Spaghetti boiling in a pot

You may already know that placing huge meatballs on pasta is actually quite un-Italian, and that some nonnas place baking soda and sugar in their pasta sauce to make tinned tomatoes taste less acidic.

You might even be aware that nutmeg is a powerhouse ingredient a lot of non-Italians miss in their savoury creamy dishes.

But a recent Reddit post was about something seemingly simpler: cooking pasta itself.

“Why do pasta instructions always say you need so much water?”, site user u/DiscountConsistent asked members of r/AskCulinary, a forum where non-chefs can ask the pros to spill their secrets.

It’s true. A pack of linguine in my cupboard asked me to cook enough carbs for four in more water than my biggest pot could hold – but according to the experts, the advice is baloney.

Multiple chefs disagree with the advice

“Kenji [López-Alt], Daniel Gritzer, and plenty of others have done lots of experimentation on this and shown that you do not need lots of water, little water does not encourage sticking, and little water makes the water starchier for making sauces better,” a top comment on the post reads.

It’s true.

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