Pasta with olive oil and wine

[PandaBear]

Say for example, Spaghetti alle vongole. You have olive oil and white wine with clams. I'm planning to cook this with canned chopped clams like Snow's one.

I have a small bottle of EVOO, but I don't really drink wine, but have some Asian cooking wine (Taiwan michiu aka rice wine, alcohol content 15-20%, salted to avoid paying alcohol tax). I would imagine the pasta would taste different if I use less of this and a little bit of pasta water (or more clam juice) but similar texture. What about substituting "light tasting olive oil" for EVOO, or even canola oil for "olive oil". How would pasta be different in texture?

What is the use for "refined" light tasting olive oil if they are similar price as EVOO? I haven't seen too many recipe calling for this but most just call for either olive oil or EVOO.

I try not to keep too many kinds of ingredients in the house. I am aware that things would taste different but I think at the moment I can't tell the difference yet, maybe someday I will.

 

[vavavroom]

Pasta water!?

 

[PandaBear]

You use pasta water to thicken your pasta sauce, right?

Pasta water!?

 

[vavavroom]

You use pasta water to thicken your pasta sauce, right?

I don't do that. You can do that if your sauce doesn't stick to the pasta but then I have to question your pasta sauce. Why is your pasta sauce nit sticky and don't you have other means of making it more sticky? You could add a little slurry of starch and water. Pasta water doesn't have a lot of thickening power as evidenced by its thin viscosity. You will thin your sauce. Egg yolks, cream, and butter will all thicken sauces and make them more sticky.

 

[PandaBear]

I don't do that. You can do that if your sauce doesn't stick to the pasta but then I have to question your pasta sauce. Why is your pasta sauce nit sticky and don't you have other means of making it more sticky?

I heard this is a problem with light sauce with just wine and olive oil (i.e. alle vongole), I normally don't add any pasta water when I do thick sauce like Bolognese or Marinara.

 

[vavavroom]

Well, I wouldn't put water in alle vongole. It's thin enough and since the pasta is starchy the sauce should be clingy enough.

 

[Leo99]

The clams probably have a lot of salt in the brine. I wouldn't use the salty brine plus the salty wine. EVOO has a stronger flavor than the light OO.

 

[GSCJR]

What about substituting "light tasting olive oil" for EVOO, or even canola oil for "olive oil". How would pasta be different in texture?

No need to substitute, the EVOO will not affect the texture.

What is the use for "refined" light tasting olive oil if they are similar price as EVOO? I haven't seen too many recipe calling for this but most just call for either olive oil or EVOO.

I don't have the answer, we only use EVOO.

 

[vavavroom]

And regarding the salty wine, just no. You can afford a bottle of proper white wine.

 

[Lubener]

Too many carbs.

 

[Oro_O]

A few point that might help:

- Light olive oil is for frying, basically. Less taste, more neutral, slightly higher smoke point. It’s useless, really. You really shouldn’t ever be frying w/olive oil anyway. It’s a finishing/tasting oil and cooking with Canola or other similar is better, more cost effective, and usually better for flavor (olive oil will give a bitter taste to food from high-temp frying. I personally can’t stand it). A large number of highly successful chef (Bobby Flay, for example) will tell you to basically never fry w/olive oil. Thus, on my shelves, it’s full-flavor only for when I want the taste.

- Here is a really good example of how to use the cook water to make a creamy sauce for the pasta. This is basically how I make Pasta Aglio e Olio (I do use slightly more oil:water than Ina Garten does here, more like 1/2c oil : 1 1/2 c water). Check out the technique here:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/spaghetti-aglio-e-olio-recipe-2043225

The fact the starches in the cook water are solubilized make them react very differently than the starch on the pasta after draining. That’s why this technique exists. If you’ve ever tried thickening a sauce by just tossing flour or cornstarch in (and watch it clump), you understand why this point is important.

- Be REALLY careful with those “cooking” wines. They can dramatically alter the flavor with their salt content and often bitter taste in general. What I often do is get a box of wine, keep it in the fridge for cooking, occasional sip. If it goes off after a while, who cares, it’s just for cooking and it still serves that purpose well. I’d rather use a bottle of the cheapest “Two buck Chuck” in the grocery than a salted/shelved “cooking wine.”

If this is all new to you, try first making the spaghetti aglio e olio above. It’s incredible cheap to make, tasty, and teaches a few good skills. Get that technique down before potentially messing up with a more expensive clam dish. Try some of the cooking wine in that, for example, to see if it tastes OK to you before using it in a fancier, more expensive dish you might be serving someone else. If you find the cooking wine palatable there, try it with the vongole.

