How to Cook Pasta Super Fast (Without a Microwave)
This post may contain affiliate links from which I will earn a commission. Learn more in our disclosure.
Do you love pasta but don't love how long it takes to make it? Here's how to cook pasta fast so you can spend less time in the kitchen and more time with your family!
One of my favorite kitchen memories from my childhood was my mother's spaghetti and meatballs.
My mother worked full-time following my parents' unfortunate divorce, so convenience foods and fast food were sadly pretty common around our dinner table.
However, there were some classic home-cooked meals that my mom made: one of them being her spaghetti and meatballs, complete with her amazing homemade pasta sauce.
She would let the sauce simmer all day and then let us taste-test it. We would get a slice of bread (sadly, it was white and store-bought) with a ladle full of homemade sauce on top. Mmmm.
Now, I still love pasta, but one thing I've never liked is the amount of time it takes to wait for that huge pot of water to boil. You know the old adage; a watched pot never boils.
In this case, whether you're watching it or not, it always seems that heating the pot of water takes forever.
So when I found this time and money-saving tip for cooking pasta I was thrilled.
Time and Money Saving Pasta Tip Origin
In a number of other posts, I mentioned Lorna Sass as being a great source for all things pressure-cooking-related. Well, this tip comes from her sadly out-of-print cookbook, Recipes from an Ecological Kitchen.
So here's how to save time and money cooking pasta.
Turns out that that huge pot of water is totally unnecessary!
You can seriously have pasta on the table lickety-split.
How to Save Time and Money Cooking Pasta
1. Take a small pot (about 1 1/2 quart-sized)
2. Add enough water so that you'll cover the pasta by about an inch. This should be about a quart for 1 pound of pasta.
3. Add a dash of salt.
4. Boil the water.
5. Add the pasta.
6. Stir occasionally to keep the pasta submerged.
7. Drain and serve as usual.
For more servings, just increase the pot size, pasta, and water amount accordingly.
Voila!
You have just saved:
- Time: You didn't have to wait as long for the water to boil
- Money: Save on energy and water usage
Here's another great tip from a reader: To save more energy, but not time, just turn off the heat once you add the pasta and keep a lid on it. Add about 5 minutes to your regular cooking time and check for doneness. Sounds great for a day when you're not in as much of a hurry!)
More Time-Saving Kitchen Tips
Hungry for more time and money-saving kitchen tips?
Check out my posts on:
Do you have a great time or money-saving tip to share?
Or how about a kitchen challenge you could use help with?
You can start with cold water to ease the stickiness. You can also use the “thick” pasta water as an excellent thickener for sauces.
You should check out this link from someone who went all out on testing this idea… https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all She even got a couple top chefs to test and give their input.
Interesting article – thanks!
duh?! how true and how simple! thanks!
I am your newest follower..pls follow back if you can.
Thanks! It’s great, isn’t it?
Thanks for this great tip. My husband always gives me a hard time because I use tiny pots of water to cook a lot of noodles. Now I can tell him I’m not the only one who does this, and there is nothing wrong with it!! I love the tip about turning the heat off and covering the pot with a lid while it continues cooking. I will give that a try. Thank you!! I have heard of adding olive oil to left over noodles that you are so they don’t stick together when you put them in the fridge. PS I hopped over here after reading your post on The Better Mom.
Hi Sharon! Nice to “meet” you and glad to have you hear from The Better Mom. It’s a really nice site, isn’t it?
Hi Adriene, I like your blog and have learnt a lot of useful tips.
I’ve been using this method for a while — add pasta to the boiling water, turn off the heat when spaphetti starts to be able to bent or pasta becomes soft a bit and put the lid on. Make sure water is boiling and the recommended cooking time will be the time (very close) you required to leave the lid on. To avoid pasta sticking together, I find stirring the pasta well before draining work better than stirring them at the beginning.
If you plan to have left over for lunch tomorrow, like me, to save time, try to coat the pasta with just enough sauce (save the rest of sauce separately). Next morning, reheat the sauce and add enough to the pasta. Or add enough sauce to the pasta and heat them up at the same time. I find this way, the pasta will not absorbed the sauce overnight and becomes dry. Also the pasta will not stick together. Hope this helps busy moms.
Elisa – this is great! Thank you! I too have been stirring and I should add that to the post. Also, if you add some olive oil to the pasta after it cooks it will help it not stick together. Thanks!
Love this post and love saving time in the kitchen! Along the pasta lines, Tupperware has a new pasta cooker for in the microwave that comes out this fall. As a Tupperware consultant, I got to demo this product this summer and it is fantastic (and not just because it’s Tupperware). You cook and strain all in the same container and it’s all done in the microwave which means you use less energy AND less time!
Interesting tip. I use a pretty large pot, but not huge. I would worry about the pasta sticking together. With spaghetti I find that I have to stir it really well at the beginning so I don’t end up with several strands lumped together. If Lorna recommends it though, I’m willing to give it a try. 🙂
I save time on heating water by using an electric teapot. It heats the water quite quickly.
Yes, the amount of water the package tells you to use usually is excessive! Another advantage to using less is that it’s not so heavy when you drain it.
Another money/energy-saving idea is to use the heat from your boiling water for something else. For example, you can steam spinach when you drain the pasta. In winter, I sometimes put the colander on another pot and then keep the drained water standing in the kitchen so that the heat and moisture go into our household air instead of down the drain. I have a tall pasta pot that came with a vegetable steamer that fits in the top–you can cook the pasta and the veggies at the same time, on one burner! Then you lift out the steamer with pot holders before draining the pasta.
I love the extra tips. I try to “multi-task” my kitchen heat too. Thanks!
Well, this certainly makes sense, doesn’t it? I don’t usually use a gigantic pot but downsizing wouldn’t hurt, right? I’m here from Heavenly Homemakers! Beautiful blog!
Becky B.
http://www.organizingmadefun.com
Organizing Made Fun
this is what we are doing! 🙂 but i am adding a little bit of oil to the water. great post as always! have a great weekend!
Well, I’m such a pasta-freak, I’m going to try this. Thanks for linking to Food on Fridays!