You don't need to keep the fire on to cook pasta

Our landlord, who lives just next door and turned 100 this year (!), told us that to cook pasta, she doesn't keep the water boiling during the approximate ten minutes required to obtain al dente pasta. Instead, once the water is boiling, simply add the pasta, wait for the water to start boiling again, then cut the fire, cover with a lid and a towel so that the heat is kept inside the pot. It takes maybe one or two minutes longer to cook.

Uh OK. We tried, and it worked. It takes maybe one or two minutes more to cook. The pasta is great, and we saved ten minutes of gas consumption.

A few months later, the Barilla website shows almost exactly this same technique. The link gets upvoted massively on Hacker News, which probably means that engineers all around the globe are thinking “what the hell?” reading this.

“Passive Cooking” on barilla.com

Comments on Hacker News with instant massive bikeshedding

And indeed: what the hell? 🤌

Why did I learn to cook pasta by keeping the fire on all the time? Why does everyone around me do the same mistake? Why do I have to learn that a massive amount of my gas consumption is an idiotic waste of energy from the mouth of a very, very old lady? I thought we were the environmentally conscious generation!

And by the way it works for boiling vegetables, potatoes, cooking soup and pretty much everything involving boiling water, so it's not my desire for pasta alone that is tainted by the un-solarpunk remorse of waste, it's probably half of the fossil fuel used to cook things in my whole life that has needlessly vanished into the atmosphere.

Most importantly: how did we end up with such a massive carelessness for energy waste that this “cut the fire” technique is not the only one taught to cook pasta?

The main lesson I take from this is that, if the world does not make much sense sometimes, maybe it's not you, but previous generations who wallowed in shameless wasteful practices to the point that the most mundane act of cooking enshrines burning dinosaur farts into your kitchen to save yourself a minute. As much as I love my parents, sometimes they taught us plain wrong things.

Don't trust the boomers!

🍝🦖💕