, this time starting with hot water. I found that it’s possible to butta la pasta in 1 1/2 or 2 quarts of boiling water without having the noodles stick. Short shapes just require occasional stirring. Long strands and ribbons need a quick wetting with cold water just before they go into the pot, then frequent stirring for a minute or two. Except for capellini, which cooks too quickly, I find that both the cold and hot versions of the minimal-water method work well with the common shapes I’ve tried, with whole wheat pasta, and even fresh pasta, as long as any surface flour is rinsed off first. I prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced. It’s true, though, that no matter what temperature you start with, this method requires more attention. That’s a disadvantage when you’re cooking several things at once. If you cook pasta often, try experimenting with different starting temperatures and amounts of water. You can even cook pasta in the manner of a risotto, adding the liquid in small doses and stirring constantly. Be sure to use a pot broad enough for the noodles to lie flat on the bottom, and to reduce the salt for smaller volumes of water. There’s one other dividend to cooking pasta in minimal water that I hadn’t anticipated: the leftover pasta water. It’s thick, but you can still easily ladle it out by tilting the pan. And it’s very pleasant tasting: not too salty, lots of body, and lots of semolina flavor. Whole-wheat pasta water is surprisingly delicious. Italian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one. Restaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.” Mr. Buford suggests that the muddy pasta water should be bottled and sold, because home cooking never produces anything like it. Cooking one batch of pasta in minimal water can’t smooth out the starch as completely or generate those long-cooked flavors. But it does make pasta water good enough to sip. - Share full article * ## More on Food and Dining ### Keep tabs on dining trends, restaurant reviews and recipes. * - Pizza Hut of Yore: With heaps of nostalgia but little promotion by their parent chain, Pizza Hut Classics [take their fervent fans on a time trip back to a simpler, warmer era](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/pizza-hut.html). - Soup for Breakfast: Social media influencers have picked up on the age-old tradition of having soup in the morning. [It’s one you can enjoy too](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/dining/healthy-breakfast-soup.html). - Should You Order the Fish? Seafood Watch, long a source of advice on sustainable choices, [is working to get restaurants to adopt its color-coded recommendations](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/monterey-bay-aquarium-seafood-watch.html). - Top-Rated Chicken Breasts: Fuss-free and blank canvases, chicken breasts are a weeknight lifesaver. [Here are 17 of our most popular recipes](https://cooking.nytimes.com/article/reader-favorite-boneless-chicken-breast-recipes). * Eating in New York City - Tortillas Cooked on a Wok?: At the Mexican restaurant Corima, Fidel Caballero [keeps an eye on experimentation](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/corima-chinatown-restaurant-review.html) (and China), without losing sight of simple pleasures. - Where to Eat**:In these three banyas, [you can squeeze in a great meal](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/dining/where-to-eat-and-have-a-shvitz.html) with a great sweat. - Restaurant Reviews: Our latest batch [includes a French spot that mines old cookbooks](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/dining/le-chene-chalong-restaurant-reviews.html), an ambitious Southern Thai restaurant and a Hudson Yards destination. - Off the Menu: Gabriel Kreuther fires up Alsatian cooking, Baohaus makes a return [and more restaurant news](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/nyc-restaurant-news.html). - Favorite Restaurants: From \$\$\$\$ tasting-menu splurges to a celebrated Brooklyn sandwich shop, here are the places from our [2025 list of the 100 Best Restaurants](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/dining/best-nyc-restaurants.html) in New York City that [Times readers](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/dining/reader-favorite-nyc-restaurants.html) and [local](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/dining/chef-nyc-best-restaurant-picks.html) [chefs](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/dining/chef-nyc-best-restaurant-picks.html) prefer. ## Related Content ### [More in Food](https://www.nytimes.com/section/food) - [For Actually Good Chicken Breast, Try One of Our Top-Rated Recipes](https://cooking.nytimes.com/article/reader-favorite-boneless-chicken-breast-recipes) ![Yasmin Fahr’s honey-garlic chicken breasts.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/27/multimedia/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. - [Paddington Would Love This Chicken](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/dining/paddington-would-love-this-chicken.html) ![Melissa Clark’s spicy marmalade chicken and sweet potatoes.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/25/multimedia/25Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-copy/25FD-APPETITEREX2-MC-Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. - [Should You Order That Fish? Menus Have a New Way to Help.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/monterey-bay-aquarium-seafood-watch.html) ![William Dissen, the owner of the Market Place Restaurant in Asheville, N.C., serves farmed trout from a local fishery.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/04/multimedia/04FD-seafood-choice-01-vfkq/03FD-seafood-choice-01-vfkq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Erin Brethauer for The New York Times - [A Creamy Salad Dressing That Will Change Your Life](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/dining/silken-tofu-salad-dressing-rvr-los-angeles.html) ![Silken tofu gives this salad dressing a light yet satisfying creaminess.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/26/multimedia/26FD-KO-2-tpzb/26FD-KO-2-tpzb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#after-top) The Curious Cook - Feb. 24, 2009 SOME time ago, as I emptied a big pot of pasta water into the sink and waited for the fog to lift from my glasses, a simple question occurred to me. Why boil so much more water than pasta actually absorbs, only to pour it down the drain? Couldn’t we cook pasta just as well with much less water and energy? Another question quickly followed: if we could, what would the defenders of Italian tradition say? After some experiments, I’ve found that we can indeed make pasta in just a few cups of water and save a good deal of energy. Not that much in your kitchen or mine just the amount needed to keep a burner on high for a few more minutes. But Americans cook something like a billion pounds of pasta a year, so those minutes could add up. My rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or \$10 million to \$20 million at current prices. Significant numbers, though these days they sound like small drops in a very large pot. The standard method for cooking pasta, found in Italian cookbooks and on pasta packages, is to heat to a rolling boil 4 to 6 quarts