Cooking pasta and sauce together

David Sickmiller said:

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

Cook the pasta in water 'till it's almost done, perhaps two
minutes remaining... drain. Toss pasta with sauce and cook
until the pasta is done, yet still firm...

~john

--
"Black holes are where God divided by Zero." - Steven Wright

There is no reason you have to separately boil pasta in
water. When I was in Malaysia they would prepare noodles
with boiling at all, they would fry the dry noodles in oil.
It worked amazingly well.

-Kent

(David Sickmiller) said:

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before?

Perhaps it was fresh pasta, rather than dried. Fresh pasta
would work well in the circumstance you described.

David Sickmiller said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I really doubt the pasta was cooked completely in the sauce,
esp. a thick dried type of pasta such as rigatony. In all
likelihood, the pasta was partially cooked a head of time
and then finished in the sauce. This is the way many
restaurants cook dried pasta.

"David Sickmiller" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

I work in a restaurant and we cook the pasta until almost
done. We then spread it out in a single layer on a sheet
pan. Then its put in the walk-in fridge to cool. Once its
cool we keep it in smaller containers ready for it to be
used in whatever dish calls for it. The pasta (rigatoni,
angel hair, etc.) is finished with the other ingredients at
this time. This is most likely what you saw.

On 26 Apr 2004 19:38:51 -0700, [email hidden] (David

Sickmiller) said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the time,
and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from scratch
(chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It turned
out delicious.

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

I do it frequently. It makes cooking pasta a little more
like making risotto. But I have never done it with chicken.
That would seem to make it trickier, since you have one more
thing that needs a certain amount of cooking.

Whenever you make a soup with pasta in it, you are
effectively doing the same thing. Some of the liquid goes
into the pasta and flavors it.

You have to allow for liquid to be absorbed in the pasta
during cooking, so it doesn't dry out.

Rodney Myrvaagnes Opinionated old geezer

Brutal dictators are routinely reelected by 90+% margins.
Only in a truly advanced democracy can one win an election
by a negative 600,000 votes.

Quoted message said:

There is no reason you have to separately boil pasta in
water. When I was in Malaysia they would prepare noodles
with boiling at all, they would fry the dry noodles in oil.
It worked amazingly well.

-Kent

That's not the same pasta noodle.

---= BOYCOTT FRANCE (belgium) GERMANY--SPAIN =--- ---= Move
UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
*********
"Life would be devoid of all meaning were it without
tribulation." Sheldon ````````````

"David Sickmiller" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

Some restaiurants cook the pasta til it is almost done,
rinse with cold water, and set aside. Then when you order
they heat it up and complete the cooking in the sauce.

--
Peter Aitken

Remove the [censored] from my email address before using.

x-no-archive: yes

Rodney Myrvaagnes said:

I do it frequently. It makes cooking pasta a little more
like making risotto.

There was an article on that technique in the NYTimes. I
lost my copy. Can you describe your technique a little for
me? Thanks!

Naomi D.

I ate in a Carrabas restaurant and sat at the stools that
look at the prep area. Very interesting how they did the
pasta and food. They had pots on the back burners with
strainers that covered the top They would cook the pasta
while they prepared the sauce and what goes in it. Then
remove the pasta and finish it in the saucepan. They had a
French fry unit that had water in it at the boil that they
would replenish the pasta pots as they evaporated. This
French fryer had a faucet above it to fill it with water.
They would use a 8 inch skillet to prepare most dishes, They
used a tool that was a spatula at one end to stir the dish
with and a 2 tine fork at the other to gather the pasta from
the pasta pots. The dishwasher kept busy gathering the
skillets and bringing new ones. The restaurant was packed
with a 90min wait for a table. There was no wasted movement.

I have tried to fix dry pasta in a sauce without cooking it
first and have never been able to get it done. Fresh pasta
will work that way,

"David Sickmiller" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

Quoted message said:

Some restaiurants cook the pasta til it is almost done,
rinse with cold water, and set aside. Then when you order
they heat it up and complete the cooking in the sauce.

Peter Aitken

Those are the restaurants that that aren't worth of calling
themself a restaurant... the nerve of them serving left
overs. Any decent dago restaurnt prepares pasta fresh to
order... how freakin' long does it take to cook pasta, what,
12-13 minutes... certainly way more than enough time from
when the order was recieved and the diners nibbled their
appetizers, sipped their drinks, and swapped a little bs.
Real dago joints have huge pots of water (100qts) set at the
boil during the entire shift (in fact all real restaurants
do this), then all needs doing is to cook each pasta serving
in a wire basket hung from the pot rim. The same system is
used for cooking veggies to order, of course in different
pots.... good restaurants maintain many pots of water aboil.
In fact that pasta cooking water and veggie cooing water is
used for many other purposes throughout the shift, including
preparing sauces and tomorrow's soup.

