How much salt you should add to your pasta water, according to science

One of the reasons I love to bake is because of the science behind the craft. Physics and chemistry play vital roles and understanding how the various components interact with one another fascinates me. Cooking involves science too, although there is more wiggle room when compared to baking. However, you can use exacting science in cooking – molecular gastronomy is the exemplar in this regard. The tools, techniques, and equipment resemble a scene straight from a laboratory. You can take it a step farther and conduct a cooking experiment in an actual lab, which is what researchers did to determine the exact amount of salt you should use when cooking pasta.

The scientists used high tech tools such as X-rays and neutrons to view and understand the “microstructure of regular and gluten-free spaghetti under different cooking conditions.” They found that salt was vitally important to the texture of the cooked pasta because it helped the “scaffold” structure created by gluten preserve its shape. Researchers also discovered that the amount of time gluten free pasta was cooked was essential to keeping it from being mushy. That’s because gluten-free pasta did not have the same “scaffolding” to hold it together, meaning that it disintegrated quicker when overcooked. Eleven minutes seemed to be the longest you could cook gluten-free pasta before degradation occurred.

As to the amount of salt, the scientists found a sweet spot for how much to use, with seven grams per liter of water as the ideal, especially in regular spaghetti. Table salt weighs about 6 grams per teaspoon, with Diamond kosher salt coming it at about 3 grams per teaspoon, so for three liters of water that works out to a generous tablespoon for table salt and 2.5 tablespoons of Diamond kosher salt. Other brands of kosher salt would fall in between these two measures.