of well-salted water per pound of pasta. The usual rationales are that abundant water quickly recovers the boil when the pasta is added, gives the noodles room so that they don’t stick to one another, and dilutes the starch they release, so they don’t end up with a “gluey” surface. To see which of these factors are really significant, I put a pound of spaghetti into a pot, added just 2 quarts of cold water and 2 teaspoons salt and turned on the heat. The water took about 8 minutes to reach the boil, during which I had to push the noodles around occasionally to keep them from sticking. They took another 10 minutes to cook through. When I drained the pasta, it had the texture and saltiness I expected, seemed about as sticky as usual, and when tossed with a little oil, seemed perfectly normal. So I tried reducing the water even further, to 1 1/2 quarts. I had to stir often because that’s not quite enough to keep all the pasta immersed all the time, but again the spaghetti came out fine. Why can pasta cook normally in a small volume of water that starts out cold? Because the noodles absorb water only very slowly at temperatures much below the boil, so little happens to them in the few minutes it takes for the water to heat up. And no matter how starchy the cooking water is, the solid noodle surfaces themselves are starchier, and will be sticky until they’re lubricated by sauce or oil. I described my method in e-mail messages to two of this country’s best-known advocates of Italian cuisine. Lidia Bastianich told me: “My grandmother would have thought of the idea surely as blasphemous. I think it is curious.” And Marcella Hazan said, “I am a very curious person, and I’m glad people are exploring new ways.” Both of them gave it a try. Ms. Bastianich responded with a controlled experiment. She started spaghettini in pots of cold water and boiling water (4 quarts each instead of her usual 6) side by side and found the cold-water version lacking in the gradation of texture she looks for. As for the flavor, she said “I felt that the cold-water pasta had lost some of the nutty flavor of a good semolina pasta cooked properly.” Ms. Bastianich agreed that using less water is O.K. “Yes, I think it’s doable to reduce the cooking water by one third,” from 6 quarts per pound to 4. “But please ‘butta la pasta’ in boiling water.” Ms. Hazan tried starting a batch of shell pasta in a somewhat reduced amount of cold water, and found that it needed constant stirring to avoid sticking. “Maybe you save heat energy, but you also have to work a lot harder,” she told me in a follow-up call. “It’s not so convenient. I don’t know if I would cook pasta this way.” Heartened by the experts’ willingness to experiment, I went back to work, this time starting with hot water. I found that it’s possible to butta la pasta in 1 1/2 or 2 quarts of boiling water without having the noodles stick. Short shapes just require occasional stirring. Long strands and ribbons need a quick wetting with cold water just before they go into the pot, then frequent stirring for a minute or two. Except for capellini, which cooks too quickly, I find that both the cold and hot versions of the minimal-water method work well with the common shapes I’ve tried, with whole wheat pasta, and even fresh pasta, as long as any surface flour is rinsed off first. I prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced. It’s true, though, that no matter what temperature you start with, this method requires more attention. That’s a disadvantage when you’re cooking several things at once. If you cook pasta often, try experimenting with different starting temperatures and amounts of water. You can even cook pasta in the manner of a risotto, adding the liquid in small doses and stirring constantly. Be sure to use a pot broad enough for the noodles to lie flat on the bottom, and to reduce the salt for smaller volumes of water. There’s one other dividend to cooking pasta in minimal water that I hadn’t anticipated: the leftover pasta water. It’s thick, but you can still easily ladle it out by tilting the pan. And it’s very pleasant tasting: not too salty, lots of body, and lots of semolina flavor. Whole-wheat pasta water is surprisingly delicious. Italian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one. Restaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.” Mr. Buford suggests that the muddy pasta water should be bottled and sold, because home cooking never produces anything like it. Cooking one batch of pasta in minimal water can’t smooth out the starch as completely or generate those long-cooked flavors. But it does make pasta water good enough to sip. ## Related Content [More in Food](https://www.nytimes.com/section/food) - ![Yasmin Fahr’s honey-garlic chicken breasts.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/27/multimedia/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt/27FD-CHICKEN-BREAST-ROUNDUP-honeygarlicchicken-hwbt-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. - ![Melissa Clark’s spicy marmalade chicken and sweet potatoes.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/25/multimedia/25Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-copy/25FD-APPETITEREX2-MC-Spicy-Marmalade-Chicken-and-Sweet-Potatoes-tvfb-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. 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Hammond in 1962. “When I first heard blues, I was completely turned on to it and it became larger than life,” he said. “And then it became my life.”](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/05/multimedia/00Hammond-02-hlzg-print1/00Hammond-02-hlzg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) The Estate of Edmund Teske, via Getty Images - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/03/opinion/03emba/03emba-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Janet Mac - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/04/realestate/04re-wyg-Louisville/04re-wyg-Louisville-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/03/multimedia/02friedman-lvgk/02friedman-lvgk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Photo Illustration by Tam Stockton for The New York Times - ![A stretch of coast in Suriname, one of many places affected by sea level rise and erosion caused by climate change](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/04/multimedia/04cli-sea-level-rise-bmch/04cli-sea-level-rise-bmch-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/21/pageoneplus/21insider-comment/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary/Getty Images - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/27/multimedia/27openthread-askvanessa-hwcl/27openthread-askvanessa-hwcl-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Liam Kennedy for The New York Times - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/04/multimedia/03lawfirms-editorial-mqpj/03lawfirms-editorial-mqpj-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times - ![Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in “Vladimir.”](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/02/arts/02tvcol-vladimir/02tvcol-vladimir-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Courtesy of Netflix Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html#after-bottom)
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