---= BOYCOTT FRANCE (belgium) GERMANY--SPAIN =--- ---= Move
UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
*********
"Life would be devoid of all meaning were it without
tribulation." Sheldon ````````````

David Sickmiller said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

That is disgusting. No, you should never cook the pasta in
the sauce. Which is not to say that you can't cook the pasta
separately and then add it to the sauce in the skillet at
the last moment and cook them briefly together. There are a
number of pasta dishes that are done this way. But I find
that uncooked pasta that is cooked in the sauce disgusting.
I had a boy friend once who always made spaghetti that way.
I didn't know this the first time he offered to make dinner
for me. I about died when I found out what he was doing.

Kate
--
Kate Connally “If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead
already.” Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.” What if the hokey pokey
really *is* what it's all about? "][email hidden]

Sheldon responded to Kent:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

There is no reason you have to separately boil pasta in
water. When I was in Malaysia they would prepare noodles
with boiling at all, they would fry the dry noodles in
oil. It worked amazingly well.

-Kent

That's not the same pasta noodle.

True, it's not the same pasta noodle, but Italian pasta
*can* be fully cooked by frying. Look at all the fried
ravioli which have popped up on trendy quasi-Italian menus.
For that matter, a well-known chain uses fried angel-hair
pasta in its "Chinese" chicken salad.

Bob

Emil said:

I have tried to fix dry pasta in a sauce without cooking
it first and have never been able to get it done. Fresh
pasta will work that way,

Well, others have succeeded where you have failed. One
of the best-known examples is lasagna made with
uncooked noodles.

Bob

Sheldon said:

Quoted message said:

True, it's not the same pasta noodle, but Italian
pasta *can* be fully cooked by frying. Look at all the
fried ravioli which have popped up on trendy quasi-
Italian menus.

Nope, those are boiled first... same as fried wontons,
kreplach, perogis, etc.

Poking around, I haven't been able to verify that you're
right about this. Instead, I find a host of recipes which
start with frozen (uncooked) ravioli and fry them. I did
find some which started from scratch:

cooksrecipes.comfried raviolisOpen ↗
recipe.html
cooking.comrecipe1401.htmOpen ↗
123recipes.netrecipe.phpOpen ↗

But the pasta isn't boiled in those recipe either.

Where are you getting your information?

I suspect that maybe DRIED pasta isn't amenable to frying,
but I haven't found any recipes for fried ravioli which call
for dried pasta.

Bob

Bob said:

Instead, I find a host of recipes which start with frozen
(uncooked) ravioli and fry them.

If they are frozen they are probably fresh. Since they are
not dried, you do not need to boil them nearly as long and I
could see not boiling them at all.

--
John Gaughan johngaughan.netjohngaughan.netOpen ↗
[email hidden]

David Sickmiller said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I wouldn't be surprised if the parts were all precooked and
they were just rehearing them together. Or making this sauce
fresh (its just too quick, why wouldn't they?) and adding in
cooked rigatoni and cooked chicken. Goomba

David Sickmiller said:

While I was in Berlin last year, I went to a small diner
and ordered a plate of chicken and pasta (rigatoni?) in
alfredo sauce. I was watching the kitchen most of the
time, and it looked like the whole thing was cooked from
scratch (chicken, pasta, cream, butter) in one skillet. It
turned out delicious.

I don't have much experience cooking, but after searching
for recipes on the Internet, it seems that everyone
recommends cooking the pasta in water in one pan and the
sauce in a separate pan. Has anyone tried cooking it all
together before? Did it turn out well?

I am planning to experiment in the next week or so, but I
would enjoy getting outside opinions.

Without having seen what you saw, hard to say if the pasta
they used was cooked or not. However, that would probably
work with fresh pasta as opposed to dried.

(Naomi Darvell) said:

x-no-archive: yes

Rodney Myrvaagnes said:

I do it frequently. It makes cooking pasta a little more
like making risotto.

There was an article on that technique in the NYTimes. I
lost my copy. Can you describe your technique a little for
me? Thanks!

I read that article. It was a suggestion of Alain
Ducasse, IIRC. I tried the idea immediately while I could
remember most of it. But, [caveat] I am an extremely
undisciplined cook, and try to react to what I have in
front of me at the time.

The risotto-like part is putting the dry pasta into the fat
early on and toasting it a little. This is only convenient
with short pasta like penne and such. So, if you start by
wilting a chopped onion, for example, stir in the pasta a
minute or so before you would be adding liquid.

When you add liquid, or chopped tomatoes, etc, you want to
have it liquid enoug so the pasta is wet all over and has
enough moisture around it so it won't dry out the sauce as
it cooks. You also want to salt a little, unless you are
using clams later on.

You know approximately how long the pasta will cook, so you
can tell when to add garlic, etc. If you are also doing
everything else as it comes together, I am not ashamed to
use a kitchen timer to remind me.

Almost any kind of pasta sauce that can be made in a few
minutes can be adapted to this method. If something needs
long cooking you could do the long-cooking part in a
separate pot and combine things near the end, but that
doesn't make as much sense as quick sauces.

HTH

Rodney Myrvaagnes Opinionated old geezer

Brutal dictators are routinely reelected by 90+% margins.
Only in a truly advanced democracy can one win an election
by a negative 600,000 votes.