15 Mistakes Most Beginners Make Cooking Pasta at Home

it's very possible that pasta is the most popular dish in the entire world people love it you see Italian restaurants in pretty much every single country but for me I grew up with pretty bad pasta in my life and it wasn't until later when I started tasting the real stuff though the well made pasta that I got sent on a bit of a journey to try to master at pasta at home and I realized through that journey that there are so many skills and tips that you can learn from just one bowl of pasta that most people just aren't applying when they make it at home so in today's video I'm gonna be doing a one dish breakdown on the most classic pasta dish there is the tomato sauce the marinara sauce the red sauce whatever you want to call it because if you master this one dish if you learned the skills well you're gonna be well on your way to cooking so much incredible Italian food [Music] before we get started on the pasta dish I wanted to thank the sponsor of today's video which is hellofresh which sends you weekly customizable meals that are always creative and always packed with quality ingredients and people ask me all the time what's the best way to get into cooking and the truth is there's no right way to get into cooking people learn skills in the kitchen in all different forms but if you're looking to instantly change your reality from a ton of takeout to home cooking overnight hellofresh is a perfect option for you no matter what your comfort level is in the kitchen what I love about hellofresh is that all the meals are chef curated so you know they're gonna be super creative and most importantly they're gonna be seasonal so every week you've got something super exciting and hellofresh is now from 566 is serving the other day I cooked up some smothered pepper Jack burgers which were absolutely delicious they had some sweet potato fries that they said to roast but I've been air frying my fries recently and they come out incredible I sprinkled on some of this barbecue spice and the burgers were pretty simple it was kind of like a fajita burger you fried up some onions and some peppers cooked up the burger smothered on some of that cheese and boom you've got a delicious dinner right there so if you're looking to get started with eight free meals that's eighty dollars off your first month of hellofresh head over to hellofresh comm and enter promo code Pro home cooks 80 at its core Italian cooking is really simple it's all about getting quality ingredients and then learning how to respect those ingredients learning the proper techniques to make those ingredients sing and when it comes to pasta since there's so few ingredients in each dish you've got to get quality ingredients so tip number one is finding the proper ingredients to make your pasta dish incredible for this entire pasta dish all I need is some onions I need a little bit of garlic I'm gonna throw on some chili for some extra spice and obviously since this is a marinara sauce the star of the show is gonna be the tomatoes and I would suggest just going to your local market and getting nice can of tomatoes but there's a few things to look out for you don't want to get a can of tomatoes that has a ton of added stuff in it like a ton of extra herbs or tomato paste things like that you just want fresh tomatoes and they could be crushed they could be whole they can be diced it's all your personal preference when it comes down to the consistency of your Tomatoes I'm gonna be using a jar of tomatoes from the jar video I put out a few weeks ago maybe some of you jarred your own Tomatoes if not just find a nice quality can of tomatoes now when it comes to pasta again this is such a preference thing because there are so many different types of pasta and in this day and age it's really easy to find a pretty cheap imported pasta from Italy or you know maybe you have a local purveyor that makes really good pasta the most important ingredient is semolina wheat so you don't want a ton of extra ingredients in there and you don't want to see regular wheat flour that's a good sign that your pasta is no good tip number two is developing layers of flavor when you're trying to make a really good pasta you can't just dump everything in and cook it down and think it's gonna be tasty you have to focus on each layer building off of the last layer think about it like blocks we have the first layer which is the onions and the garlic which are gonna require their own technique then of course building on top of that we have the tomatoes which require their own amount of time to develop flavor then the final block the final layer of flavor is the cheese and the herbs to really bring the pasta dish together really the only prep for this entire pasta dish is taking care of your veggies so I've got an onion here I'm gonna slice this in half and I'm gonna cut little dices so I just go down the onion like this turn it and then cut it the other way really simple and then for the garlic I'm using two cloves of garlic totally a preference thing some Italians they just use a whole clove and they'll remove it I like a lot of garlic you can go more garlic I just slice it up and keep it nice and chunky and then the final aromatic is some chili which