Salted Pasta Water: How Much Salt.

[Porthos]

I searched to see if I could find this info and couldn't.

 

Caveat: No own in my home needs a restricted salt diet. Please don't use this thread to talk about salt consumption.

 

I was watching some Michaels Simons videos last night and he made a point of saying that pasta water should be salty like the sea. How much salt per quart of water should I use to mimic his water?

[Paul Fink]

If the sea has a %3 salinity you would need a couple a tablespoons per Quart

[Okanagancook]

Marc Vetri in Mastering Pasta says: (and this is for fresh pasta)

"Use plenty of water if you don't, when you drop in the pasta, it takes longer to get the water back up to a boil and the pasta soaks rather than boils.  About 5 quarts (4.7 Litres) of water per pound (454 gram) of pasta is right.  For that amount of water, I like to add about 2 1/2 tablespoons (23 grams) of kosher salt."

 

Thomas McNaughton in Flour + Water says:

"Our equation for the perfect pot of pasta water:  For 4 quarts (US) of water add 1/4 cup kosher salt and a handful of semolina flour."  He uses semolina because he also uses the cooking water for his sauces which helps to stabilize the sauce.

 

Marcella Hazan in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking says

"Pasta needs lots of water to move around in, or it becomes gummy.  Four quarts of water are required for every pound of pasta (she doesn't say whether that is factory or homemade but I think she is talking about factory pasta by the sounds of the rest of the directions.)  Add another quart for each half point and don't cook more than 2 pounds at once.  For every pound of pasta put in no less than 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt, more if the sauce is very mild and under salted."  She doesn't specify what kind of salt.

 

And Lastly:

 

Nate Appleman in A16 Food + Wine says:

1 tablespoon Kosher salt per gallon (US).

 

So take your pick.

[gfweb]

I'd quibble about using kosher salt if you are going to dissolve it. I think it was Am.Test Kitchen that did a salt tasting and found that all the plain salts (ie not smoked or harvested from the fins of mermaids or whatever) tasted the same when dissolved. When used to finish a piece of meat, granule size mattered such that  kosher > table salt.

 

Batali says as salty as the Adriatic is how it should be.

Edited February 2, 2017 by gfweb (log)

[Anna N]

6 minutes ago, gfweb said:

I'd quibble about using kosher salt if you are going to dissolve it. I think it was Am.Test Kitchen that did a salt tasting and found that all the plain salts (ie not smoked or harvested from the fins of mermaids or whatever) tasted the same when dissolved. When used to finish a piece of meat, granule size mattered such that  kosher > table salt.

 

Batali says as salty as the Adriatic is how it should be.

 

 I am not following your reasoning here on kosher salt.  If kosher salt is one's salt of choice then why wouldn't one use it to salt pasta water?

[gfweb]

3 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 I am not following your reasoning here on kosher salt.  If kosher salt is one's salt of choice then why wouldn't one use it to salt pasta water?

 

If that's all the salt you have then sure. But Appleman specifying kosher salt implies that it makes a difference over table salt when dissolved.

 

I did say I was quibbling  ;-)

 

[Porthos]

@Okanagancook I typically cook up 6-8 oz of pasta and use 3 1/2 to 4 quart of water with the pasta pot on the 16K BTU burner to keep the noodles from languishing in water that isn't hot enough.

 

@gfweb I keep a little table salt around for the occasional baking I do. Everything else gets kosher salt. I would be hard-pressed to worry about the difference in total salt weight in pasta water. Not dissing your information at all. I'm just going for a ballpark amount to use.

 

My taste buds have been telling me that my pasta water was undersalted but I didn't have enough insight to guess how much more I needed. I think I'm going to see if a generous tablespoon gets me where I want to be. I am cooking up fettuccini tonight.

 

 

ETA: I have had a ton of life's hard times pressing upon me for the better part of a year and until I heard Simons make that remark I have not spent any time thinking about the undersalted taste of my pasta.

Edited February 2, 2017 by Porthos (log)

[Anna N]

8 minutes ago, gfweb said:

 

If that's all the salt you have then sure. But Appleman specifying kosher salt implies that it makes a difference over table salt when dissolved.

