I love how Adam basically gives us an abstract to his video up front. No BS, no trying to hook you to the end, just “here’s what I found, and show you how I found it if you wanna stick around”
so nice, unlike other videos on youtube which either bombard you with baked in ads or they tell you their entire life story when you are just there for a quick tutorial on how to wire an outlet correctly
Since I moved to the US and learned about how essays are written in english, he probably is just following that exact method when he writes the script for his videos.
He's like if Alton Brown had no fucks to give and kind of just wanted to eat good food before getting back to writing an unannounced scifi novel (or maybe I'm projecting). I watch a lot of youtube chefs, but Adam is the only one whose recipes I actually follow along with from time to time. And every time I do, I find myself feeling like I did something wrong because it tastes *so* good despite how little work/prep was involved. Shoutout to the potato-leek soup for a few weeks ago that became an instant household favorite for date nights.
I'm not sure if this is also the case in America, but here in the UK you can get jarred sauces which are sold as "Pasta Bake" sauces. They actually tell you to follow almost the exact same process you describe, put in the dry pasta, any additions like meat/veg/cheese, pour in the sauce, then half fill the jar with water and pour into the dish. And again, unsure if this is the case for the US but almost all dry lasagne sheets here say that you don't need to par-boil them before use! Edit: a lot of replies assume this is a way to sell the same stuff at higher prices, but the pasta bake sauces are basically the same price as other jarred sauces, they're just slightly different kinds of sauce, most commonly the baked sauces contain cream, plus potentially other things like bacon or whatever.
I learned about the lasagne sheets the hard way - I was used to par-boil sheets to assemble the lasagne, until one day I had to use a different brand, which said it did not need previous parboiling. Nice, but I ran out of sauce at the top layer, it got a little less sauce than the rest and when the dish came out of the oven, the top was really tough and we had to discard some; the rest was delicious since I poured a lot of sauce at first.
@@geovannacampos6794 I think a potential fix for that is to either use more sauce or water down the existing amount of sauce to the point where you have enough.
If you have trouble finding sodium citrate, you can add just enough lemon juice or citric acid solution to a bit of baking soda to fizz it all off. The reaction products of citric acid and baking soda are CO2 and sodium citrate. I've tried this for emulsifying a cheese sauce and it works fine.
Oooo thanks for that tip! Baking soda is so versatile. I knew the trick of baking the baking soda to get sodium carbonate, but I didn't know this. I even have a big bag of citric acid, so I can probably just use that with water instead of lemon.
Both my parents worked shortly after the 2008 crash so I was responsible to cook the meals. As a lazy teenager I quickly discovered this on my own. I hated doing dishes, especially after cooking so this helped.
For those times you do want to boil your pasta, you don't even need to keep the heat on. Bring your water to a boil, add the pasta, stir to make sure it doesn't stick together, then put on the lid, turn off the heat & let it sit for the desired cooking time. In my years of using this method, the pasta cooks without additional heat in about the same amount of time as if you were boiling it. This would also be a good Adam Ragusea experiment.
the texture goes wonky - have done it, no where as good as boiled then removed and drained. I just dont drink coffee from a coffee shop or save money in other ways
I take you don't use too much water? So there is no excess water that need to heat and energy just transfer to athmossphere via evaporation. Certainly that is case with my pantrysoup (pasta and what ever ingredient you have in one little kettle boiled in low heat).
@@MeltedMask I don't cook the pasta in a large amount of water. I don't know the proportions right off the bat, but it's probably only 6-8 cups of water if that, for a 12-16 oz box of pasta.
This is why I love your work, Adam - you consider the stuff that surrounds cooking (the buying, the cleanup, the will-the-kids-eat-it) in a way that other recipe purveyors just don’t. In my experience, the actual active cooking time is always less than the prep and cleanup. A recipe is no use if I don’t have time to make it and reset my kitchen afterwards. I really care about any steps that save on dishes (I’m British and we “do dishes” as much as “washing up”; not sure if I’m alone in this?). So: thank you!
I literally just left the grocery store with all the ingredients for a pasta bake tonight and I see this. I feel this must be a sign from the universe itself that I have been making things unnecessarily complicated in the kitchen
I think the reason why this dishes use parboiled pasta is because they were originally a method of using up leftover plain boiled pasta, same way as "leftovers pie" is supposed to be topped with leftover, not freshly made mashed potatoes
Given that as the origin of most casseroles, I find this equally likely to his theory. It's such a shame how rarely people use leftovers today. I see all these people advocating for these tiny recipes that leave you hungry and with no leftovers, when the real way to be efficient is to make one gigantic meal you can eat over the course of a few days. You don't even have to skimp on variety, just make a few things and have simple meals to fill in the gaps, a day with fried eggs for breakfast and leftover spaghetti for dinner, the next day cereal for breakfast and leftover shepherds pie for dinner.
@@Great_Olaf5 been doing rolling stews, fix stew with meat and veggies in a large pot, dip out some into a saucepan and add the starch to it... reheating starches and sugar tend to cut the life of a rolling stew...and the sweet sauces added with pasta/rice/taters/oatmeal and so on... to the stew half... and cooked enough to cook the starch of choice... the amount of fluid (stew juices) can be adjusted for a solid mass like a casserole or remain a bit like enhanced stew with extra fluids... the rolling stew can usually be frozen without starches in it, ice damages the starchy components of a stew.
I LOVE that there's no weird music, intro, stuff and stuff before getting to the subject. It's one of the first things I noticed positively about Adam Ragusea and I still appreciate to this day.
I really appreciate the addition of a segment where you find the exact measurements of things you say to eyeball- I really struggle to do stuff without clear directions, and it makes your recipes so much more accessible to me. Thank you!
Same here. I can appreciate that some things can just be eyeballed, but if I don't have prior experience to guide me, then I need measurements so I know what I'm aiming for! Plus, the science of it is genuinely interesting to me.
Another pasta hack is no-drain stovetop pasta. You can cook it like rice. Add the dry pasta to a pan and add about enough water to cover. Bring to a boil then simmer until it's done. Ideally there should be just a little starchy liquid left after cooking which is great mixed with any sauce.
Note: When you cook pasta like rice, it has much much more concentrated starch left in it, rather than poured out with the liquid; so its gonna be starchier this way and most folks probs wont even notice. I only mention this cuz my fiance can 100% tell the diff and hates that slightly starchier pasta you get when you dont drain most the starchy pasta water Notably, he normally conserves some of the boil water for the sauce all the same, its just too much starch if its all the starch from the boil water.
I am speechless. Not only did you answer all of my questions before I could even ask, this was like finally being able to experience the "what if" of cooking without me wasting food. Beautiful work.
I felt the same way. I did his no par boil lasagna, and before hand said "well, if it comes out poorly its just pasta and sauce so I'm sure it's fine either way?" Adam's fool proof lasagna came out just as good as Babishs fancy stuff that was more costly in $$$ and in time. Both were good but for something that took me 15 mins to make over an entire afternoon? I'll take Adam's 9 times out of 10 lol
I think another reason that you see this is stuffed pasta, like shells or manicotti. You just cannot stuff a raw shell or manicotta. And those are some of the most common baked dishes still around.
Mentioned this in my own comment before I scrolled down and found this one. When making stuffed shells, you gotta parboil the shells; they'll just snap if you try to stuff them dry, and even if you somehow manage to stuff them without breaking them, they'll just steal the water out of their filling anyways during the bake because of osmosis.
yes this makes a lot of sense for stuffed pasta dishes, it's possible to stuff dry shells with very liquidy filling but ime that makes the filling a bit bland and gummy, as opposed to stuffing cooked shells with thicker or chunkier fillings
Years of experience watching Adam's videos yet in only a week, I've managed to squeeze in 17 of his podcasts into my commute. If you haven't discovered them yet, I find them exponentially superior to the simpler cooking vids like this one, (which I love, don't get me wrong). In his pods, he simply breaks out into tangents that I don't think even he plans for. They're so very entertaining and I just can't get enough. I guess I'm within my "personality, subject and moment" spectrum with him.
