Cooking with Spaghetti

Spaghetti is the perfect cupboard standby. Dried spaghetti will keep for a long time and is quick and easy to prepare, making the perfect accompaniment to a great variety of sauces.

Italians traditionally cook their spaghetti al dente, which means it still retains some bite. It is also common to retain a few tablespoon of the cooking water from the pasta for the sauce, as it will have leeched some of the starch from the spaghetti, which helps the sauce emulsify. In a good Italian restaurant, the pasta will taste best late in the service as the cooking water will be heavily starched after having boiled up many portions of pasta.

Back to the National Spaghetti Day home page.