When the pasta is cooked, problems often begin.
The pasta will be better if you mix it with the sauce before putting it on the plate. Mari Moilanen
Do you often have a spaghetti dumpling on your plate that has stuck tightly to it? You may solve the problem by pouring oil into the spaghetti. Oh, oh, it went wrong.
If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one who does this.
Top chef and restaurateur Hans Välimäki gives advice on how to succeed with pasta. Last fall, Välimäki opened the Italian Bistro Gina, which naturally has several pasta dishes on its menu.
What does Välimäki think is our mistake in making pasta?
– The purpose is for the pasta to be fully seasoned in the sauce. So it’s not the basic situation that the pasta is lifted directly from the boiling water onto the plate, but it is mixed with the sauce in a pan, Välimäki instructs.
Mutti’s survey shows that 66 percent of Finns first portion the pasta onto a plate and put the sauce on top of it. Only one in three mixes the cooked pasta with the sauce and only then serves it on the plate.
Pasta drying out and becoming lumpy is avoided when the sauce is mixed with hot pasta immediately after straining the pasta and before placing it on the plates. Appropriately cooked pasta, mixed with sauce, mixed and then only on the plate.
But Mutti’s Nordic marketing manager Emma Vuorenmaa says in the announcement that the biggest mistake is made when cooking pasta with oil. Almost every other Finn falls into this.
– Of course, it’s a matter of taste how you want to eat pasta. In the Italian style, you get the best result when you leave out the oil completely. The oil makes the pasta slippery, so the sauce does not stick to the surface of the pasta, advises Vuorenmaa in the press release.