I love the fact you told us all the information in the first MINUTE, I absolutely hate when YTs hide their information over a 20 minute video to make you “watch it all” This channel has become one of my favourites 😍
Ironically his style makes me watch the full video even though the information is given at the start. Respecting my time is one great way to get me to trust you with it, so by putting the most important bits at the front I trust that there'll be more gold down the line. And there usually is 😂
I think the reason parboiling pasta is such a common thing in basically all baked pasta recipes is just because it's good practice. Cooking it at least part of the way through guarantees that you don't have any potentially un(der)cooked pasta. It's not because it's necessary, it's because it's a safety net.
I quite enjoy that you are as committed, if not more, as I am to getting as few dishes dirty as possible. I recently tried the spanish omelette and my tactic is to have it in the frying pan a bit longer before flipping, that way I can reuse the plate when serving. To myself. Cooking is way more fun when you do it for just yourself, nobody will have to suffer through the experiments.
The main difference with par-boiling and using raw dry pasta is starch: par-boiling reduces the amount of starch, as it gets left in the cooking water. Raw pasta releases all possible starch in the final bake. That can be ok for some recipes, not so ok for others.
@@Great_Olaf5 I don't think it is that low starch content. It thickens sauces pretty well. And if you can use it to thicken sauces it should work for Baked dishes aswell. Would be pretty interested in any results tho!
@@Great_Olaf5 Are you sure? Pasta water definitely has a good amount of starch in it. That's why you save it to help emulsify things in your sauces. If it had negligible starch I'd think it wouldn't be any better than regular water for that purpose.
@@Great_Olaf5 is it possible you’ve got this mixed up with his estimates of how much starch you wash off when you rinse pasta before eating? That one *was* negligible if I recall.
I just wanted to say i really appreciate you taking the time to make a formula for the people that like guidelines and numbers. I know a lot of cooking channels will just write us off and tell us to learn how to get used adjusting recipes by taste, but I always appreciate those that also list estimated quantities as well :)
That's exactly my thought. Adam is like the passionate teacher we all had at some point in our life, making us interested and curious, explained whys and hows. This guy fucking rocks. Now excuse me but I need to go back drinking my white wine.
Honestly I would not at all mind if you put out another video just making more baked pasta dishes, with this method. Kind of like a buzzfeed tasty "5 recipes" compilation.
Well, I suppose one of the blessings of pasta and baked pasta in particular is that it is more of a method than a recipe - try combinations that you like and see which taste the best for you. Using the method in the video you just need rough proportions of liquid ingredients to pasta, accounting for liquid which will be expressed by ingredients like spinach of zucchini.
I want to see large stuffed shells with this method. Can't imagine it working. How would you stuff the cheese into the shells without cooking them? They'd break. Or those big tube pastas that you also stuff.
Another great tip I can easily apply to my own cooking right away. And no unnecessary sticking to tradition just for the sake of it. This is why I love your channel. Thanks, Adam!
See, I wish more videos were structured like this. You and Ethan both say “here’s the result I came up with, here’s what you need to know. If you want to see how I did it, stick around.” That makes me watch the whole video. Otherwise I’m skimming through the video looking for your succinct conclusion.
For eggplants, I nearly always prefer to cut and salt them at least an hour but ideally the evening before using them. Reduces the water so they seem to cook faster and improves the taste
A pair of caveats. when making Stuffed Shells, you ABSOLUTELY need to parboil the shells before assembly and baking so that they can bend enough to stuff, as opposed to snapping like dry pasta tends to be want to do! When making Lasagna with dry noodles, as it's a structured dish, it's recommended that you parboil it if you choose to not water the sauce down or use a watery sauce; water has a hard time penetrating into a structured dish when added directly like shown here, and the pasta noodles will steal some of the water from the sauce and filling that they're coated in or adjacent to if they're not par-boiled.
Not true. We ONLY use dry noodles in our lasagna now. The trick is to let it sit in the fridge for a least a day. The longer it sits the more tender it becomes. I like it after around 3 days of a presoaking. No added water, just a little extra sauce. Much more creamy and rich in a flavour. Makes for a much more unified lasagna in general, its also easier to cut and melts in your mouth.
My family never parboiled dry lasagna sheets. I didn't even know about parboiling them until later in life. You can absolutely skip it, but you need to bake the lasagna for longer. We usually give it an hour in the oven: 45--50 minutes covered with foil, the remaining 10-15 uncovered to crisp up the top (the top would be way too dry if cooked uncovered for that long).
This is what it really comes down to is how long you're willing to let your thing cook for... It takes time to boil off the water and raise the temperature of the dish. And you definitely have to add a lot more sauce if your noodles are not boiled
I just bought a house that doesn't have a dishwasher. It's made me realize that I actually like hand washing dishes for the first time in my life, and I won't be buying a dishwasher. As someone who makes a lot of pasta dishes, this video has been yet another revelation, and I cannot thank you enough for it!
I make a baked variation on your mac and cheese about once a quarter for some function or another, and not having to boil the pasta sounds awesome!! I'll probably still make the cheese sauce in another vessel because I'm scared of putting a casserole dish on the stove, but one fewer dirty pot is always appreciated!
This also works for one pan pasta dishes that are cooked. Just make a sauce with tomatoes, vegetables and possibly meat, throw in pasta and a bit more water and some salt and slowly cook it.
7:30 And right here, I find the reason that I prefer your cooking/recipe vids to Chef Johns: In his Stroganoff video, out this week -- it's apparently Stroganoff week; I've seen three so far -- he says something that I interpreted as "you can decide if it's cooked enough based on your own experience". You almost never say that; you explain *how to tell*. A subtle but impotant difference; your approach leaves lots of maneuvering room for cooks who have the experience, while providing more support to those who are still acquiring it. Like me. Now if only I didn't live in a house with two eaters even more finicky than me. Continuing in-line suggestions about avoiding/substituting things like pork, squash and eggplant, and the cruciferous trilogy of broccoli, cauliflower and brussels, deadly to the lower GI of a statistically significant number of people, will remain cheerfully accepted.
Forever now, so many years, I've made veggies lasagna< I always put the veggies and cheeses and pasta in together and bake it and it works every time. No pre boiling!!
Good tipp with the extra water! I've always just gone with uncooked pasta for bakes, but I aways have that extra layer being too hard unless I drowned it in way to much sauce.
Cooked spag last week. Placed the pasta directly into the pan of sauce which I watered down. I got nervous at first cause it took longer to cook. It's harder to stir too and you have to really watch it in case the pasta would stick to each other. The water evaporated too making the sauce too thick. I could've just added more water though but been adding so much at that point. It works but it's scary at first and might involve a lot of stirring than just pre-boiling the pasta instead.
My British friend made a lasagna with uncooked pasta-sheets. It was crunchy all the way through as it was mainly uncooked union, unseasoned mince meat and like ½ a small tube of tomato paste, with grates questionable packaged cheese on top. It was the most awful dish I ever ate. I always get best results by quickly dipping pasta sheets in boiling water (no need to go soft) and go into a beautiful, well flavored and seasoned tomato sauce, add cheese meat and into the oven. But I look forward to trying more dishes like this Adam Ragusea! It look delicious, thank you so much for this!
Parboiling pasta could stem for a need to remove excess starch, kind of like rinsing rice. Idk if that's true, but I do also prefer the heterogeneity parboiling offers.
I've been doing this for years, dry pasta mixed with twice it's weight in 'stock' (water, wine, actual stock, pesto, sauce, literally anything can work), add whatever inclusions you want, veggies, meat, cheese etc. Cook it covered for 30 mins, uncover, stir and finish for 10. Mind bendingly easy way to feed the family.
