Tag Archives: anima

This is a 100% Absolutely Fool-Proof, Never-Fail Method for Determining When Spaghetti and Other Pastas are Fully Cooked!

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This post was first published in February of this year…

There is a 100% Absolutely Fool-Proof, Never-Fail method for determining when Spaghetti and other (Linguine, Fettuccine and other “long, solid”) pastas are fully cooked! This particularly pertains to dry pastas, rather than *”soft” Homemade noodles, although the following method can be used, to some degree, for any pasta.

First of all, don’t do this: “Some like to fling it up to the ceiling, onto the wall or [on] to the dog to see if it acutally sticks.” This is a fairly common Dumbism, the theory being: that if the pasta is done, it will stick. So will overdone pasta. I prefer my methodology.

As a strand of semolina/flour spaghetti for instance cooks, the outer (cooked) edge turns a creamy/golden color as the (uncooked) core (anima) retains a whitish hue. (If the pasta contains spinach or other ingredients the colors, of course, will be different. With some fresh pastas, the colors are inverted – just look for differences.)

Cooking the pasta: First bring the correct amount of water to a rolling boil. Find the suggested cooking time, which is usually listed on the package or box of noodles. This will give you an approximate idea of the total cooking time, so you won’t have to keep checking the pasta excessively.

When you get to within a few minutes of the suggested cooking time, remove a single strand of the pasta with a fork and cut it (or bite it) in half. Do this (several times if necessary) until: looking at the sliced edge, you see a whitish anima (core) about the size of a period [ . ] This is the state of the pasta at about one minute (more or less) before it is fully cooked; the pasta is cooked “Al Dente” at this point. Remove the pasta, if you want it cooked Al Dente or, give it a bit more time until the whitish anima completely dissappears – then the pasta is 100% cooked. Knowing the Al Dente point, you can adjust the pasta to preference, harder (Al Dente) or softer.

This LasVegasBuffetClub animated GIF shows how a piece of pasta changes color during the cooking process: the raw uncooked pasta starts off as pale white, then the outer edge starts to turn creamy/gold as it cooks – the anima remains whitish. At the Al Dente point, the anima is reduced to the size of a period [.] (GIF pictures are exagerated.) The whitish anima diminishes until disappearing, when the pasta is fully cooked.

Cooking Pasta
Cooking Pasta

Fresh pastas and pastas of other shapes can be similarly monitored, just look for “differences.”
*Some big, fat Homemade noodles may take 30-40 minutes to cook fully.
Who said: “I like fat spaghetti and skinny women?”

Cooking For Engineers is a “technical” Food Website…
View a WIKI page on pasta…
Visit the Recipe Pages of LasVegasBuffetClub.Com…
Visit the Home Page of LasVegasBuffetClub.Com…
[All text/Animated GIF belong to the LasVegasBuffetClub-Copyright © 2009 LasVegasBuffetClub.]