Hope that helps, good luck!

 

[vavavroom]

The fact the starches in the cook water are solubilized make them react very differently than the starch on the pasta after draining. That’s why this technique exists. If you’ve ever tried thickening a sauce by just tossing flour or cornstarch in (and watch it clump), you understand why this point is important.

That's why you add a slurry of starch and water and not just starch directly, a non-clumping thickener, or why you use a roux for other sauces.

 

[Oro_O]

That's why you add a slurry of starch and water and not just starch directly, a non-clumping thickener, or why you use a roux for other sauces.

Yes, that’s the point. That’s why the cook water is valuable.

 

[vavavroom]

Yes, that’s the point. That’s why the cook water is valuable.

How much pasta water do you add to get a noticeable improvement in clinginess from the little bit starch that is in there and how does this not thin out the sauce? Or do you keep reducing the sauce? And would you put pasta water in a white wine-based sauce?

 

[Oro_O]

How much pasta water do you add to get a noticeable improvement in clinginess from the little bit starch that is in there and how does this not thin out the sauce? Or do you keep reducing the sauce? And would you put pasta water in a white wine-based sauce?

- Surprisingly, you can get a lot of bang out of a little water. Even a cup to a pound helps ( a bit more is better IMO).

- I cook w/less water to get starchier cookwater, for one thing. I have a 2.5qt Le Cresuet sauce pan than can easily and very nicely cook a pound of pasta. It can do even more in a pinch - I did 1.5lbs in it a week or so ago for the traditional post-Thanksgiving Turkey Tetrazzini. This will greatly boost the starch content. Using an iron pan like that helps a lot to reduce the waterasta ratio as you can’t quite pull that off in stainlessware or non-stick pots with less even heat. But you can still be conscious of that and reduce the water ratio as much as possible.

- Even just tossing the pasta with a cup or 1.5c of water before adding a separate sauce makes the sauce bind and adhere much, much better. It makes it much creamier.

- Basically, the cookwater is a cheap and free roux. And yes, I’d add it to a wine sauce if I didn’t start with a roux (I usually do).

I can’t recall where, but I saw a legit blind taste test where they put the cookwater thing to the test. Must have been someplace like ATK, Lopez-Alt, Serious Eats or someplace that does stuff like that. Anyway, they blind-tested pasta that had been a) sauce just added to it w/no water reserved, b) cookwater added back to drained pasta before sauce added, and c) pasta with sauce added that had the sauce already had cookwater reduced into it.

Result were c, b, a in order of preference, very consistently. So the whole “theory” of it does meet with real-world expectations. That’s always a nice bonus. .

 

[vavavroom]

- Surprisingly, you can get a lot of bang out of a little water. Even a cup to a pound helps ( a bit more is better IMO).

- I cook w/less water to get starchier cookwater, for one thing. I have a 2.5qt Le Cresuet sauce pan than can easily and very nicely cook a pound of pasta. It can do even more in a pinch - I did 1.5lbs in it a week or so ago for the traditional post-Thanksgiving Turkey Tetrazzini. This will greatly boost the starch content. Using an iron pan like that helps a lot to reduce the waterasta ratio as you can’t quite pull that off in stainlessware or non-stick pots with less even heat. But you can still be conscious of that and reduce the water ratio as much as possible.

- Even just tossing the pasta with a cup or 1.5c of water before adding a separate sauce makes the sauce bind and adhere much, much better. It makes it much creamier.

- Basically, the cookwater is a cheap and free roux. And yes, I’d add it to a wine sauce if I didn’t start with a roux (I usually do).

I can’t recall where, but I saw a legit blind taste test where they put the cookwater thing to the test. Must have been someplace like ATK, Lopez-Alt, Serious Eats or someplace that does stuff like that. Anyway, they blind-tested pasta that had been a) sauce just added to it w/no water reserved, b) cookwater added back to drained pasta before sauce added, and c) pasta with sauce added that had the sauce already had cookwater reduced into it.

Result were c, b, a in order of preference, very consistently. So the whole “theory” of it does meet with real-world expectations. That’s always a nice bonus. .

Interesting.