My guess for why it's common to preboil the pasta, is that it just seems like the safer option when coming up with recipes. The potential to over or underdo it with the water might mean putting your entire dinner at risk. Once you know your recipe, this is definitely the superior option though.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that this video has changed my life for the better. I'm a new dad and my wife and I have been behind on taking care of ourselves for a bit, this technique has re introduced home cooked meals for us when they seemed impossible. Thank you Adam!
You are saving me prescious time for dorm cooking with this, now I know I can literally ignore preboiling and save a lot of time on washing the dishes.
I figured this out years ago. Mostly because my lasagna was always a little soggy or than I wanted amd the noodles were mushy (I like a couple of layers of fresh zucchini in among the stuff). Figured I'd let the zucchini water cook the noodles and I was right. Glad I'm not the only one
Hey Adam, I've never really enjoyed making very many baked pasta dishes except for twice-baked lasagna and finishing a macaroni and cheese in the oven with a crispy bread crumb top (but even now I prefer to make the topping separately to avoid gratinization). I've always felt like I was playing chicken with the toothsomeness of the pasta during a bake and it always ends up either a bit too al dente or a bit too mushy. I don't often cook pasta by time but rather by feel and taste, which isn't something you can really do all that well with baked pastas. Nor can I really control the consistency of a baked pasta dish's sauce and individual elements while working around bits of still-cooking pasta, different pastas - shape, brand, etc - take in different amounts of liquid and not many recipes agree with how much liquid you need to get fully done pasta at the end without making it either too soupy or too dry. I've often found myself baking the ingredients of a pasta bake separately from the pasta itself with a tad more wet ingredients since there's no pasta to absorb the liquid, then finishing the pasta in the resulting sauce and then topping individual portions with bits of the browned top and 'fillings', more like a traditional pasta. That has always felt surefire to me, takes out the hassle of trying to clock in everything so it comes out perfectly while getting that deep, roasted in the oven flavor that baked pasta often gets. That and always ends up with about the same amount of dishes, except maybe an extra pot that I cooked and then finished the pasta in. What do you think?
It's not unheard of for me to do this, too, especially in dishes that will sit in the fridge for a day or two as leftovers. Even if you *do* get it perfect out of the oven, once you toss it into the fridge, the pasta just continues to absorb stuff and get mushier and mushier. Keeping everything separated makes the dish much more palatable as a leftover.
Since you're in Eastern Tennessee now there's an event in April that you might be interested in. Every year there's the Polk County Ramp Tramp Festival in Reliance, TN. This year it's on April 21-22. It seems like something you might be interested in.
I like how Adam is slowly but surely migrating everything over to the metric system. (I’m American by the way, but I work in Canada a lot so I thinKMetric)
Thanks for the video Adam! I've always thought it was unnecessary to parboil dry pasta for baked dishes. I just never got around to experimenting to find out. Also, a lot of people simply will not take the time to pre-boil pasta and even will make another meal choice because they don't want to bother boiling a large pot of water. I realize that fact may be hard to understand for Italian-Americans. With this recipe, perhaps more busy home cooks will make more pasta dishes and it has the potential to both clean out the fridge AND save them time in meal prep.
Baked pasta dishes were always a use for leftover pasta in our household. If mom gave out a recipe she would tell you to parboil it to mimic the leftover component
You should check out a Greek baked pasta dish called Giouvetsi. You don't boil the pasta, just cook the meat, add tomato sauce, bring to a boil, and add orzo pasta and bake in the oven.
When I've tried cooking pasta in the sauce I find I get a gummy pasty sauce that just doesn't work for me, even with extra liquid. I parboil pasta because I just get more consistent results
@@rob6850 omg thank you for this I thought it was just happened stance my boyfriend and I had to change the sheets after eating Adam's bake only lasagna cuz we turned into the wind section of an orchestra afterwards 🤣🤣🤣
I started doing this a few years ago and its been amazing! Saves on dishes and I love that the pasta gets to cook in the flavor entirely as opposed to just part of the time
Thank you Adam, another excellent post again. For part 2, you should do test of 225gm dry pasta and x vol of water instead of eye balling. Then you can vary x+-50ml water etc and see how it turns out. Then you can report on the ideal vol of water to use. I think evaporation in oven may be different to pan on stove.
Well darn it, I wish this had been released 12 hours ago when I made a pasta bake! I'll try it next time.
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What I love about these videos is that I learn to make food without following recipes, I just take the general principles and my food is good now. Feels great
Not sure how much time this really saves given I typically boil the pasta whilst making the sauce. Pre-boiled pasta also only really needs to bake for as long as it takes to brown on the top, or you can just put it under the grill to brown. A pasta water pot is also just about the easiest thing to clean.
I feel you, man. I never preboiled my store bought lasagna sheets. I just pre soaked them in a bit of warm water and added to the lasagna layers as usual. It worked wonders!
When we were jarring up our own tomatoes, since they ended up having so much liquid and you don't really want (or need) to cook fresh tomatoes very long pasta can go right in the dish before baking (lasagna) or after it comes to a boil (spaghetti). I know you can squish out or pour off the liquid but I want to keep the juice even if its separated out; give it a good shake and it's all back together.
2 words pasta water. Especially when you make Mac & Cheese. If you use the boiled pasta water in tandem with evaporated milk you'll never need to make another roux ever again...use the butter for making the bread crumbs taste better.
This is why you are the king. Great experiments and also questioning the typical or usual ways. Always ask why. And people are definitely comforted by "well that's how it's always been done."
Adam, can you talk about the saturation of fats in things like coconut and avocado (and their respective oils)? I did an investigation in high school and found that they were sometimes more saturated than lard, and yet they are hailed as incredibly healthy. Why so when they are definitely full of fat, and unhealthy fat at that?
Fat has had a hard time for a long time, but usually isn't that bad if used in moderation or if used in a low carb diet as your new fuel source. If you look at food studies on MCTs and other things that deal with fat including saturated fats you can find a lot of positive things.
It's because the fat is healthy not unhealthy. Saturation isn't the only property of a fat and it's those other properties that make coconut oil healthy and lard less so
Around the 5 minute mark I was thinking that I should test how much water pasta absorbs so I would not have to preboil it anymore. I didn't know Adam was going to do the test for me at 8 minute mark, saved me a ton of time, thanks dude!
The last recipe is actually kinda surprising given that there was a few "MICROWAVE" food we have here in 711 convenient store that sell "exactly" like that, raw pasta noodles with Cheese and other toppings and then microwave it for a few minutes and you got yourself a lunch/dinner.
I've never boiled lasagna sheets before baking the lasagna. No one I know has. No extra water or extra salt either, I've never felt any need for those.
appreciate the detailed explanations of the shortcuts you take and the breakdown of the formula for what you just eyeball, I feel like a lot of people take for granted that they know generally what good amounts for things look like and it's great to have a better understanding until I get to that point
I tried this with a large (16 oz?) can of tomato sauce, cooked ground pork, maybe 8 oz of dried pasta, and a lot of cheese. I used a grated cheese mix I bought from the store and some shaker parmesan. I baked it for about half an hour with the lid on to begin, and maybe another 20 minutes with it off. It turned out really good. Now I am trying it again, this time with tomato sauce I made using tomato paste, water, and herbs. I've never actually made tomato sauce from scratch like this from scratch. Another difference this time is that I am using some roasted chicken which I picked off of the bones instead of using ground pork. Also, this time I am not cooking it with the lid on because I want to see what happens if I don't. I put in a little extra water as well. It is now in the oven, so I will see how it turns out soon.
I really like the way you quickly explained the method without requiring the viewers to watch the whole video if they are in a hurry. i ended up watching the whole video because it was so entertaining anyway.