I really like in my tomato sauce I like the spiciness infused in my tomato sauce it's a bit addicting so tasty but completely optional now the next step is finding the right pots to make your pasta this is actually really important because you want the right size so you're gonna run into some issues down the line I like finding a nice big pot that's still low to make the sauce in because ultimately we're gonna be dumping in our pasta later so you want to make sure you have plenty of room not just for your sauce but for all of that pasta that goes in the sauce and when it comes to picking the right pot for water again you just want plenty of room think three two one so three parts water to one part pasta because that pasta is really going to expand when it cooks and you don't want it expanding over the water line all right so we're ready to cook our sauce and tip number four is getting the right amount of oil or fat in your pan do not skimp out on this step if you go to Italy you'll see when they're making pasta they load in that olive oil because olive oil isn't that bad for you it's just press it's like olive juice basically but we have a thing at least in the u.s. against fats we're scared of fats but if you don't use enough fat in your dish you're not gonna properly be able to caramelize your onions you're gonna either burn them or they're gonna dry out and it's no good with your pan on a medium heat you're gonna add in your onions your garlic and your chilies and you're just gonna slowly start cooking them in that oil and you can see right there all of those ingredients they're swimming in the olive oil there's plenty of olive oil there so they're nice and lubricated you're basically confit your onions it's a slow cooking process in that oils first going to sweat they're gonna get translucent and then over time the sugars and the onions are going to caramelize and they're gonna turn a darker color but not a burning it takes time to get to that level and that's where we are developing a layer of flavor the sweetness that you're bringing out and all of these aromatics are really going to enhance your overall sauce [Music] so now that your aromatics are slowly cooking away tip number six is adding the proper amount of salt so we're adding the salt to the aromatics and we're seasoning this layer of flavor right here in our sauce we're also gonna add some salt to the pasta water and this is a classic debate do you add salt to your pasta water I find that it's great because it's going to add a layer of flavor to your actual noodles so really just add a few pinches of salt to your water and you'll be good to go there we go every time I pop one of these open Oh freshness [Music] so tip number seven is intensifying your flavor if you look at the tomato sauce right here it's super watery which actually isn't a bad thing because we're gonna reduce that over time as we reduce the sauce the water cooks out and it intensifies the flavor the sauce and also gives it time to develop the flavors for everything to meld together so my tomatoes naturally had a lot of liquid in there but if the tomatoes you buy from the store if they don't have a lot of liquid you can always add a cup of water so you have room there to reduce your sauce I'm just keeping the sauce on a nice low simmer you can see those bubbles just bubbling away we're not boiling the sauce but there's definitely some action there so just keep it even and if you want to at this point you can mash up your sauce a little more that's another bonus tip the consistency is completely up to you if you want to blend your sauce if you want it super creamy that's totally fine I like my sauce a little chunkier but as it cooks those tomatoes are gonna continue to break down and get a little smoother with so at this point I add in some dried oregano because oregano can handle a longer cook time it's gonna infuse over time whereas the more delicate herbs like basil I'm gonna save that for later on - just perfume the dish now that the pasta sauce is cooking away tip number 8 is adding more to your pasta and this isn't necessarily traditional if you go to Italy generally a marinara type sauce is really simple but you can always add extra veggies or meat to really bulk it up and what I like doing is just taking some fresh greens in this case I have some spinach but you can use kale or chard whatever you have and I just give them a quick blanch in the boiling pasta water just for about 30 seconds to a minute which is gonna take out a bit of the bitterness but it's still going to retain a lot of the freshness of the greens and then I'll just put those right into an ice bath and reserve those for once the sauce is done so tip number nine is getting that timing down between the noodles going into the sauce so right now the sauce is cooking away and when I look at it there's still a little more liquid to be reduced so it's gonna take around ten minutes in the box of pasta it says about eight to ten minutes to cook now I don't recommend going exactly off the box of pasta it's always best to taste it to see if it's done but the instructions will definitely give you a rough estimate so I'm gonna dump in all of the pasta to the boiling water knowing that it's gonna take around ten minutes