There are certain rules and traditions one should follow when cooking pasta, such as never breaking spaghetti noodles, since that prevents them from being twirled around a fork. Another unspoken rule involves how often you should stir your pasta as it cooks.

Stirring pasta helps to prevent your noodles from sticking together and cooking unevenly. In the first minutes of boiling, your pasta will be covered in a thick layer of starch that acts as a glue, and you can only break this up by stirring the pasta.

The trick to perfectly textured pasta isn't how long you should be stirring, but when you should do so. You should stir the pasta twice within the first two minutes of the cooking time, and the pasta will cook on its own from there, although a few stirs here and there won’t hurt.