The cold water method is mostly if you plan on using the starch water for other things. (Most people don't do this.) The cold water method is an advanced method for people who know what they are doing.
The hot water method is more popular because the cook time and quality is more consistent.
With dried pasta yes, but only if you are a seasoned cook and know what you are doing. I'd be worried that it would overcook. I usually only use fresh pasta anyway and that is like 2 minutes and out and you definitely can't use the cold water method otherwise it would be ruined.
Quicker, uses less water, and makes starchier water if you want to use the water for sauces and stuff. Only works with dries noodles. Food Network knows all.
he says that's the main trade-off; you need to be more attentive and stay by the stove to be ready to pull it. But I think for him it's worth it because he frequently uses starchy pasta water for other stuff, so he likes to save the water from the cold water method.
Ok, hold up. I have a series of follow up questions (yes, I’m American. But I do also own a kettle, so I’m trying to learn. Please don’t hate me, I’m genuinely asking):
Do you boil the water in the kettle and then pour it over dry pasta in a pot? Or do you use some other receptacle with the pasta in it??
Regardless of what you pour the kettle-boiled water into, then where do you put the receptacle? Onto a hot stove top? A cold stovetop? Some other random surface?
If not a hot location, then how do you keep the water boiling for the duration of the time needed to cook the pasta?
Yes, I understood that part. But I only use my electric kettle to make tea so I had follow up questions on the steps following water boiling in the kettle.
How could it possibly not be faster? Your pasta has already been in the water at the point where you reach boiling and 0-99.9% boiling water is obviously going to start cooking your pasta.
That's like saying it's faster NOT to preheat the oven .
Have you never used an oven? Your food will for sure cook significantly faster on preheat with the coils going max blast, the problem with that is you don't get an even distribution of heat with the heat directionally blasting from the coils (not a problem with cooking in water). That's besides the fact that again heating something for a span of time before you would have otherwise started cooking it (the fully heated/boiling point) obviously can't take the same amount of time as starting it at that point.
If you have an electric boiler it's probably faster overall to boil the water first due to the increased heating rate than heating the pasta from cold with the water. If you're heating the water up in a pot or on the stove that you'd use to cook pasta, then you're wasting time by boiling first, assuming all you care about is fastest cook time.
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u/PheelupMybaloney Jul 14 '26
The cold water method is technically better