8 Simple Tests to do at home to understand if the pasta is good quality
From a "first sight" look at cooking, passing through the shape, here are 8 simple tests to do at home to understand if the pasta is of good quality.
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Quality "at first sight" - If the pasta is of high quality, it can be judged even when it is raw: from the homogeneous amber-yellow colour, without light or dark dots and from the dry sound it releases when it is broken. For example, if the drying has not been carried out correctly, red-brown substances can be seen on the pasta, which penalize cooking. The presence of white dots on the surface indicates an imperfect hydration of the semolina, while if the dots are black it is a sign of the presence of bran fragments not eliminated during grinding or of semolina particles deriving from dark kernels (grains of wheat).
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The clarity of the water - It may seem strange to you, but how "dirty" the water becomes during the cooking of the pasta is an important indication. The less cloudy the water is during cooking, the more it is a sign of quality, because it is a pasta that limits the release of starch and this guarantees excellent cooking resistance.
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Elasticity - Try to control the elasticity, i.e. the ability of the structure to resume and maintain its original shape. For example, does the pacchero "sit down" or not? Does spaghetti keep the nerve even when it's wavy or does it pile up? This feature is a symptom of good quality gluten and of a dough that has rehydrated evenly.
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Cooking - Taste the pasta and if there are no soft (outside) or hard (inside) areas under your teeth, then the pasta was worked to perfection and from excellent raw materials. The cooking of the pasta must be homogeneous, both inside and out. Unless it's a format specially designed to have different consistencies in a single piece, such as butterflies.
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The shape - After firing, how many pieces remain intact and how many are cracked or flaked? How many are glued together, how many undercooked? It is obvious that if there are many defective pieces, the lower the quality of the pasta and its al dente properties.
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"Nervousness" - Pasta, the more "nervous" it is, the better. The nerve is the effort required to cut the pasta with the teeth, its resistance to cutting, elasticity and the ability to maintain this performance, even under stressful conditions (overcooking, waiting for service) are fundamental characteristics for understanding if a pasta is of quality.
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Overcooking - One of the laboratory tests that pasta is subjected to is stressing it with overcooking: the more the cooking time increases, the more all the quality indicators decrease. First of all, the Optimal Cooking Time must be identified, i.e. the moment in which the central part of the dough (the so-called white "sweetbread") hydrates and loses its whitish colour. That's what we find written on the packaging. The sweetbread can be visualized in the cooked product by crushing a string of spaghetti between two pieces of transparent plastic (slide test) or by cutting a short format highlighting the section (knife test). Then the product is kept cooking for 25%-30% more (about 2-3 minutes). This proves how much pasta is able to withstand mistakes and distractions when we cook.
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The "patinity" - To test how long pasta can still remain good on the plate, you need to check the nerve and "patinity" values: this is one of the most important evaluation parameters for the catering sector.
source: Welovepasta