Pasta: Buying, Storing, and Cooking It Right

Dried pasta is durum wheat semolina and water, and the shape is engineering, not decoration. Long strands, spaghetti and linguine, carry slick olive oil and tomato sauces. Short shapes with ridges and curves, penne, rigatoni, fusilli, trap chunky sauces and baked dishes. Thin shapes, angel hair, collapse under heavy sauce, and stuffed shapes like ravioli are their own course and want butter or cream, not a heavy ragu.

Fresh pasta, eggs and flour, cooks in 2 minutes and is tender and rich, better for delicate fillings. Dried pasta has more bite and holds up to robust sauces. Neither is better, they are different tools.

Dried pasta keeps for years, so buy shapes you actually cook. Look for bronze-die or rough-textured pasta if the label says it, the rough surface grabs sauce better than shiny extrusion. For fresh pasta, check the date, it is perishable, usually 2 to 3 weeks refrigerated or frozen.

One pound (455 g) feeds 4 generously as a main, 6 as a side. For baked pastas, figure a few extra ounces because they reabsorb sauce in the oven.

Dry pasta in a sealed container in the pantry keeps years past its quality date. Fresh pasta keeps 2 to 3 days refrigerated, or freeze it on a tray then bag it for 2 months, cooking straight from frozen. Cooked pasta keeps 3 to 5 days refrigerated, tossed with a little oil so it does not fuse into a block, and it freezes fine in sauced form.

Water first, salt second: a big pot, 4 quarts per pound, and 1.5 tablespoons of salt in it, which tastes like the sea and is the only chance the noodle itself gets seasoned. Oil in the water does nothing but make sauce slide off later, skip it.

Then timing: start testing 2 minutes before the box says, and pull the pasta when the center shows a thin pale line, al dente. Save a mug of the starchy water before draining. Finish the pasta in the sauce pan with a splash of that water, the starch emulsifies the sauce so it clings instead of pooling. That minute in the sauce is the difference between pasta with sauce on it and pasta that tastes like sauce.

• Gluten free pasta: corn and rice blends cook closest to wheat, pull them a minute early because they go soft fast, and expect the water to foam more.
• Zucchini noodles: for a low carb swap, salt them, drain 20 minutes, and saute briefly, they never replace pasta's chew but carry the same sauces. Do not cook them long or they weep water into the sauce.
• Other grains: orzo is rice-shaped pasta and swaps in soups; for baked dishes, cooked penne and rigatoni trade freely for each other, and ziti stands in for either.