Reusing pasta cooking water

[Shalmanese]

I've been making a lot of fresh pasta recently and a lot of my recipes involve using pasta cooking water in the sauce. In restaurants, the same batch of water is used to make multiple batches of pasta, leading to full bodied pasta cooking water and superior sauces. I've taken to trying to replicate this effect at home by reusing pasta cooking water.

I keep a half gallon tupperware container of pasta cooking water in my fridge. When it comes time to cook pasta, I'll add the water + another half gallon of fresh water to a large pot on the stove and bring it to the boil for at least a minute and use it to cook about a lb of fresh pasta. Instead of draining in a colander, I use a spider to scoop out the pasta and dump it directly in the sauce (bringing some cooking water along with it). I leave the water on the stove until it's cooled down to room temperature, then strain half a gallon of it back into the container, discarding the rest. I then add enough salt such that, when re-diluted, it'll be at the appropriate salinity to cook pasta next time. So far, I've been using the water at least once a week so I'm not too concerned about the food safety issues but I figure the excess salt buys some protection as well. Every time I've used it, I taste it beforehand and it's fresh and clean tasting but I assume if you're cooking pasta less than once a month, there may be issues with this approach.

Also, now that I have it around, it's been occasionally useful as an all-purpose light thickener when I want to add just a bit of body to a dish. Because it's so heavily salted, it needs to go in before the final seasoning adjustment but I've found it's actually really great in soups where it adds just that hint of thickness that gives it the mouthfeel of a stock based soup (at the expense of cloudiness).

Does anyone else regularly do this? What's been your experience?

[weinoo]

I don't, But Batali has always said that the pasta water at the end of a shift is the best due to how much starch is in it.

[rotuts]

if pasta water turns out to be useful for you, why not make a pot and freeze in ice-cube trays: save some energy, take the salt out of the equations and have the frozen cubes ready in a zip-lock bag.

Take a fair amount of your favorite pasta, don't use salt and not so much water. Over cook significantly.

Then grind up the pasta thats now soft in the Cuisinart, add back to the water and cook some more to get the maximum starch into the water. Strain, cool, freeze-cube and save? You then will have a delicate thickener with a mild semolina flavor ready at all times.

Edited April 24, 2012 by rotuts (log)

[jmolinari]

if pasta water turns out to be useful for you, why not make a pot and freeze in ice-cube trays: save some energy, take the salt out of the equations and have the frozen cubes ready in a zip-lock bag.

Take a fair amount of your favorite pasta, don't use salt and not so much water. Over cook significantly.

Then grind up the pasta thats now soft in the Cuisinart, add back to the water and cook some more to get the maximum starch into the water. Strain, cool, freeze-cube and save? You then will have a delicate thickener with a mild semolina flavor ready at all times.

that's an interesting idea...

[slkinsey]

That was my thinking as well: overboil semolina pasta in water, VitaPrep it into oblivion, strain out any chunks and freeze.

[rotuts]

Id re-simmer it after the chop-up as new surface would be exposed to the water. Id also not make it so smooth that it would be difficult to strain, unless you wanted something with very fine starch particles in it.

I can see this as very useful for traditional italian soups, especially minestrone.

[Shalmanese]

An update since I started doing this: I've fallen in love with this method. I've started using this as an all purpose blanching liquid. I've cooked pasta in it, cooked udon in it, blanched vegetables & cooked dumplings and the liquid is developing into a rather flavorful stock. Tonight, I was blanching some leeks before grilling and I threw the leek trimmings into the pot after the leeks were done. I previously never had the patience for the whole "save scraps in the freezer until you have enough to make stock" method but if I can just dump them into my blanching stock instead, it seems like a far more convenient way to take advantage of trimmings.

Summer is getting into full swing and much of the fantastic produce is best enhanced with just a quick blanch and so I anticipate this blanching liquid getting a lot of workout during the summer.

[Toliver]

You have stumbled upon what the Chinese have been doing for centuries: The Master Sauce (an eGullet discussion)

[Shalmanese]

I'm familiar with Lu Shui and the concept is somewhat similar but I don't think exactly equivalent.