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Comment by williamdclt | Hacker News Reader

Some more pasta water insights:

- A good ratio of salt/water is one tablespoon per litre (or gallon). Reduce if the sauce is going to be very salty already (eg carbonara). We're talking kosher salt here (specifically Diamon Crystal), if using table salt it's probably going to be half of that: salt density varies a lot depending on the type.

- Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible. For some reason there's some myth that you want to cook pasta in a large volume of water: that's BS. What makes pasta water "liquid gold" is the starch that comes from the pasta, you want that as concentrated as possible.

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A good ratio of salt/water is one tablespoon per litre (or gallon)

A gallon is 3.5-4 litres. This doesn't seem right.

Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible.

This advice is worthless without some baseline like g of pasta to l water or how much water to cover your pasta with. You should cook your pasta in a large volume of water so the water will still be hot when you add the pasta and the pasta will be cooked as quickly as possible. Too little water and you risk the pasta sticking to itself as well. All this in mind, properly cooked pasta with diluted pasta water is a better outcome than starchy pasta water with pasta that has an odd texture. Maybe that last bit is personal preference, but when eating pasta, the first thing I notice is the texture of the pasta, not the starchiness of the pasta water. Hell, maybe we're thinking about the same amount of water, and you've just seen people try to cook with comically large amounts, I dunno.

I usually cook for two, 200g of pasta into 1 liter of water. And a teaspoon of salt.

Oh god please don't to 1 TB of salt per gallon you need way more. I would do 4TB because although it's more than 1% salt it's easy to remember and close enough. As long as you stay less than 2% you're probably good for average salt tolerance.

I think he meant ‘quart’ rather than ‘gallon’ because the first reference is for ‘litre’

Sorry yes! As cossatot points out in the sibling comment, I meant quart. Not used to american metrics.

+1 to the as little water as possible tip, that's worked well for me. The emulsifying properties transmit flavors really well, I like to infuse a tiny bit of oil to stir in.

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