this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
549 points (92.4% liked)
Funny
8139 readers
1027 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As an American who just had some glorious fake pizza last night, I thought I hated pasta until I had good Italian, and then I realized I just hate Americanized Italian food. Except pizza, we do it better.
Pasta still isn't my favorite, but I'll take it if it's authentic. My SO makes some great aglio e olio and carbonara, often with shrimp.
As someone who makes pizza from scratch every week, I love all forms of pizza from fast food US pizza (like Dominos), to "drunk" US pizza dipped in ranch, to NY pizza, to Chicago deep dish, but what I make at home is always simple Italian pizza with just a few ingredients: dough, a sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes specifically canned for pizza with some salt, fresh oregano, mozzarella cheese, and olive oil. Sometimes I add a ton of arugula on top too. What's nice is that pizza is also kinda healthy actually.
Wait can you explain the difference between Americanized pasta and Italian pasta? Isn't all pasta just... pasta?
It's very common in the US to just plop some pasta sauce on top of noodles for one thing... You gotta cook the pasta in the sauce real quick! If any American reads this and doesn't do that I promise that tiny change will already improve your pasta experience.
You're obviously not Italian...
Starting with the pasta itself (not how it's prepared), they use different ingredients. Italian pasta is usually made from high quality duram wheat, whereas American made pastas use a variety of flours, and usually includes eggs (rare with Italian pasta), which results in a softer cooked product. That leads to cooking differences, where Italians prefer firmer texture (al dente), whereas Americans tend to have it softer.
And then we have sauces. Italians usually keep it simple with a handful of ingredients, and Americans add milk/cream, sugar, cheese, or anything else that sounds good. Americans also go overboard on the sauce, so you get a lot less of the pasta flavor (yes, pasta has flavor, y'all need to add salt to the water).
And that's restaurant quality pasta dishes. It gets wild when you look at what's in those prepared meals in the freezer section.
I give pizza a pass because I don't like bread much (yes, I've had good Italian pizza), so loading up on toppings works really well. But I just don't like the mushy mess that is American-style pasta.
How many times have you had pasta in America?You have some good points with the rest of your comment but this paragraph makes sound like either someone over overcooked your pasta or incorrectly used egg noodles, which are totally different and for different dishes though they look the same at a glance. I would only use egg noodles in soups and stroganoff. I just looked through all the pasta I have now, purchased from Walmart, Costco, and all the normie places: none of it has eggs, a lot of it contains durum wheat/semolina flour, and a majority of it is 100% durum. Some of it uses the phrase "al Dente" on the box, and I can tell you with good confidence that that is one of the few Italian phrases that American non-italians will know.
Since I'm American, hundreds if not thousands of times. I've had it at home, at friends' houses, and restaurants. My parents aren't italian, just bog standard Americans.
You're right that store bought noodles don't have eggs, and that's likely due to the IPO definition of spaghetti (and other pastas) to only contain duram wheat semolina and water.
My point about eggs comes from recipes like this or this (first hits when searching "spaghetti pasta noodles recipe") that use trash flour and eggs. So if you're being "fancy" and making the pasta at home, you're likely to use eggs.
Your typical American understands that phrase to mean "undercooked" or "crunchy." It really just means "firm," as in chewy instead of squishy. The fact that the default doneness in the US is soft instead of firm, which is the opposite in Italy (if they even let you order it overcooked), highlights this.
I think this is so the sauce sticks better, because Americans like a lot of sauce. Both Americans and Italians will agree that the secret to a good pasta dish is the sauce, but in Italy that means a handful of quality ingredients to complement the pasta (e.g. simmering a ragu for hours), whereas in the US it means adding a ton of processed crap to thicken it (cream, cheese, etc) and drown the pasta flavor out.
🤷 I'm also American and grew up on pasta, and while you're dead on about the sauce and unsalted pasta water, most people in my experience know that al Dente means "firm to the bite" and cook pasta properly enough, often enough that when it's not I'd just assume it was an accident.
I'm being a bit hyperbolic here. My point, however, is that soft pasta is pretty common here, and people do complain about properly cooked pasta. Not often, but people tend to lean more toward the overcooked end of the spectrum.
For example, most boxes of spaghetti say 10-11 min cooking, whereas I usually test around 7-8 min and stop a bit short of 10min. This can vary a little by brand, thickness, and probably altitude (I live in the Rockies so I'm used to adjusting cooking times).
I'm not some angsty chef or something, I just don't like overcooked noodles of any variety because the texture sucks. So I just generally avoid pasta for the most part. I don't make lasagna because I'm not willing to spend the time to do it well, but I do occasionally make something like aglio e olio because it's fast and easy to do well.
What the fuck Americans?
Wait do Americans not do that? In that case I have to thank Italian Reunification for giving the Middle East real pasta.
Most pasta in the US suggests to salt the water when you boil it, I don't think many Americans do. My mother didn't, at least.
This may be a result of the war on salt that came from heart disease concerns of the 80s/90s.
Yeah, a lot of people just toss the pasta in bong boiling water and pull it out when it's soft. Sometimes they'll add oil to stop it from sticking (due to overcooking already soft pasta), and they're shocked when I tell them they need to add salt.
Most likely the difference between handmade pasta and dried pasta but that's not a geographical thing
But Italians eat dried pasta… lots of it.