 

I did say I was quibbling  ;-)

 

Ok then. 

[Porthos]

By the way, I just picked up a copy of Marcella Hazan's book this morning and haven't had a chance to peruse it at all.

[Okanagancook]

Doesn't a tablespoon of Kosher salt weigh less than a tablespoon of regular table salt?

So that might be why he specified Kosher but agree that the small different isn't going to make a lotta difference in a boiling caldron of pasta water!

(For Canadians, 1 US Gallon (4 quarts) = 0.83 Canuck Gallons or 3.4 Litres in case the Metric Police are reading.)

 

As an aside and off topic, Porthos, if you just got her Classic book be sure to try the butter/tomato sauce which was rated one of the top 10 recipes EVER on Epicurious, it's on page 152 and her stuffed mushrooms on page 76 (they are very filling but absolutely will blow the pasta out of your water!).   cheers

[FeChef]

I use a 5 QT pot and just fill the palm of my hand with coarse sea salt or kosher salt. My usual dried pasta's require about 10 minutes for al dente and after a quick rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process, my pasta still has a good salted taste, not too salty. But without the cold water rinse its way too salty.

[Porthos]

Generous tablespoon as eye-balled in the palm of my hand produced better-tasting (regarding salt) than I have made in a long while.

[scubadoo97]

I just pour in what looks right.  Seems to work.   But only seems to work with my Diamond Kosher salt because I have a good sense of how much is right since I use it all the time 

[Porthos]

19 minutes ago, scubadoo97 said:

I just pour in what looks right.  Seems to work.   But only seems to work with my Diamond Kosher salt because I have a good sense of how much is right since I use it all the time 

 

I am am a dyed in the wool Mortons guy. But, like you using you Diamond Kosher, I have used it for so long I have the feel when using it, pasta water notwithstanding.

[Duvel]

As a rule of thumb I use 1000 mL water, 100 g of (dried) pasta and 10 g of salt (regardless of grain size) ...

[shain]

For almost all pastas shapes and dishes, I find the salt in the water to be of no importance at all, and I actually skip it often. I don't think that salt absorbed during cooking is notable. Obviously, pasta cooked in salted water is tastier when tastes plain unsalted pasta, but most sauces should adhere well enough to cover the pasta and provide saltiness, especially if the pasta cooking is finished in it. I might make an exception for very thick pastas.

My reasoning for using little to no salt is that it's allow me to use pasta cooking water without worrying about adding too much salt.

 

By the way, I find it amusing that I never saw koshering salt (aka kosher salt) for sale anywhere in Israel...

[Anna N]

12 minutes ago, shain said:

For almost all pastas shapes and dishes, I find the salt in the water to be of no importance at all, and I actually skip it often. I don't think that salt absorbed during cooking is notable. Obviously, pasta cooked in salted water is tastier when tastes plain unsalted pasta, but most sauces should adhere well enough to cover the pasta and provide saltiness, especially if the pasta cooking is finished in it. I might make an exception for very thick pastas.

My reasoning for using little to no salt is that it's allow me to use pasta cooking water without worrying about adding too much salt.

 

By the way, I find it amusing that I never saw koshering salt (aka kosher salt) for sale anywhere in Israel...

I think many Italians would be inclined to disagree with you. I am not into Italian cooking but I have read about it and have watched some serious TV devoted to Italian cuisine. As I understand it, for Italians, it is all about the pasta. That being said, unsalted pasta is pretty unpalatable. But it's your pasta and your sauce.

 

•  Now as for kosher salt.  I think very few connect the name to the act of koshering. I think it has become a code name for coarse salt.  "Kosher" sounds so much more gentile than "coarse".  All puns intended.

[shain]

22 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I think many Italians would be inclined to disagree with you. I am not into Italian cooking but I have read about it and have watched some serious TV devoted to Italian cuisine. As I understand it, for Italians, it is all about the pasta. That being said, unsalted pasta is pretty unpalatable. But it's your pasta and your sauce.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the "is all about the pasta" club, and unsalted pasta is definitely not tasty. What I mean is that I let the sauce provides the salt for the pasta, instead of expecting the pasta to soak salt as it cooks. Even with a gentle sauce such as aglio olio, I can't seem to find a difference between pasta cooked with salt, or salted once coated in sauce.

