Pasta Shortcuts at Home
Maximum Flavor, Less Time & My Updated Favorite Extra Virgin Olive oils list
After the last post about Northern Chinese Dumplings we are going back to pasta briefly. If you missed the dumplings post, I chronicled learning how to make from scratch delicious boiled dumplings 🥟 🇨🇳 during the Chinese New Year celebrations from a grandma known for her delicious and crave-worthy dumplings. Don’t miss that!
Now back to pasta.
Since relocating to Asia I discussed how much I started craving pasta and dropped a tasty af Arrabiata sauce you can make at home in minutes.
Pasta doesn’t need to be time consuming. In fact, some of the tastiest pastas can be whipped in minutes and high quality eats. Here are some time saving hacks that can have you cranking out insanely good pastas in under 10 mins 🙌
Pasta Pantry Shortcuts:
Olive Oils:
You need to have multiple Extra Virgin Olive Oils in your kitchen.
This is broken into (2) categories.
Cooking Olive Oils
Finishing Olive Oils
Aromatics will burn off during the heating and cooking process so you want a solid EVOO but not one that is “precious”; save that for finishing dishes and pastas.
I wrote about this years ago so here’s the link (which included a list as well)
Also, many people talk about using EVOO for high heat cooking and I will say after years and years that for the most part I don’t like the flavor of cooking in olive oil that is smoking at a high rate. Regardless of health or not, I don’t care for the flavor.
TLDR have a solid EVOO that you can cook with (Middle Eastern markets can be a gold mine here) and have at least 2-3 high end EVOO’s that you can finish dishes and pastas with that have differing flavor profiles.
Garlic in EVOO
This is a true hack.
Using a mandoline, take whole cloves of peeled garlic and slice super thin. You can use the Goodfellas technique of a razor blade but it’s really inefficient and more time consuming.
Another reason I recommend having a mandoline in your kitchen. 😉
Take 2-3 heads of peeled garlic cloves, shave thin on a mandoline and place in a small mason jar.
Submerge in a cooking EVOO and stir to make sure all the garlic slices are coated in EVOO. (Alternatively you can shave the garlic directly over a jar that has been filled with EVOO).
You now have sliced garlic in EVOO that can be placedd directly in a saute pan and used as the base for dozens of pasta sauces that require sauteing garlic in EVOO.
The bonus?
You can use any leftover EVOO taht has been infused with garlic on bread doughs, in salad dressings, to make a garlic flavored aioli, basting meats on a grill and much more. 🙌
Store in your fridge long term and pull out to room temp when needed for use.
Pasta Water:
There’s a myth that you need to cook pasta in a huge cauldron of water.
This is mostly crap especially for the home kitchen setting. When blending a cooked pasta with a sauce, you want some starch water that will act as a slight thickening or emulsifying agent to bring the two together.
It’s hard or impossible to make this happen when the water has hardly any starch because cooked 2 portions of spaghetti in 3 gallons of water.
The answer is to cook dried pasta like spaghetti in very little water, just enough to cover by an inch or so seasoned with salt, in a skillet or large saute pan.
You will notice a huge difference and will be much faster.
Bonus points for using a kettle to get the water started much hotter.
Cheeses
Keep 3 on hand at a minimum.
Grana Padano: Think of this as a milder version of Parmigiana Reggiano. It’s more cost effective and can be used in many pastas, meatballs, risottos when you want a nutty umami flavor that isn’t as intense as Parmigiana Reggiano.
Pecorino: This is a hard sheeps milk cheese that is tangy and addictive. Locatelli is a widely available and rock solid product. I’m imagining tortellini stuffed with ricotta on a bed of ragu and finished with pecorino as heavenly 🤤
Parmigiana Reggiano: You can get varying ages of this king of cheese. It’s punchy, full of umami and addictive af. Use for finishing pastas that you want a nutty, cheesy finish…
Tomatoes
Keep two on hand.
Tomato Passata:
This is a smooth tomato sauce that has not been cooked. Perfect for sauces that you want a very fresh and vibrant acidity and flavor. (As in the Arrabiata sauce I dropped; link above)
Whole Peeled Tomatoes
San Marzano (legit ones) have a wonderful acidity and sweetness that are hard to rival. The reason I prefer whole peeled tomatoes is that cut up or pureed tomatoes are sitting in juice that most of the time needs to be strained off and is thus waste.
Check here for recs on canned tomatoes and dried pastas ⬇️
Pesto Pastas
I love the sweet and herbaceous freshness that great pesto brings to pasta, especially during warm summer months when heavy or creamy tomato sauces are too rich.
I have already dropped the best damn pesto recipe known to man previously.
If you make this in bulk, consider freezing leftovers in a ice cube tray, then storing frozen in a ziploc bag. Then you can take out small quantities on demand.
Pro Tip for Pesto Pastas: After the pasta is cooked, drop the pasta with a little hot water from cooking into the pesto and mix off heat. Don’t cook over heat. Toss over and over to integrate the pesto (and a good pinch of grana padano) with the pasta. Fusilli is great for this. Garnish with fresh basil leaves and a glug of fabulous finishing EVOO.
This should get you miles ahead of the pack for making fabulous and tasty pastas in minutes.
I have some more pasta recipes coming up including an insane Ragu recipe that will melt your heart. I’ve seen a lot of people online using “ragu’ and what i’m seeing isn’t even a Ragu so we will set the record straight. 🔥
Please share with friends and continue to spread the word on Cooking with Octopod. Word of mouth is the most effective and I appreciate your support.
See you soon! Happy eating 🥂