before it goes into the sauce now that our noodles are on the heat we've got time to really refine our sauce and get it perfect and tip number ten is keeping all of the seasonings in mind so I'm gonna add just a little bit of salt at this point because it's reduced I can confidently add salt knowing that it's not going to get that much saltier from the reduction process but remember we are adding the Parmesan cheese to this so that's gonna add another layer of saltiness so I'm not adding too much just a taste so our noodles are boiling away they're looking really good you can see timing is pretty good we aren't quite there it's still a little liquidy but you can already tell that it's transformed a bit it's starting to get more saucy you see that we want one consistent sauce texture [Music] so our noodles have expanded there they're looking good they're just about done but how do we actually know when to put them in the sauce you always hear that term out dente everyone wants their noodles al dente but what does that actually mean is the question well I've got a trick that I find works great so pull out one of your noodles from your pasta water make sure it's cool enough to just give it a bite and if you see a little bit of starch in your noodle that means your noodles are not cooked through now I find that the perfect time to pull your noodles is when you bite into that noodle and you don't see that starchy ring on the inside it's completely cooked through but there's still some chew to your noodle it's not completely soft that to me is the perfect time to put your noodles into your sauce all right we're gonna give it a final test right here right into this there you go the inner white starch is completely gone so it's cooked through but it's still Alden tail it Allah it's not completely tender which is the perfect time to add to our sauce [Music] now the reason we put our noodles into the sauce just a little early is tip number 12 probably the number one thing people screw up on making homemade pasta which is they don't infuse the noodle with the sauce you're trying to bring these two elements together so they become one and a lot of people just put cooked noodles into the sauce and they think it's done but by putting the noodles in just before they're fully cooked it gives us time to really cook the sauce into the noodles so we're just gonna keep cooking that on a nice low heat and just stirring that and stirring that until the sauce infuses see right here is where most people stop when it comes to pasta they put it in there they think it's done but you can see these noodles there they're not even coated the sauce slips right off so you can see in the next few minutes all of that sauce all that liquid that's going to thicken up with the pasta water the starchiness of the noodles and incorporate and become one with the pasta which brings us in to tip number 13 that's starchy water that is your friend all of the water that's coming off your noodles it's loaded with starch and when it heats up it's gonna thicken up that sauce so just keep stirring on a low heat and eventually your sauce is gonna get nice and thick from all of that starch [Music] our pastas looking great and the final step is to add that last layer of flavor which is some delicious salty Parmesan cheese plus a little bit of fresh basil and at this point the basil is really just there to perfume the entire dish you're not trying to overcook the basil it's very delicate so you just want to stir that in for another minute and you are ready to go but if you taste your pasta at this point and you still think it's a little under it's a little chewy tip number 14 is just pop a lid on your pasta and just let it sit there for a few minutes and the residual heat and all of that steam is going to continue to cook that pasta and just get it perfectly tender [Music] there you go you've got all the tips to make incredible pasta at home actually one more tip Wellmark tip make sure you make a deal beforehand with whoever you're cooking for whether it be or your partner your friends your family let them clean if you're doing the cooking work that out beforehand because pasta can be a bit messy between the noodles and the sauce and you're gonna have a much more enjoyable time knowing that you can just eat your meal in peace and they have to clean I always find that those types of deals are pretty easy to make especially now now that you have these new tips your pasta game is going to be so strong that they look clean no problem believe me so make sure you follow me at life by Mike G on instagram if you want more behind-the-scenes action all the recipe testing that goes into these videos and let me know below what you want to see next what do you want me to break down in the next one dish break down [Music]

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 1,202,584

Keywords: pasta tips, pasta fails, how to make good pasta, how to make Italian pasta, marinara sauce, homemade tomato sauce, authentic tomato sauce, how to make pasta taste good, what tomatoes do I use, what pasta do I use, pasta skills, better pasta at home, perfect pasta, red sauce, amazing red sauce, italian red sauce

Id: pThu4C_hiWg

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019