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Dry pasta absorbs about its weight in cooking water, so for my no-boil dry pasta recipes, I add about 80% water by weight of pasta to hydrate the pasta during baking. it helps to be sure no raw past is exposed00it should be under the surface. I also cover the pan for the first 60% of baking to ensure the pasta has plenty of water to absorb. This was my go to no-boil lasagna recipe for an annual dinner I coordinated.
Welp. I’ve got an eggplant in my fridge I need to use, I’ve got a ton of basil I need to use, and I’ve got 8oz of fresh mozz I need to use. I don’t have any ricotta, but I have some Rao’s vodka sauce, which i think will work just fine. So I guess this is dinner. Thanks Chrissy + Adam!
Thanks to this video dump and bake pasta recipes have become a staple in my kitchen. If you are lazy and single, this is such a godsent. So far spinach works amazingly (add a dash of cream cheese at the end) and any ready made pasta sauce is good as well (add some cream with the sauce). Next up I'll try mushrooms and cream.
I have heard pre-soaking in warm salty water for 45 minutes before you add it to the dish works well and doesn't require you to add more water to the dish before baking.
Well, I have only done a traditional Finnish "macaroni casserole" a couple of times (and it is good), and my recipe says first boil the macaroni as instructed in its packet. And frankly I feel more comfortable doing this because mixing cooked pasta with the minced fried meat and spices for baking is just more... comfortable and confident than doing it with hard uncooked pasta. And the one extra kettle to cook the pasta in and mix it with the other ingredients before dumping it in the oven dish is really almost no burden to wash :)
For the one pot approach, the all-time best approach would be to use a shallow dutch oven. Preferably ceramic coated not cast iron. You get the best of both worlds of being able to sauté ingredients beforehand and can throw it straight into the oven after that. 👍
I tried a one pan pasta dish before, where the pasta was cooked in the sauce as opposed to in water and added after. My main complaint was how strong the flavor of the pasta was in the finished dish. All that starch that usually comes off in the water and then most of it down the sink was in my sauce and I could taste it. Maybe not a big deal if your sauce is flavorful enough, or you're just into that flavor, but for me I think the extra dishes are worth it.
I really appreciate including both an eyeball-based approach and a more rigorous procedure. As an aerospace engineer pretending to know how to cook, I am definitely comforted by sturdy guardrails in the form of weight based measurements. But I definitely get there are many folks who'd prefer to avoid rigor unless actually neccessary (which honestly seems like a much less stressful way to live). There's also a point to be made that if you only follow the instructions and don't understand the underlying mechanism then you might not know when/how you need to modify the instructions due to unforseen factors (e.g. modifying dough hydration based on humidity). And that kind of intuition might come more naturally from the more loosey-goosey approach which seemingly neccitates an understanding or at least a feel for the underlying mechanism. That being said, at work we have strict requirements, controls, and procedures to keep our spacecraft and crew safe while on orbit... and I guess I feel more comfortable if my noodles are kept safe via that same level of technical rigor.
I haven't par boiled since the first time I did. The pasta was like wilted lettuce leaves that had been boiling for extra tenderness. I used the instructions and added more water btw. Great video as always
Made a fridge-cleaning baked pasta dish today and it was amazing. I didn't boil it just did the water and salt in the dish method so I can confirm it's a great idea for an easy delicious meal
In the cooking of any pasta, whether it is dried or fresh, is to "rehydrate" it, not to turn it into mush. There is plenty of liquid in the Ragu to rehydrate "al forno" pastas. If the pasta is dried commercial or artisan types, soaking it in lukewarm water for 30 minutes should do the trick. For fresh pasta, no need to soak. Just immerse in hot water and immediately remove. Chef Luciano Monosilio has a great video on this.
Totally agree with you. I was taught by my very Italian Great Aunt to never precook dried pasta. The only exception is stuffed pasta like shells that need to be a little pliable to add the filling.
Nice experiment as usual. I'd bet the more intense flavor comes from the extra salt you're adding. When you normally prepare pasta, some salt is indeed absorbed (adsorbed?) by the pasta, but most of it is left behind in the water or rinsed off. So perhaps try adding less? I found (I forget from where) the formula for dried pasta is: pasta needs 1.8x its weight in water, cooking happens above 180°F, and time depends on shape. The stove version for dried pasta is: 1. Throw dry pasta into empty pot (preferably a single layer). 2. Add just enough water to cover. Add a little salt (or not). Turn on the stove. 3. When the water gets to 180°F, start the timer. 4. Stir for the time on the package, or until all the water is absorbed. 5. Don't rinse. Add sauce. Now I see I have more experimenting to do...
I love how Adam basically gives us an abstract to his video up front.
No BS, no trying to hook you to the end, just “here’s what I found, and show you how I found it if you wanna stick around”
so nice, unlike other videos on youtube which either bombard you with baked in ads or they tell you their entire life story when you are just there for a quick tutorial on how to wire an outlet correctly
I mean that's the format he's been doing for years now
that's his style, thanks to his background in journalism
Since I moved to the US and learned about how essays are written in english, he probably is just following that exact method when he writes the script for his videos.
@@martinbogadomartinesi5135 Right, "inverted pyramid" structure.
Lets take a minute to appreciate Adam's commitment to time and dishwasher space saving.
He's like if Alton Brown had no fucks to give and kind of just wanted to eat good food before getting back to writing an unannounced scifi novel (or maybe I'm projecting).
I watch a lot of youtube chefs, but Adam is the only one whose recipes I actually follow along with from time to time. And every time I do, I find myself feeling like I did something wrong because it tastes *so* good despite how little work/prep was involved. Shoutout to the potato-leek soup for a few weeks ago that became an instant household favorite for date nights.
Adam, Kenji, and the man, the myth, the legend Chef John all mention saving dishes and time.
It's why i enjoy a panini maker with a bowled surface and silverpaper and olive oil. Awsome breakfast machine
For those of us that have to wash by hand, we thank him.
'Course someone with a Rem PFP would appreciate that. Classic.
I'm not sure if this is also the case in America, but here in the UK you can get jarred sauces which are sold as "Pasta Bake" sauces. They actually tell you to follow almost the exact same process you describe, put in the dry pasta, any additions like meat/veg/cheese, pour in the sauce, then half fill the jar with water and pour into the dish. And again, unsure if this is the case for the US but almost all dry lasagne sheets here say that you don't need to par-boil them before use!
Edit: a lot of replies assume this is a way to sell the same stuff at higher prices, but the pasta bake sauces are basically the same price as other jarred sauces, they're just slightly different kinds of sauce, most commonly the baked sauces contain cream, plus potentially other things like bacon or whatever.
I learned about the lasagne sheets the hard way - I was used to par-boil sheets to assemble the lasagne, until one day I had to use a different brand, which said it did not need previous parboiling. Nice, but I ran out of sauce at the top layer, it got a little less sauce than the rest and when the dish came out of the oven, the top was really tough and we had to discard some; the rest was delicious since I poured a lot of sauce at first.
Can speak for us Americans across the pond from you; we have no mention of needing to or not needing to par-boil dry lasagna sheets on our boxes.
@@geovannacampos6794 I think a potential fix for that is to either use more sauce or water down the existing amount of sauce to the point where you have enough.
I'm surprised we don't considering we have lots of prepackaged instant/one step foods like shake-n-bake or hamburger helper
So its just regular sauce, but with instructions telling you to add extra water
If you have trouble finding sodium citrate, you can add just enough lemon juice or citric acid solution to a bit of baking soda to fizz it all off. The reaction products of citric acid and baking soda are CO2 and sodium citrate. I've tried this for emulsifying a cheese sauce and it works fine.
