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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> Speaking of pasta water, use less water for boiling past[a]…

Or skip the boiling completely: https://www.seriouseats.com/food-lab-no-boil-baked-ziti-reci...

"But who's to say that these two phases, water absorption and protein denaturing, have to occur at the same time? H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of the fantastic blog Ideas in Food asked themselves that very question, and what they found was this: You don't have to complete both processes simultaneously. In fact, if you leave uncooked pasta in lukewarm water for long enough, it'l absorb just as much water as boiled pasta."

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I prefer to cook pasta like rice and starting it in cold water brought to a boil and then a simmer: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/cold-water-pasta-method/

This is how I lasagna. Warm water soak to rehydrate (I do use my kettle to speed things up).

I realize baked ziti (your link) and lasagna are basically the same thing, but it felt worth calling out. It makes for a much faster prep stage. I do the prep work after my family leaves for the day in the morning, then dinner is just preheating and popping it in the oven

Sounds like a way to trade preparation time for energy expenditure, if it lets you minimize the amount of water you need to boil.

You'll probably need some extra water just to ensure even heating, but if the pasta is already rehydrated, then you no longer have to include a safety margin for water to be absorbed.

If you do that aren't you just eating uncooked flour and egg?

It cooks in the liquid from the surrounding ingredients. You can do this with a sufficiently wet enough Lasagna quite easily.

Indeed we regularly eat "oven pasta", the raw pasta goes in to a sauce into the oven. 30-40 mins and it is al dente (with crispy cheese on top).

Ah ok I missed that your link was for ziti. I thought you were talking about spaghetti or other non-baked pastas where you typically just pour sauce over.

It would be interesting to let it absorb water at ambient temperature, then let koji do the job with the proteins.

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