food, fun fact
there's an oft-repeated bit of advice that says you should always put enough salt in your pasta water to make it "as salty as the sea"
turns out, if you actually do that by putting the stoichiometric amount of salt equal to what there is in seawater, you end up with pasta that's inedibly salty
but! the acceptable range of saltiness for pasta cooking includes the point where adding more salt doesn't much change the taste because you're already overloading the salt receptors on your tongue. so the proper amount of salt in the water *tastes* about the same saltiness as seawater
-F
re: food, fun fact
@relee "as salty as the sea" is what we've heard from quite a few people, some of whom were professional chefs, so i'd say that's probably about right
i mean pasta doesn't technically *need* salt at all but it's tastier with some salt in it
-F
re: food, fun fact
@Felthry Well, I know that not much of the salt in a big thing of salt water is going to stay with the pasta after you strain it. I thought the salt was for something other than taste, though? Something about the way the noodles stick?
re: food, fun fact
@relee A little salt might affect that? Honestly we've never made pasta without salt
but actually a fair bit of salt does get absorbed into the pasta! You can definitely notice the different taste between low-salt and high-salt
-F
food, fun fact
@Felthry I thought you were just supposed to put in a pinch of salt?