Convince me that this is not just an expensive way to make overcooked spaghetti

2 Likes

I guess you’ll hafta TOFTT so we can all find out :wink:

1 Like

Of course I had to find out if this pasta cooked in wine was a traditional Italian prep in any way, because this is giving big TikTok vibes for me. Found Spaghetti All’Ubriaco, or drunken spaghetti, over on Serious Eats as a reference.

My first thought was that in Italy, local table wine (from a community’s cantina) would likely go into the pasta pot along with water.

So if sometime we have leftover wine that we’re not getting around to, it might go into the pasta water as an experiment! I regularly use the low-water method for cooking most dried pasta. I could see the wine combining with the extra starchy pasta water from the low-water method to create an agreeable pan sauce.

1 Like

Not this time! Too risky.

Aw. What’s the worst that could happen? You could use a cheapo wine?

#YOLO

That recipe asks a pound of mostly-cooked spaghetti to absorb 4oz of liquid. Your low-water method does not require the spaghetti to absorb a quart of water - you drain it once it’s done. But the one in my OP asks a pound of uncooked spaghetti to absorb 25 oz of liquid. It seems like that would result in spaghetti mush.

Edited to correct my math error, and now the recipe looks even less viable.

1 Like

Yes, agreed. I would use my preferred low-water method. And less wine, because a full bottle seems like a lot to me. I’m good with less tipsy pasta. :laughing:

When you cook a pound of spaghetti it absorbs about 20-24oz water to become al dente. So one bottle of wine (25oz) sounds good as most of the alcohol will evaporate. I don’t think it will create any spaghetti mush

Wow. That seems like a lot of water! Maybe I will try this with 1/4 lb of pasta and 6 oz of wine.

Still haven’t done that. And I just made spaghetti last night for dinner using the full stockpot boiling first, then adding the sketti method. I’ll have to pull out my largest 12" skillet next time to try it out. Cutting WAY back on the amounts of dried pasta and water, since I never made a full pound. Just enough for a couple of meals.

Is there a written version of the recipe? I have a spare bottle of wine lying around that I don’t mind donating in the interest of science. But I can’t get the video to load. If you can find me a writeup I will be happy to try this early next week and report back. LMK :slight_smile:

Just this.

But what happens is:

Add (what looks like) 2T butter to a pan, add anchovies and cayenne, then 1lb of pasta and a bottle of white wine. Stir until wine is mostly gone, then add (what looks like) paprika and parsley.

1 Like

I do it all the time for smaller shapes, and especially for small batches. It’s such a huge time and energy saver. Kind of mind blowing to do it and see it work so well, after we were told for so many years that pasta simply could not succeed without gigantic amounts of water.

1 Like

“Cook pasta in an entire bottle of white wine. When the butter is foaming …”

What butter? And no salt mentioned? I’m sorry, I’m taking back my offer until we find a more authoritative version of a recipe involving this technique :laughing:

I added more info.

Okay, that sounds better! And I have some anchovies on hand too, so we’re back in business!

I often do long strand pasta like fettuccine or linguine in a frying pan. Less water, MOAR starch — for the pasta and the sauce.

1 Like

And I have TONS of smaller pasta shapes (thanks, Home Goods!). So I’ll definitely try this out soon. I also like the idea of the concentrated pasta water, which you just don’t get with a 6 qt pot boiling method.