Absorption cooking

[nancylebov]

agrumer recommended cooking spaghetti in the sauce.

I've tried it with whole wheat spaghetti, and it definitely tastes better that way, and there's one less pot to clean. The only drawback is that the spaghetti comes out almost sauce colored, so there's a loss of visual contrast.

I think this method is worth trying for any carbohydrate that you need to cook and are planning to put under a sauce.

Comments

[avram]

My usual recipe for this goes: Put a little olive oil in the pot, enough to cover the bottom. Chop up about a third, maybe half, of an onion, and sauté it in the oil. Some grated garlic isn't a bad idea, and maybe some cilantro, I think I may have used pesto once or twice. Now toss in some meat -- I've used canned salmon, chopped-up hot dogs, or leftover roast chicken. Stir it around. Pour in a little water. Add about a third of a teaspoon of Better Than Bullion (I've been using the chicken flavor). Put in a heaping handful of dried pasta. Add a handful of frozen peas. Add enough water to just barely cover the pasta. Stir it all up again so that the bullion gets dispersed. Maybe toss in some other spices. Once the water starts boiling, reduce it to low heat, put a lid on the pot, let simmer for as long as the pasta box says to cook the pasta (but at least 8 minutes -- I've found that 7 minutes left the pasta too hard, even though that was the time on the box for that type of pasta). Once done, pour into bowl, add ground pepper, and eat.

Since I'm using chicken bullion (Chris sometimes uses a box of low-sodium chicken stock instead of the bullion and water), the pasta comes out white or yellow, and the peas provide a color contrast. As do the hot dogs, if that's what I'm using for meat.

Also, I usually eat it out of an orange bowl.