Seawater is two teaspoons salt per cup of water. That’s a little more than half a cup of salt per gallon of water. That is an unhealthy amount of salt.
I read that quote regularly. Any clue who it originates from? I think it’s a romantic overstatement and does not hold as a general pasta rule. Salty pasta water is needed when you use a sauce or a pesto that has little salt in it. However, when using a particularly salty sauce or pesto, your end result can easily turn out too salty, if you put too much salt in the pasta water. When I make japanese miso-butter pasta for example, I don’t put any salt in the boiling water, because combined with the miso-butter, that would make the end result way too salty.
pasta water should be as salty as the sea!
For fresh pasta yes, dried you don’t need as much salt
Sea water has a salinity of around 35g/kg.
No one wants pasta water as salty as the sea - although unsalted water doesn’t sound much more appealing.
No one except everyone who wants their pasta to taste good. You need to add a ton of salt because most of it is going down the drain at the end.
Edit: ok, I stand corrected.
What you just said is that you want to add in the range of 50-70g of salt depending on the size of your pan. That’s too much salt
I think you underestimate how much salt that is.
I use 2 tablespoons per pound of pasta.
that’s exactly how much I use too, the one time I tried to make it actually taste like seawater nobody would eat it.
Seawater is two teaspoons salt per cup of water. That’s a little more than half a cup of salt per gallon of water. That is an unhealthy amount of salt.
well nobody is drinking the pasta water
Damn, you guys are missing out.
I read that quote regularly. Any clue who it originates from? I think it’s a romantic overstatement and does not hold as a general pasta rule. Salty pasta water is needed when you use a sauce or a pesto that has little salt in it. However, when using a particularly salty sauce or pesto, your end result can easily turn out too salty, if you put too much salt in the pasta water. When I make japanese miso-butter pasta for example, I don’t put any salt in the boiling water, because combined with the miso-butter, that would make the end result way too salty.