Oooo thanks for that tip! Baking soda is so versatile. I knew the trick of baking the baking soda to get sodium carbonate, but I didn't know this. I even have a big bag of citric acid, so I can probably just use that with water instead of lemon.
Nice! Another great use for citric acid. I keep it on hand for canning but love to find ways to use it in other ways.
Both my parents worked shortly after the 2008 crash so I was responsible to cook the meals. As a lazy teenager I quickly discovered this on my own. I hated doing dishes, especially after cooking so this helped.
Laziness is the parent of ingenuity!
Not lazy, but efficient
98pp@@wasabisniffles
@@kamcorder3585but laziness is also a parent of efficiency......
For those times you do want to boil your pasta, you don't even need to keep the heat on. Bring your water to a boil, add the pasta, stir to make sure it doesn't stick together, then put on the lid, turn off the heat & let it sit for the desired cooking time. In my years of using this method, the pasta cooks without additional heat in about the same amount of time as if you were boiling it. This would also be a good Adam Ragusea experiment.
This is how I cook rice! I'll have to try it with pasta.
the texture goes wonky - have done it, no where as good as boiled then removed and drained. I just dont drink coffee from a coffee shop or save money in other ways
@@robine916 What proportions do you use? I tried that and my rice always comes out under cooked.
I take you don't use too much water? So there is no excess water that need to heat and energy just transfer to athmossphere via evaporation.
Certainly that is case with my pantrysoup (pasta and what ever ingredient you have in one little kettle boiled in low heat).
@@MeltedMask I don't cook the pasta in a large amount of water. I don't know the proportions right off the bat, but it's probably only 6-8 cups of water if that, for a 12-16 oz box of pasta.
This is why I love your work, Adam - you consider the stuff that surrounds cooking (the buying, the cleanup, the will-the-kids-eat-it) in a way that other recipe purveyors just don’t. In my experience, the actual active cooking time is always less than the prep and cleanup. A recipe is no use if I don’t have time to make it and reset my kitchen afterwards. I really care about any steps that save on dishes (I’m British and we “do dishes” as much as “washing up”; not sure if I’m alone in this?). So: thank you!
I literally just left the grocery store with all the ingredients for a pasta bake tonight and I see this. I feel this must be a sign from the universe itself that I have been making things unnecessarily complicated in the kitchen
How did it go?
🤔
Same lol never went to the store to buy fresh mozzarella this fast.
Pretty sure its a sign from Adam Ragusea about in complicating your cooking. Half his videos involve these tips
I did as well, turned out rly good. Definitely won’t be shy of the water next time (my sauce was a bit thick), the pasta rly absorb it all up
I think the reason why this dishes use parboiled pasta is because they were originally a method of using up leftover plain boiled pasta, same way as "leftovers pie" is supposed to be topped with leftover, not freshly made mashed potatoes
No wonder I find Shepherd's Pies to be better with refrigerated mash as opposed to fresh mash.
Given that as the origin of most casseroles, I find this equally likely to his theory. It's such a shame how rarely people use leftovers today. I see all these people advocating for these tiny recipes that leave you hungry and with no leftovers, when the real way to be efficient is to make one gigantic meal you can eat over the course of a few days. You don't even have to skimp on variety, just make a few things and have simple meals to fill in the gaps, a day with fried eggs for breakfast and leftover spaghetti for dinner, the next day cereal for breakfast and leftover shepherds pie for dinner.
@@Great_Olaf5 been doing rolling stews, fix stew with meat and veggies in a large pot, dip out some into a saucepan and add the starch to it... reheating starches and sugar tend to cut the life of a rolling stew...and the sweet sauces added with pasta/rice/taters/oatmeal and so on... to the stew half... and cooked enough to cook the starch of choice... the amount of fluid (stew juices) can be adjusted for a solid mass like a casserole or remain a bit like enhanced stew with extra fluids... the rolling stew can usually be frozen without starches in it, ice damages the starchy components of a stew.
@@Great_Olaf5 Leftovers is manna from heaven.
I LOVE that there's no weird music, intro, stuff and stuff before getting to the subject. It's one of the first things I noticed positively about Adam Ragusea and I still appreciate to this day.
Adam tops off his baked pasta dishes with white wine
You must be new here lol
Adam also tops off his white wine with some more white wine.
@@SexyDalton This whole thread is making me giggle.
It's to balance the heterogeneity of course
@@nBasedAce why I put win into my food and not my mouth
I really appreciate the addition of a segment where you find the exact measurements of things you say to eyeball- I really struggle to do stuff without clear directions, and it makes your recipes so much more accessible to me. Thank you!
Same here. I can appreciate that some things can just be eyeballed, but if I don't have prior experience to guide me, then I need measurements so I know what I'm aiming for! Plus, the science of it is genuinely interesting to me.
Another pasta hack is no-drain stovetop pasta. You can cook it like rice. Add the dry pasta to a pan and add about enough water to cover. Bring to a boil then simmer until it's done. Ideally there should be just a little starchy liquid left after cooking which is great mixed with any sauce.
But I already cook rice like I do pasta...
Why not just skip the extra step and just cook pasta *in* the tomato sauce?
@@InShortSight this is the most cursed thing I've ever read
that would be hilarious to see Adam cook his rice like pasta and his pasta like rice
Note: When you cook pasta like rice, it has much much more concentrated starch left in it, rather than poured out with the liquid; so its gonna be starchier this way and most folks probs wont even notice.
I only mention this cuz my fiance can 100% tell the diff and hates that slightly starchier pasta you get when you dont drain most the starchy pasta water
Notably, he normally conserves some of the boil water for the sauce all the same, its just too much starch if its all the starch from the boil water.
I am speechless. Not only did you answer all of my questions before I could even ask, this was like finally being able to experience the "what if" of cooking without me wasting food. Beautiful work.
I felt the same way. I did his no par boil lasagna, and before hand said "well, if it comes out poorly its just pasta and sauce so I'm sure it's fine either way?" Adam's fool proof lasagna came out just as good as Babishs fancy stuff that was more costly in $$$ and in time. Both were good but for something that took me 15 mins to make over an entire afternoon? I'll take Adam's 9 times out of 10 lol
Science!
I think another reason that you see this is stuffed pasta, like shells or manicotti. You just cannot stuff a raw shell or manicotta. And those are some of the most common baked dishes still around.
Mentioned this in my own comment before I scrolled down and found this one.
When making stuffed shells, you gotta parboil the shells; they'll just snap if you try to stuff them dry, and even if you somehow manage to stuff them without breaking them, they'll just steal the water out of their filling anyways during the bake because of osmosis.
Good point! Though I have successfully stuffed dried shells before, FWIW.
@@aragusea Thanks Ragussy
@@mummer7337😐
yes this makes a lot of sense for stuffed pasta dishes, it's possible to stuff dry shells with very liquidy filling but ime that makes the filling a bit bland and gummy, as opposed to stuffing cooked shells with thicker or chunkier fillings
Years of experience watching Adam's videos yet in only a week, I've managed to squeeze in 17 of his podcasts into my commute. If you haven't discovered them yet, I find them exponentially superior to the simpler cooking vids like this one, (which I love, don't get me wrong). In his pods, he simply breaks out into tangents that I don't think even he plans for. They're so very entertaining and I just can't get enough. I guess I'm within my "personality, subject and moment" spectrum with him.
your 17 hour commute sounds hellish lol
@@enter_eagle Even if that's 7 days worth, it's still over an hour each way. And if not, it's more than 3 hours total daily.
The bravery of Adam to shove his hand right under the broiler in a hot oven to deposit some cheese
finally someone noticed! I was on the edge of my seat there
I think a lot of chef is not afraid of touching hot stuff. Plus, if your hand is wet, the water will quickly evaporate to prevent you from burn.