 

28 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Now as for kosher salt.  I think very few connect the name to the act of koshering. I think it has become a code name for coarse salt.  "Kosher" sounds so much more gentile than "coarse".  All puns intended.

 

Yes, I assume so, however one would expect to see this product over here as well. We got fine table salt and quite large coarse salt (and various "fancy" sea & specialty salts).

[chromedome]

56 minutes ago, shain said:

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the "is all about the pasta" club, and unsalted pasta is definitely not tasty. What I mean is that I let the sauce provides the salt for the pasta, instead of expecting the pasta to soak salt as it cooks. Even with a gentle sauce such as aglio olio, I can't seem to find a difference between pasta cooked with salt, or salted once coated in sauce.

 

 

I find that unless a sauce is drastically over-seasoned, unsalted pasta just sucks the life out of it. On the other hand, the "make it really briny" approach feels over-seasoned to my palate. 

 

I always just eyeball mine, but I'll say it's about a tablespoon for 4 litres. 

[Paul Fink]

2 hours ago, Anna N said:

 Now as for kosher salt.  I think very few connect the name to the act of koshering. I think it has become a code name for coarse salt.  "Kosher" sounds so much more gentile than "coarse".  All puns intended.

 

Coarse and not treated with iodine. Salts differ. Its important to select a salt so you get a feel for how much to use with out a recipe.

I never use "Kosher" I use Baleine, fine or coarse.

[cakewalk]

3 hours ago, shain said:

By the way, I find it amusing that I never saw koshering salt (aka kosher salt) for sale anywhere in Israel...

It's just called coarse salt ("gahss") in Israel. I guess the name is different because you'd be hard pressed to find meat in Israel that hasn't already been through the kashering process, so there's no point in calling it kosher salt. 

I always salt pasta water, but I don't measure. Always works out well. I use Diamond Crystal, it's what I remember from childhood. My father was a butcher and sometimes he'd bring home meat that still needed to be soaked and salted. It was always Diamond Crystal, some habits never die.

[MelissaH]

I like Diamond Crystal because it doesn't include the additive that Morton's uses to keep the salt from clumping, which adds a bitter flavor to my tongue. The two versions of kosher salt also look distinctly different under a magnifying glass (or, I suppose, a microscope. Anyone got one of the USB scopes?) so you can actually see why they pack differently. (That said, the most beautiful salt to look at close up, to me, is Maldon. Gorgeous pyramids! But definitely not for the pasta water.)

 

I know that when I make pasta, I fill the pot to the third hole from the top of the insert, and use a palmful of the Korean extra-coarse sea salt we get at the Asian market. How's that for measuring? (That said, lately I've been experimenting a little bit with the method of using much less water and stirring often at the beginning, to keep the starch in the pasta from gluing everything together. I definitely don't have the proportions down yet.)

[shain]

11 minutes ago, cakewalk said:

It's just called coarse salt ("gahss") in Israel. I guess the name is different because you'd be hard pressed to find meat in Israel that hasn't already been through the kashering process, so there's no point in calling it kosher salt. 

I always salt pasta water, but I don't measure. Always works out well. I use Diamond Crystal, it's what I remember from childhood. My father was a butcher and sometimes he'd bring home meat that still needed to be soaked and salted. It was always Diamond Crystal, some habits never die.

 

Ah, it always seemed to me that kosher salt is somewhere between what I can get as fine and coarse salts. I personally don't really use coarse salt for nothing other then sprinkling on breads before baking.

[FeChef]

I would like to point out that alot of italian pasta dishes are simply a few fresh herbs and vegetables quickly sauteed and drizzled with good quality olive oil. You definitely want to salt the water your cooking the pasta in for these types of dishes.

[shain]

47 minutes ago, FeChef said:

I would like to point out that alot of italian pasta dishes are simply a few fresh herbs and vegetables quickly sauteed and drizzled with good quality olive oil. You definitely want to salt the water your cooking the pasta in for these types of dishes.

 

Yes quite likely, tough I'd probably add most of the salt during the final mix with the vegetables, oil and pasta water.