How to cook pasta al dente ? How many minutes for al dente ?

What is the best way how to cook pasta to make it al dente ? How many minutes of cooking are enough to make pasta al dente ?

The cooking time of pasta depends on the variety of pasta you have. It is different for spagetti, penne, tagliatelle etc.

Al dente pasta is firm when bitten without being hard. Proper al dente pasta have a little resistance when you bite into it. Many people like pasta to be less al dente, but some people like pasta to be more al dente.

In Italy, when pasta is cooked until soft, it is called "stracotto", what means it is overcooked.

The general advice how to cook pasta al dente is to cook it 1-2 minutes less than is the recommended cooking time written on the packaging.

You should mind that pasta will get a bit softer after you stop boiling it.

It happens because the temperature of pasta is still quite high at that time.

So you should stop boiling your pasta a couple of moments before it is soft enough.

Pasta can be easily overcooked or but also easily undercooked.

You have to have some pasta cooking experience to cook a pasta al dente.

You have to practice the pasta-cooking for a few times to learn how to cook it al dente.

In Italy, al dente is considered to be the ideal consistency for pasta.

They say, there is nothing worse than overcooked pasta :)