Italians are protective of their cuisine and often argue about the correct pasta to use with Bolognese ragu.
The Italian physicist's advice about how to cook pasta perfectly which seemed to upend everything the countries' cooks had been doing in the kitchen for hundreds of years caused an almighty row.
Professor Giorgio Parisi, who won the physics prize for "the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales", suggested that turning off the heat midway through cooking pasta, then covering with a lid and waiting for the residual heat in the water to come
According to the chef, this method makes the pasta rubbery, and that it could never be served in a high quality restaurant.
Food and science experts contributed to the controversy.
Is Parisi's method really cost effective when it comes to saving money while cooking pasta at home? Do you think it tastes that bad?
The idea of saving money inspired Mia and Ross to cook pasta in different ways in the kitchen at Trent University.
What happens when we cook pasta? There are two processes in the case of dried pasta.
It takes ten minutes for water to penetrate the pasta and rehydrate it. The pasta expands and becomes food due to the heat.
The standard cooking method cooks 100 grams of pasta into 1 liter of boiling water for 10 to 12 minutes. Information on the price of energy and the efficiency of the stove can be used to convert the breakdown of energy use into a cost.
The cost of cooking dried pasta on a ceramic cooker comes in at about US$ 0.15 per serving, and the cost of cooking it on a gas cooker comes in at about US$ 0.07 per serving. The average person in the UK eats one portion of pasta per week, so we are spending over eight million dollars a week on pasta.
The graphic shows the amount of energy used to keep the water boiling. Reducing the cooking time would have a big impact on the cost.
The cooking cost will be halved with Parisi's method of turning off the stove midway and letting pasta cook in the residual heat. The method will be more effective on ceramic kitchens as they are slower to cool down.
It is possible to reduce the cost even more if the processes of rehydration and heating are separated. It is possible to fully rehydrate dried pasta by pre-soaking it in cold water. This is a process that doesn't require any energy at all.
There are further savings to be made here because the pasta needs to be dropped into boiling water. The quality of pasta is unaffected by the amount of water used.
halving the water resulted in perfect pasta, but reducing it to one third was not satisfactory. If there is not enough water, the concentration of stear builds up and leaves clumps of unevenly cooked pasta.
Bringing the water to the boil is the second largest energy requirement. There is more to be done here.
There is no need to bring the pan to a "rolling boil" at 100oC because the pasta has dissolved above 80oC. An additional savings of around 0.5p can be provided by gentle simmering.
The microwave was used to heat the pasta. In our experiments we found that microwaves produced the worst pasta of all time. It's definitely not a good idea to try at home.
The most efficient way to cook dried pasta is to pre-soak it in cold water before adding it to a pan of simmering water or sauce.
You can keep a lid on the pan. Salt makes a small difference to the boiling point, but it does improve the taste.
We can all make a difference in the way we cook, even if we aren't famous chefs or physicists.
It's up to you to experiment with these methods until you find a way to make your cooking more economical while also saving your pennes.
Students Mia London and Ross Broadhurst were thanked by the author.
The principal lecturer at the College of Arts and Science is David Fairhurst.
Under a Creative Commons license, this article is re-posted. The original article is worth a read.
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