Pasta, Part I

I was reducing a sauce for pasta the other day, and I remembered reading about cooking pasta directly in the sauce. I thought that this was completely logical, so I decided to dump the uncooked pasta in the sauce and see what would happen (after all, I had excess water in the sauce, and I had pasta that needed water, so this seemed to be the perfect solution).

Siena, Tuscany, Italy Keith Levit

The result of my experiment: delicious!

Here are my observations, for what they are worth:
I had to add water to the sauce--a scant cup.
The pasta took as long to cook as it would to boil water and cook the pasta.
I used tomato sauce
The sauce was smoother and better.
When I tested the pasta I kept thinking it was going to be ruined, but then it suddenly became perfectly al dente.

For the record, I was using 100% whole grain penne pasta.

So the next time you cook a marinara or other tomato-based sauce, if your pasta will fit in the pot, dump it right in. In my case, I had to up the pasta cooking time from eight minutes to fourteen minutes. You'll save washing an extra pot and colander, too!