For those of you who serve pasta (linguine, for example, not lasagne or other assembled and baked pasta dishes), do you cook it as it’s ordered or do you partially cook large amounts of pasta ahead of time and then drop into boiling water for a few minutes as it’s ordered?
Both methods of course have their pros and cons, just wondering what others have found works best for them.
Thanks.
We sell up to 30 or so orders of spaghetti or fettucini each evening and do the “par-cooked” method. We’ll cook to slightly underdone, give a quick shock ( which I know can be frowned on by others, but it’s working for our place ) and then portion (9oz), into cheap sandwich baggies and chill.
On order they get dumped into the simmering pasta pot water for maybe 90 seconds, and “fresh” made pasta is on the table in no time.
Get a salad spinner to shake off the excess water…Then your “great” sauce is not diluted…
Same as deacon here, we stricty use barilla because it seems impossible to overcook…
I can’t see how one can cook FACTORY MADE pasta to order. Especially in a place with high volume. I’ve even worked at high end places that precook their Barilla VERY al dente, spread out on a sheet pan and refer. Some have even rinsed it, but that is becoming rare.
Now, fresh made pasta is always cooked to order.
Just make sure the first cooking is al dente…even less cooked than al dente. Americans like their pasta cooked more than in Italy where AL DENTE IS BIG TIME AL DENTE.
Lol, I like most of your posts Royce, but I just can’t get on board with this one. :roll:
Thanks for all the responses. Seems like pre-cooking is the way to go.