The Easy Ice Water Hack To Save Overcooked Pasta
Everyone's done it before. You're cooking pasta in the kitchen and get distracted for one second. Then, bam! Overcooked, limp pasta. Now you have to decide whether or not to start all over or to spend time fixing it. Luckily, if you don't have time to start again ordon't have any pasta left, there are a few ways to fix overcooked pasta. One of the simplest ways is to sauté your overcooked pasta in order to bring it back to life. Another option is to bake it into a frittata in the same way that you would with leftover pasta. However, if you have big plans for your noodles and want to keep your dinner recipe intact, another easy hack to save overcooked pasta is to rinse it in ice water. This way, you can revive your pasta without sacrificing the recipe.
While you may have heard that you shouldn't rinse your noodles after cooking, that only applies to perfectly cooked al dente pasta. With overcooked pasta, anything goes to bring it back to the land of the living. All you need is a strainer, the coldest water you can find, and some ice cubes.
Why rinse in cold water?
The reason you shouldn't rinse al dente pasta and the reason why you should rinse overcooked pasta is one and the same –- starch. Rinsing pasta in cold water gets rid of much of the starch, and with al dente pasta, the starch is the binder that helps the sauce stick to the noodles. However, when you overcook pasta, it is the starch that makes the noodles all gummy. So, you will want to rinse it away for a better texture.
Another good reason to rinse overcooked pasta is to stop the cooking process. If you let your overcooked pasta stay warm in the pot, it will continue cooking even after it's been drained. With overcooked pasta, you definitely don't want it to cook further and it is best to stop the process right away with ice water. The last reason to rinse your overcooked pasta is that cooling down the temperature will actually make the noodles slightly firmer.
How to rinse your overcooked pasta
The method for rinsing your pasta is pretty straightforward. Strain the noodles in the sink first, then, turn on the faucet and rinse the pasta in the coldest water possible. You can also add ice cubes on top of the noodles so that the water gets even colder and cools the pasta faster. Remember that the longer you wait to rinse the pasta, the more overcooked it will become. So, this is something you want to do as soon as you realize the noodles have been cooked too long.
Another way to keep your overcooked noodles firm after rinsing is to serve them cold and store them in the fridge before serving. This is why some people recommend using overcooked pasta in pasta salads. But no matter how you use the noodles (like making the overcooked pasta okonomiyaki that chef Mark Steuer shared with The Chicago Reader), rinsing it in cold water is the first step to saving your dinner and preventing food waste.