Salting the Water

Pasta water is your first seasoning. Once the noodle is cooked, salt never gets inside it again — it sits on the surface, in the sauce. If the water was bland, the pasta will be bland forever.

The rule of 1-10-100

For every 1 liter of water, use 10 grams of salt, to cook roughly 100 grams of dry pasta. Italians call this acqua, sale, pasta — uno, dieci, cento.

That is about two heaped teaspoons of coarse sea salt per liter. It should taste like a calm sea — not the Dead Sea, not a freshwater lake.

When to salt

Salt the water after it boils, before the pasta goes in. Cold salt water takes longer to boil and can pit aluminum pots over time. Boiling first, salting second, dropping pasta third — that is the rhythm.

Why this matters more than your sauce

A perfectly seasoned plate of cacio e pepe rests on one thing: the starchy, salty water that emulsifies with the cheese. If the water is flat, the sauce splits and the noodle tastes like nothing.

Quick test

Taste the water with a clean spoon before the pasta goes in. If you would not drink a sip of broth that tasted like this, add more salt.

One last thing

Do not add oil. Oil floats. Pasta cooks below the surface. The only thing oil in pasta water does is coat your noodle so sauce cannot stick. Save the olive oil for the bowl.