He mention before that his fingers is numb enough to not feels burn
(Brits call it a grill)
@@Shoob__ thank you lolll
I love the fact you told us all the information in the first MINUTE, I absolutely hate when YTs hide their information over a 20 minute video to make you “watch it all”
This channel has become one of my favourites 😍
Ironically his style makes me watch the full video even though the information is given at the start. Respecting my time is one great way to get me to trust you with it, so by putting the most important bits at the front I trust that there'll be more gold down the line. And there usually is 😂
I think the reason parboiling pasta is such a common thing in basically all baked pasta recipes is just because it's good practice.
Cooking it at least part of the way through guarantees that you don't have any potentially un(der)cooked pasta.
It's not because it's necessary, it's because it's a safety net.
I quite enjoy that you are as committed, if not more, as I am to getting as few dishes dirty as possible. I recently tried the spanish omelette and my tactic is to have it in the frying pan a bit longer before flipping, that way I can reuse the plate when serving. To myself. Cooking is way more fun when you do it for just yourself, nobody will have to suffer through the experiments.
The main difference with par-boiling and using raw dry pasta is starch: par-boiling reduces the amount of starch, as it gets left in the cooking water. Raw pasta releases all possible starch in the final bake. That can be ok for some recipes, not so ok for others.
I'm fairly sure he (or someone) did a video on that, and found that the actual amount of starch lost to the cooking water was negligible.
@@Great_Olaf5 I don't think it is that low starch content. It thickens sauces pretty well. And if you can use it to thicken sauces it should work for Baked dishes aswell. Would be pretty interested in any results tho!
@@Great_Olaf5 Are you sure? Pasta water definitely has a good amount of starch in it. That's why you save it to help emulsify things in your sauces. If it had negligible starch I'd think it wouldn't be any better than regular water for that purpose.
@@Great_Olaf5 is it possible you’ve got this mixed up with his estimates of how much starch you wash off when you rinse pasta before eating? That one *was* negligible if I recall.
@@OrWhatWeHave That might be it.
I just wanted to say i really appreciate you taking the time to make a formula for the people that like guidelines and numbers. I know a lot of cooking channels will just write us off and tell us to learn how to get used adjusting recipes by taste, but I always appreciate those that also list estimated quantities as well :)
Once again, love your methodology and thinking process. So much easier to understand and appreciate your perspective. Can't wait for the next video!
That's exactly my thought. Adam is like the passionate teacher we all had at some point in our life, making us interested and curious, explained whys and hows. This guy fucking rocks. Now excuse me but I need to go back drinking my white wine.
I just want to thank you for your fully fledged subtitles, I and I'm sure many people really appreciate it
YES, preach king. no more extra steps to make your dish taste 5% better. we home cooks just dont need it!!
Honestly I would not at all mind if you put out another video just making more baked pasta dishes, with this method. Kind of like a buzzfeed tasty "5 recipes" compilation.
I would never watch a top 5 mass produced liquid manure videos trash channels like buzzfeed make but Adams I would.
And honestly I wouldn’t mind if Adam invited me to dinner as his taster
Well, I suppose one of the blessings of pasta and baked pasta in particular is that it is more of a method than a recipe - try combinations that you like and see which taste the best for you. Using the method in the video you just need rough proportions of liquid ingredients to pasta, accounting for liquid which will be expressed by ingredients like spinach of zucchini.
I want to see large stuffed shells with this method. Can't imagine it working. How would you stuff the cheese into the shells without cooking them? They'd break. Or those big tube pastas that you also stuff.
@@recoveringsoul755 I'd imagine you'd kind of want to inject it, like you might do with a fragile pastry.
You can do this to non-baked dishes as well, you get more of that nice crunch that way!
Where does lasagna lie on the baked spectrum? 😅
Crunch seems like the ultimate reason NOT to do this.
@@HellecticMojo there is no part of a pasta dish that wants to be crunchy I don't know what they're on about.
@@gavinc6366 Have you ever seen non-baked lasagna?
Another great tip I can easily apply to my own cooking right away. And no unnecessary sticking to tradition just for the sake of it. This is why I love your channel. Thanks, Adam!
See, I wish more videos were structured like this. You and Ethan both say “here’s the result I came up with, here’s what you need to know. If you want to see how I did it, stick around.” That makes me watch the whole video. Otherwise I’m skimming through the video looking for your succinct conclusion.
For eggplants, I nearly always prefer to cut and salt them at least an hour but ideally the evening before using them. Reduces the water so they seem to cook faster and improves the taste
A pair of caveats.
when making Stuffed Shells, you ABSOLUTELY need to parboil the shells before assembly and baking so that they can bend enough to stuff, as opposed to snapping like dry pasta tends to be want to do!
When making Lasagna with dry noodles, as it's a structured dish, it's recommended that you parboil it if you choose to not water the sauce down or use a watery sauce; water has a hard time penetrating into a structured dish when added directly like shown here, and the pasta noodles will steal some of the water from the sauce and filling that they're coated in or adjacent to if they're not par-boiled.
Not true. We ONLY use dry noodles in our lasagna now. The trick is to let it sit in the fridge for a least a day. The longer it sits the more tender it becomes. I like it after around 3 days of a presoaking. No added water, just a little extra sauce. Much more creamy and rich in a flavour. Makes for a much more unified lasagna in general, its also easier to cut and melts in your mouth.
My family never parboiled dry lasagna sheets. I didn't even know about parboiling them until later in life. You can absolutely skip it, but you need to bake the lasagna for longer. We usually give it an hour in the oven: 45--50 minutes covered with foil, the remaining 10-15 uncovered to crisp up the top (the top would be way too dry if cooked uncovered for that long).
Nah bro, lasagna works just fine with raw sheets
This is what it really comes down to is how long you're willing to let your thing cook for... It takes time to boil off the water and raise the temperature of the dish.
And you definitely have to add a lot more sauce if your noodles are not boiled
I just bought a house that doesn't have a dishwasher. It's made me realize that I actually like hand washing dishes for the first time in my life, and I won't be buying a dishwasher. As someone who makes a lot of pasta dishes, this video has been yet another revelation, and I cannot thank you enough for it!
Oh, I hate it so much. Now I'm moving to a place with a dishwasher and it's great.
I would probably find it sorta fun (as long as its my own dishes) but dishwashers save water too
I make a baked variation on your mac and cheese about once a quarter for some function or another, and not having to boil the pasta sounds awesome!! I'll probably still make the cheese sauce in another vessel because I'm scared of putting a casserole dish on the stove, but one fewer dirty pot is always appreciated!
This also works for one pan pasta dishes that are cooked. Just make a sauce with tomatoes, vegetables and possibly meat, throw in pasta and a bit more water and some salt and slowly cook it.
7:30 And right here, I find the reason that I prefer your cooking/recipe vids to Chef Johns:
In his Stroganoff video, out this week -- it's apparently Stroganoff week; I've seen three so far -- he says something that I interpreted as "you can decide if it's cooked enough based on your own experience".
You almost never say that; you explain *how to tell*. A subtle but impotant difference; your approach leaves lots of maneuvering room for cooks who have the experience, while providing more support to those who are still acquiring it. Like me. Now if only I didn't live in a house with two eaters even more finicky than me.
Continuing in-line suggestions about avoiding/substituting things like pork, squash and eggplant, and the cruciferous trilogy of broccoli, cauliflower and brussels, deadly to the lower GI of a statistically significant number of people, will remain cheerfully accepted.
Facts Adam is the RUclips cooking GOAT
Forever now, so many years, I've made veggies lasagna< I always put the veggies and cheeses and pasta in together and bake it and it works every time. No pre boiling!!
Good tipp with the extra water! I've always just gone with uncooked pasta for bakes, but I aways have that extra layer being too hard unless I drowned it in way to much sauce.
That fridge cleaning pasta dish is a game changer. I gotta try that out!
