To Rinse or Not To Rinse? Brief Guide to Rinsing Your Pasta

Types of pasta
Photo by Karolina Kołodziejczak on Unsplash

Some people rinse their pasta every time while others avoid it all costs, but what is the correct way to go about this? It turns out that rinsing your pasta shouldn’t be down to the personal preference alone, but also the kind of dish that you’re preparing, and this brief guide will help you make the final verdict.

Pasta Salads

If there’s one kind of dish where rinsing pasta makes total sense, it would be pasta salad. Rinsing pasta is recommended when it comes to cold pasta dishes because it will stop the cooking process and quickly bring down the temperature of your pasta.

Hot Pasta Dishes

If you’re going to serve your pasta hot, rinsing is best avoided, especially if additional sauces are involved. The tricky thing about rinsing pasta for hot dishes is that the sauces will have trouble sticking to the pasta after it’s been stripped of its starchy coating, so draining it is quite enough in this case.

Stir Fry Dishes

If you’re cooking spaghetti or Asian-style noodles that you’re going to use in your stir-fry dishes, feel free to rinse them. Simply draining the water won’t be enough, because the noodles will be too gummy and clump together, potently ruining the taste of your pasta.