 

[PandaBear]

A few point that might help:

- Light olive oil is for frying, basically. Less taste, more neutral, slightly higher smoke point. It’s useless, really. You really shouldn’t ever be frying w/olive oil anyway. It’s a finishing/tasting oil and cooking with Canola or other similar is better, more cost effective, and usually better for flavor (olive oil will give a bitter taste to food from high-temp frying. I personally can’t stand it). A large number of highly successful chef (Bobby Flay, for example) will tell you to basically never fry w/olive oil. Thus, on my shelves, it’s full-flavor only for when I want the taste.

- Here is a really good example of how to use the cook water to make a creamy sauce for the pasta. This is basically how I make Pasta Aglio e Olio (I do use slightly more oil:water than Ina Garten does here, more like 1/2c oil : 1 1/2 c water). Check out the technique here:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/spaghetti-aglio-e-olio-recipe-2043225

The fact the starches in the cook water are solubilized make them react very differently than the starch on the pasta after draining. That’s why this technique exists. If you’ve ever tried thickening a sauce by just tossing flour or cornstarch in (and watch it clump), you understand why this point is important.

- Be REALLY careful with those “cooking” wines. They can dramatically alter the flavor with their salt content and often bitter taste in general. What I often do is get a box of wine, keep it in the fridge for cooking, occasional sip. If it goes off after a while, who cares, it’s just for cooking and it still serves that purpose well. I’d rather use a bottle of the cheapest “Two buck Chuck” in the grocery than a salted/shelved “cooking wine.”

If this is all new to you, try first making the spaghetti aglio e olio above. It’s incredible cheap to make, tasty, and teaches a few good skills. Get that technique down before potentially messing up with a more expensive clam dish. Try some of the cooking wine in that, for example, to see if it tastes OK to you before using it in a fancier, more expensive dish you might be serving someone else. If you find the cooking wine palatable there, try it with the vongole.

Hope that helps, good luck!

I have been thinking of the same line of using that cook water / pasta water. In the past when I was boiling fresh Asian noodle, that water always smells kind of like raw wheat flour, so I always use a lot of water and even rinse the noodles (blanch) to get the excess starch off and give it a better crunch / al dente feel with just AP flour based noodle. With pasta I think this is a new kind of method I am still getting a hang off. Since semolina is much firmer there is no need to blanch, and there is no raw flour smell in the cooking water usually. My biggest problem is actually boiling long pasta without too much water. I can use less for short pasta like penny or rotini but for long pasta I need a wider pot, and to boil it with a wider pot with shallower depth of water they can evaporate too fast. I am not sure if I am doing it right, or should I start with water amount I'm comfortable with and then take away some of the water early so the starch content of the pasta water is higher, thicker, for later use.

Or should I still start with a thinner pasta water added to the oil to reduce so there's some time to emulsify the oil and the starch?

Wine: I guess I will just get a bottle of Charles Shaw, but it is the space that I have problem with (small fridge) so if it is not used up it will be down the drain in a week. 1 pot of pasta doesn't use 750ml of wine I think.

 

[Oro_O]

One thing I do to make long pasta boil better is break it in half as it goes in. If I am making a pound, I will pick up a few ounces at a time, snap it in the middle of the bundle, and sort of fan it out as I drop it in, so it does not go in as a thick bundle. This makes it cook a lot more evenly and stick WAY less. Also easier to eat IMHO and I have never found a downside to it or had anyone complain.

There are purists who are against this because, and this is so childish - it doesn’t twirl on the fork as easily! Which is asinine given the benefits. Give this a try and see if you like it. Really helps with the pot size issue in general, not just on using less water.

 

[97prizm]

Say for example, Spaghetti alle vongole. You have olive oil and white wine with clams. I'm planning to cook this with canned chopped clams like Snow's one.

I have a small bottle of EVOO, but I don't really drink wine, but have some Asian cooking wine (Taiwan michiu aka rice wine, alcohol content 15-20%, salted to avoid paying alcohol tax). I would imagine the pasta would taste different if I use less of this and a little bit of pasta water (or more clam juice) but similar texture. What about substituting "light tasting olive oil" for EVOO, or even canola oil for "olive oil". How would pasta be different in texture?

What is the use for "refined" light tasting olive oil if they are similar price as EVOO? I haven't seen too many recipe calling for this but most just call for either olive oil or EVOO.

I try not to keep too many kinds of ingredients in the house. I am aware that things would taste different but I think at the moment I can't tell the difference yet, maybe someday I will.

I cook alot and "light refined " olive oil is bulk reject oil. I wouldn't use it for anything. Technically from many cooking sources light refined isn't really a category of olive oil.