Cooking times and the literal mind

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I Cook pasta about 10 minutes but it still becomes sticky when it waits in the refrigerator

Cooking is more of an art than a science. I've never found times to be accurate.

For pasta, put some salt and some olive oil in the water you will cook it in. This helps keep the pasta from sticking to itself. Drain in a colander, toss it a bit and then put it back in the pot it was boiled in with the lid on to keep it warm while you finish up the sauce.

I just test the pasta by taking a bit out and chewing on it. I like pasta al dente, but my husband likes it soft, so I have to try for the middle.

^ You're def. right, it's similar to art. Hmm, i put oil in after i finish cooking since my mom always makes it like that. Maybe i'll try putting it in earlier.

The sauce won't stick very well if there is oil on the pasta.

I have never had a problem with it sticking if I had enough water at a high boil. I prefer to have enough water boiling that it won't stop boiling when I add the pasta. A vigorous boil, by itself, should keep it all moving so that it won't stick together. If that's not enough, stir it a few times, especially if it stops boiling when you add the pasta to the water.

The sauce should be completely ready to go when the pasta is finished. Many people will take the pasta off the stove a minute early, add a bit of water from the pasta to the sauce as well as the pasta itself so that the sauce will thicken from the starch in the pasta, and then let the pasta finish in the sauce.

Perhaps it is the waiting for the sauce that is causing it to stick. Rinsing the pasta in cold water is not considered to be the right way of doing it, but on those very rare occasions when I cook it in advance (probably once every ten years), I rinse it off to stop the cooking action.

For me, I think it's more of a need to follow instructions and difficulty making a judgement call when it's in the grey area.

In my case I force it to be scientific. I won't use other people's recipes as they are, I modify them till they look more like the scientific protocols I used when I was working. I use digital scales - including a sensitive gram scale - for measuring out most things. Temperature control isn't very tight because domestic cookers are horribly inaccurate, but by trial-and-error with the same cooker, the same containers and a digital timer, I can get reproducible, adequate results.

I've long been familiar with the fact that recommended cooking times in "normal" recipes can be inaccurate and very often underestimates. I also like to reduce the cooking temperature of some recipes, to reduce the risk of generating acrylamide and other carcinogens, and to keep the heat and steam output down when the weather's hot, so I often have to increase the time to compensate, and to cook new things by inspection until I've discovered what parameters work best for me. Like most activities, blindly following other people's instructions causes me to screw up, so as usual I do it my way and it usually turns out very well.

All of your suggestions are spot on. I do have trouble getting the various parts of a dinner ready at the same time.

I use cooking-times as advised guidelines. I've long developed a sixth-sense (which is usually correct) of when food is cooked esp. considering that most of the food I cook is from scratch, and hence an absence of posted preparation guidelines.

I always get nervous reading cooking/baking instructions. I scan through the text just to realize that I HAVE to read it and concentrate if I want a result.
That wasn't the question.

Yes, I take those written times very seriously. Maybe because it stresses me I prefer to cook easy stuff, in a repeated cycle, I guess.

Feels to me like it's a matter of concentration or the pain of having to stick to numbers and letters. Where is the love??
I'm learning to bridge that hole.

Thanks for the topic. I am amazed that people talk about things I usually try to hide.

I need to follow recipes. And I’m not very imaginative with meal planning. That was one of the difficult areas of raising a child! Trying to make healthy, varied meals.

On a side note, I have some old cookbooks of my mothers. They don’t say at what temperature to cook things or for how long. They indicate to use a warm oven and cook until golden brown. Talk about sitting, staring at the oven!

I still remember the best spaghetti sauce I ever made. I think it was better than any spaghetti sauce I've ever eaten, not only my spaghetti sauce.

It was during the summer of 1978 when I was living in a rather old house that was torn down in about 1980 or 1981. The stove in the kitchen wasn't level and so any oil or grease in your frying pan ran over to one side.

One Saturday afternoon, I started the sauce by browning ground beef in the skillet. I was really early and wasn't in a big hurry, so I let it brown at lower heat than normal. It took about 45 to 60 minutes just to brown the ground beef. All the time, the grease from the ground beef ran over to the side and so the ground beef itself wasn't cooking in grease. It was a very dry browning.

Once browned, I added spices and tomato sauce and things went normally from there.

I've tried to duplicate that sauce a few times but it has never worked that well again.

I do this too! I'm getting used to the idea of looking at food when it's at the end of its cooking time and trying to determine if it's 'done' to my standards (I like things well done a lot of the time). At first, it seemed wrong because if it's got a specific time to be cooked in I felt it should be done by then .

I used to struggle with following recipes- they seemed to 'jump' from one step to the next to me. I've started re-writing them with the missing steps in e.g. Get the bowl, then add the flour. It's much less stressful for me .

The best spaghetti sauce I have ever made was really super and I haven't been able to reproduce it either. It had fresh basil from the garden that I had grown. I thought that was what made it so delicious, but my efforts at replicating this have been futile.

To take something "literally" means "take it how it is written".

Like if someone tells you that her friend "died laughing" you don't give your condolences and ask "when is the funeral".

Instructions for cooking are supposed to be taken "literally".

But yes, the time lengths are often bs.

Pasta is supposed to take five minutes, and it usually takes eight to ten minutes.

And rice is supposed to take 15 minutes, and it usually takes over 20 minutes.

Rice takes longer the more you're making, I have found, even if the ratio of water to rice remains the same.

I bought a computer controlled rice pot so I can cook other things while the rice cooks. It does a great job!

I've, many times, cooked potatoes in a microwave via constantly re-opening the door and poking an item of cutlery in the potato to see if it's sufficiently soft.