The Surprising Trick for Making Better Tasting, Never-Ever-Mushy Pasta

Spaghetti with tomato sauce

Pasta is a weeknight dinner winner. It's affordable, accessible, easy and incredibly versatile. Go with a classic, like spaghetti and meatballs, spice things up with a viral recipe, like Gigi Hadid's Spicy Vodka Pasta, or choose your own dinner adventure by boiling up some pasta and tossing it with leftover meat and veggies from the fridge—and don't forget the cheese.

Although what you toss with your pasta often gets the most attention, we recently came across a tip that focuses on the pasta itself. We all know to boil pasta until it's al dente, but have you tried toasting your pasta before it even hits the water? The trick promises a more deeply flavored pasta that's almost impossible to overcook. We dug into the method to learn more—and gave it a shot in our own kitchen. Here's what you need to know.

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Why Should You Toast Your Pasta?

Toasting food—whether it's nuts or bread or rice for pilaf—adds flavor. And that's the idea here, too. Lightly browning your pasta before you cook it adds a rich, nutty layer of flavor. The pre-toasting pasta technique isn't a new idea. Cooks around the globe have been doing it for long time. One example: Mexican Fideo Seco, in which thin pasta is toasted in a pan and then simmered in a tomato-based sauce.

The experts at America’s Test Kitchen gave the method a try and heartily signed off on it. They included instructions for toasting the pasta in the oven, in the microwave or in a pot on the stovetop. They said any of the methods would improve your pasta, so the next step for me was to give it a try IRL.

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How to Toast Pasta

You have a few options here: You can heat some oil in your pasta pot, break the pasta into the pot and stir it in the oil until it's lightly browned and toasted. Option 2 is tossing 8 ounces of pasta with oil and microwaving it at 50% power for 3 to 5 minutes, at which point some of the pasta should be a little blistered.

I passed on both of those methods and went with option 3: the oven. I preheated my oven to 350° and evenly spread 8 ounces of pasta out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I baked the pasta until each piece was golden brown, which took about 10 minutes.

What Happened When I Toasted Pasta at Home

My main tip for you is to keep an eye on the pasta while it toasts because it's easy to accidentally burn some of the pieces. My oven is a little temperamental and I mistakenly heated it to 375° instead of 350°, which meant my pasta was done around the 6-minute mark.

Despite my toasting blunder, the boiling process went smoothly, though I did need to boil the pasta a couple of minutes longer than I normally do for al dente. The extra cooking time was definitely worth it, though.

When I tried the pasta I immediately noticed the nutty flavor. It was so tasty that I felt all I really needed to add was a little bit of olive oil and freshly grated Parmesan cheese to complete the meal. I had already put together the sauce but the dish would have been great without it. This is one tip I'll be adding to my cooking routine as a fun and easy way to level up a basic bowl of noodles.

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