Cooked spag last week. Placed the pasta directly into the pan of sauce which I watered down. I got nervous at first cause it took longer to cook. It's harder to stir too and you have to really watch it in case the pasta would stick to each other. The water evaporated too making the sauce too thick. I could've just added more water though but been adding so much at that point. It works but it's scary at first and might involve a lot of stirring than just pre-boiling the pasta instead.
My British friend made a lasagna with uncooked pasta-sheets. It was crunchy all the way through as it was mainly uncooked union, unseasoned mince meat and like ½ a small tube of tomato paste, with grates questionable packaged cheese on top. It was the most awful dish I ever ate. I always get best results by quickly dipping pasta sheets in boiling water (no need to go soft) and go into a beautiful, well flavored and seasoned tomato sauce, add cheese meat and into the oven.
But I look forward to trying more dishes like this Adam Ragusea! It look delicious, thank you so much for this!
Parboiling pasta could stem for a need to remove excess starch, kind of like rinsing rice. Idk if that's true, but I do also prefer the heterogeneity parboiling offers.
I've been doing this for years, dry pasta mixed with twice it's weight in 'stock' (water, wine, actual stock, pesto, sauce, literally anything can work), add whatever inclusions you want, veggies, meat, cheese etc. Cook it covered for 30 mins, uncover, stir and finish for 10.
Mind bendingly easy way to feed the family.
My guess for why it's common to preboil the pasta, is that it just seems like the safer option when coming up with recipes. The potential to over or underdo it with the water might mean putting your entire dinner at risk.
Once you know your recipe, this is definitely the superior option though.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that this video has changed my life for the better. I'm a new dad and my wife and I have been behind on taking care of ourselves for a bit, this technique has re introduced home cooked meals for us when they seemed impossible. Thank you Adam!
You are saving me prescious time for dorm cooking with this, now I know I can literally ignore preboiling and save a lot of time on washing the dishes.
I figured this out years ago. Mostly because my lasagna was always a little soggy or than I wanted amd the noodles were mushy (I like a couple of layers of fresh zucchini in among the stuff). Figured I'd let the zucchini water cook the noodles and I was right. Glad I'm not the only one
Hey Adam, I've never really enjoyed making very many baked pasta dishes except for twice-baked lasagna and finishing a macaroni and cheese in the oven with a crispy bread crumb top (but even now I prefer to make the topping separately to avoid gratinization). I've always felt like I was playing chicken with the toothsomeness of the pasta during a bake and it always ends up either a bit too al dente or a bit too mushy. I don't often cook pasta by time but rather by feel and taste, which isn't something you can really do all that well with baked pastas.
Nor can I really control the consistency of a baked pasta dish's sauce and individual elements while working around bits of still-cooking pasta, different pastas - shape, brand, etc - take in different amounts of liquid and not many recipes agree with how much liquid you need to get fully done pasta at the end without making it either too soupy or too dry.
I've often found myself baking the ingredients of a pasta bake separately from the pasta itself with a tad more wet ingredients since there's no pasta to absorb the liquid, then finishing the pasta in the resulting sauce and then topping individual portions with bits of the browned top and 'fillings', more like a traditional pasta. That has always felt surefire to me, takes out the hassle of trying to clock in everything so it comes out perfectly while getting that deep, roasted in the oven flavor that baked pasta often gets. That and always ends up with about the same amount of dishes, except maybe an extra pot that I cooked and then finished the pasta in.
What do you think?
It's not unheard of for me to do this, too, especially in dishes that will sit in the fridge for a day or two as leftovers. Even if you *do* get it perfect out of the oven, once you toss it into the fridge, the pasta just continues to absorb stuff and get mushier and mushier. Keeping everything separated makes the dish much more palatable as a leftover.
THIS. I totally agree!
Since you're in Eastern Tennessee now there's an event in April that you might be interested in. Every year there's the Polk County Ramp Tramp Festival in Reliance, TN. This year it's on April 21-22. It seems like something you might be interested in.
I like how Adam is slowly but surely migrating everything over to the metric system. (I’m American by the way, but I work in Canada a lot so I thinKMetric)
Thanks for the video Adam! I've always thought it was unnecessary to parboil dry pasta for baked dishes. I just never got around to experimenting to find out. Also, a lot of people simply will not take the time to pre-boil pasta and even will make another meal choice because they don't want to bother boiling a large pot of water. I realize that fact may be hard to understand for Italian-Americans. With this recipe, perhaps more busy home cooks will make more pasta dishes and it has the potential to both clean out the fridge AND save them time in meal prep.
Baked pasta dishes were always a use for leftover pasta in our household. If mom gave out a recipe she would tell you to parboil it to mimic the leftover component
You should check out a Greek baked pasta dish called Giouvetsi. You don't boil the pasta, just cook the meat, add tomato sauce, bring to a boil, and add orzo pasta and bake in the oven.
When I've tried cooking pasta in the sauce I find I get a gummy pasty sauce that just doesn't work for me, even with extra liquid. I parboil pasta because I just get more consistent results
This.
It also makes the tummy gassier.
@@rob6850 omg thank you for this I thought it was just happened stance my boyfriend and I had to change the sheets after eating Adam's bake only lasagna cuz we turned into the wind section of an orchestra afterwards 🤣🤣🤣
I started doing this a few years ago and its been amazing! Saves on dishes and I love that the pasta gets to cook in the flavor entirely as opposed to just part of the time
I love Adam's commitment to avoiding washing more dishes. 😂
Thank you Adam, another excellent post again. For part 2, you should do test of 225gm dry pasta and x vol of water instead of eye balling. Then you can vary x+-50ml water etc and see how it turns out. Then you can report on the ideal vol of water to use. I think evaporation in oven may be different to pan on stove.
Adam Ragusea has low key become the dad of RUclips
Easily the best cooking channel on RUclips. You're the sole reason I started cooking at home. Thank you so much, Adam.
Well darn it, I wish this had been released 12 hours ago when I made a pasta bake! I'll try it next time.
What I love about these videos is that I learn to make food without following recipes, I just take the general principles and my food is good now. Feels great
Not sure how much time this really saves given I typically boil the pasta whilst making the sauce. Pre-boiled pasta also only really needs to bake for as long as it takes to brown on the top, or you can just put it under the grill to brown. A pasta water pot is also just about the easiest thing to clean.
he already makes this point
I feel you, man. I never preboiled my store bought lasagna sheets. I just pre soaked them in a bit of warm water and added to the lasagna layers as usual. It worked wonders!
I don't even soak them.
Why i boil my cutting board instead of my pasta
When we were jarring up our own tomatoes, since they ended up having so much liquid and you don't really want (or need) to cook fresh tomatoes very long pasta can go right in the dish before baking (lasagna) or after it comes to a boil (spaghetti). I know you can squish out or pour off the liquid but I want to keep the juice even if its separated out; give it a good shake and it's all back together.
I'll have to try this. Idk if I trust it tho lol I've been boiling pasta for damn near 20 years now
Love your style and presentation. Makes everything much more approachable
2 words pasta water. Especially when you make Mac & Cheese. If you use the boiled pasta water in tandem with evaporated milk you'll never need to make another roux ever again...use the butter for making the bread crumbs taste better.
Adam you continuiously blow me away with how much care and analysis goes into these videos, god you cover so much!
0:50 - done with the video. Thank you :)
No it isn't.
This is why you are the king. Great experiments and also questioning the typical or usual ways. Always ask why. And people are definitely comforted by "well that's how it's always been done."
Adam, can you talk about the saturation of fats in things like coconut and avocado (and their respective oils)? I did an investigation in high school and found that they were sometimes more saturated than lard, and yet they are hailed as incredibly healthy. Why so when they are definitely full of fat, and unhealthy fat at that?
Fat has had a hard time for a long time, but usually isn't that bad if used in moderation or if used in a low carb diet as your new fuel source.
If you look at food studies on MCTs and other things that deal with fat including saturated fats you can find a lot of positive things.
It's because the fat is healthy not unhealthy. Saturation isn't the only property of a fat and it's those other properties that make coconut oil healthy and lard less so
@@sagetmaster4 Avocado oil is healthy, coconut oil is very much not. At least not for eating. Thats why its solid at room temperature.
@@cinuxx "solid fats are bad" is an oversimplification.
I mean, lard is not a bad fat in any way really.
Around the 5 minute mark I was thinking that I should test how much water pasta absorbs so I would not have to preboil it anymore. I didn't know Adam was going to do the test for me at 8 minute mark, saved me a ton of time, thanks dude!
can i boil my pasta in white wine?
😅😂😅
I really like that Adam puts out what he found out in the first minute of a video, so classy
The last recipe is actually kinda surprising given that there was a few "MICROWAVE" food we have here in 711 convenient store that sell "exactly" like that, raw pasta noodles with Cheese and other toppings and then microwave it for a few minutes and you got yourself a lunch/dinner.
You really are out here on the front lines, breaking new ground in the regular old kitchen. I salute you for this idea, Adam.
I've never boiled lasagna sheets before baking the lasagna. No one I know has. No extra water or extra salt either, I've never felt any need for those.
Same here. Never done that in my life, never had any issues.
appreciate the detailed explanations of the shortcuts you take and the breakdown of the formula for what you just eyeball, I feel like a lot of people take for granted that they know generally what good amounts for things look like and it's great to have a better understanding until I get to that point
Now, you have to carefully boil your pasta in a pot and then... NO!
NOoOoOoO!!! It's not loud enough unless your speaker cracks
I tried this with a large (16 oz?) can of tomato sauce, cooked ground pork, maybe 8 oz of dried pasta, and a lot of cheese. I used a grated cheese mix I bought from the store and some shaker parmesan. I baked it for about half an hour with the lid on to begin, and maybe another 20 minutes with it off. It turned out really good.
Now I am trying it again, this time with tomato sauce I made using tomato paste, water, and herbs. I've never actually made tomato sauce from scratch like this from scratch. Another difference this time is that I am using some roasted chicken which I picked off of the bones instead of using ground pork. Also, this time I am not cooking it with the lid on because I want to see what happens if I don't. I put in a little extra water as well. It is now in the oven, so I will see how it turns out soon.
the pasta exposed to the oven air gts all dry and burnt.. no thanks
I love the crispy parts 😂
@@anarchyneverdies3567 The crispy, cheesy parts are the best parts imo. I need some ziti now..
Thats why you add the extra water and cover with a lid like he said bozo
I really like the way you quickly explained the method without requiring the viewers to watch the whole video if they are in a hurry. i ended up watching the whole video because it was so entertaining anyway.
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I have always used Dry Pasta Sheets for my Lasagna w/o preboiling them and I have never had any complaints, In fact, it is usually easier to dish out.
The Waffle House has found its new host.
The waffle house has found it's new host
Dry pasta absorbs about its weight in cooking water, so for my no-boil dry pasta recipes, I add about 80% water by weight of pasta to hydrate the pasta during baking. it helps to be sure no raw past is exposed00it should be under the surface. I also cover the pan for the first 60% of baking to ensure the pasta has plenty of water to absorb. This was my go to no-boil lasagna recipe for an annual dinner I coordinated.
Welp. I’ve got an eggplant in my fridge I need to use, I’ve got a ton of basil I need to use, and I’ve got 8oz of fresh mozz I need to use. I don’t have any ricotta, but I have some Rao’s vodka sauce, which i think will work just fine. So I guess this is dinner. Thanks Chrissy + Adam!
Thanks to this video dump and bake pasta recipes have become a staple in my kitchen. If you are lazy and single, this is such a godsent. So far spinach works amazingly (add a dash of cream cheese at the end) and any ready made pasta sauce is good as well (add some cream with the sauce). Next up I'll try mushrooms and cream.
I have heard pre-soaking in warm salty water for 45 minutes before you add it to the dish works well and doesn't require you to add more water to the dish before baking.
I definitely notice the big jump in breadth and depth afforded by the slower upload schedule. Really love this format, Adam!
Well, I have only done a traditional Finnish "macaroni casserole" a couple of times (and it is good), and my recipe says first boil the macaroni as instructed in its packet. And frankly I feel more comfortable doing this because mixing cooked pasta with the minced fried meat and spices for baking is just more... comfortable and confident than doing it with hard uncooked pasta. And the one extra kettle to cook the pasta in and mix it with the other ingredients before dumping it in the oven dish is really almost no burden to wash :)
For the one pot approach, the all-time best approach would be to use a shallow dutch oven. Preferably ceramic coated not cast iron.
You get the best of both worlds of being able to sauté ingredients beforehand and can throw it straight into the oven after that. 👍
I tried a one pan pasta dish before, where the pasta was cooked in the sauce as opposed to in water and added after. My main complaint was how strong the flavor of the pasta was in the finished dish. All that starch that usually comes off in the water and then most of it down the sink was in my sauce and I could taste it. Maybe not a big deal if your sauce is flavorful enough, or you're just into that flavor, but for me I think the extra dishes are worth it.
I really appreciate including both an eyeball-based approach and a more rigorous procedure. As an aerospace engineer pretending to know how to cook, I am definitely comforted by sturdy guardrails in the form of weight based measurements. But I definitely get there are many folks who'd prefer to avoid rigor unless actually neccessary (which honestly seems like a much less stressful way to live).
There's also a point to be made that if you only follow the instructions and don't understand the underlying mechanism then you might not know when/how you need to modify the instructions due to unforseen factors (e.g. modifying dough hydration based on humidity). And that kind of intuition might come more naturally from the more loosey-goosey approach which seemingly neccitates an understanding or at least a feel for the underlying mechanism. That being said, at work we have strict requirements, controls, and procedures to keep our spacecraft and crew safe while on orbit... and I guess I feel more comfortable if my noodles are kept safe via that same level of technical rigor.
I haven't par boiled since the first time I did. The pasta was like wilted lettuce leaves that had been boiling for extra tenderness. I used the instructions and added more water btw. Great video as always
Made a fridge-cleaning baked pasta dish today and it was amazing. I didn't boil it just did the water and salt in the dish method so I can confirm it's a great idea for an easy delicious meal
In the cooking of any pasta, whether it is dried or fresh, is to "rehydrate" it, not to turn it into mush.
There is plenty of liquid in the Ragu to rehydrate "al forno" pastas. If the pasta is dried commercial or artisan types, soaking it in lukewarm water for 30 minutes should do the trick.
For fresh pasta, no need to soak. Just immerse in hot water and immediately remove.
Chef Luciano Monosilio has a great video on this.
Totally agree with you. I was taught by my very Italian Great Aunt to never precook dried pasta. The only exception is stuffed pasta like shells that need to be a little pliable to add the filling.
Nice experiment as usual. I'd bet the more intense flavor comes from the extra salt you're adding. When you normally prepare pasta, some salt is indeed absorbed (adsorbed?) by the pasta, but most of it is left behind in the water or rinsed off. So perhaps try adding less?
I found (I forget from where) the formula for dried pasta is: pasta needs 1.8x its weight in water, cooking happens above 180°F, and time depends on shape.
The stove version for dried pasta is:
1. Throw dry pasta into empty pot (preferably a single layer).
2. Add just enough water to cover. Add a little salt (or not). Turn on the stove.
3. When the water gets to 180°F, start the timer.
4. Stir for the time on the package, or until all the water is absorbed.
5. Don't rinse. Add sauce.
Now I see I have more experimenting to do...
I always appreciate Adam's perspective in his videos. I don't always agree, but it's nice to have a chance to look at things differently!