In fact, though they absorb relatively little water in this process, it turns out any added moisture is a good thing – because, as Dave Arnold of the International Culinary Center observes, “While the mushrooms are boiling off their water, they aren’t absorbing oil. As I noted back then, Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay and even the Mushroom Bureau (subsequently rebranded as More with Mushrooms) are also in the no-wash camp, with Smith explaining that fungi “already have a lot of moisture and washing them means they absorb even more, which can make them soggy”. Never wash a mushroomĪs the US’s Bon Appetit magazine cautioned mushroom-loving readers back in 2017, “If your usual move is to bring them home from the market and immediately stick them under a running faucet – stop! … Dry mushrooms are delicious mushrooms.” It’s almost as if they hadn’t read the very first instalment of what was to become my How to cook the perfect … column back in 2010, where I thoroughly debunked the idea.
Illustration: Steven Gregor/The Guardian 2. I won’t delve into it here, but look up J Kenji López-Alt’s take on the subject on the aforementioned Serious Eats website.
There’s also debate around whether pasta is best cooked in a very large pan of water, as is traditional, or whether you can save power by using a smaller pot, and less water. According to Serious Eats culinary director Daniel Gritzer, 2% is, for him, “the top end of what’s tolerable, tasting very well seasoned but also noticeably salty”. Certainly you do need some salt – pasta cooked without it will be bland and disappointing, however delicious the accompanying sauce – but how much depends on your palate.ĭel Conte suggests 10g per litre, or at least a teaspoon-worth “if you want a pasta worth eating”, a formula also approved by the Michelin-starred chef Giorgio Locatelli.
To be fair, those who repeat the claim, like Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi in their book The Long & the Short of Pasta, or even the great food writer Anna del Conte, are usually mistaken about the saltiness of the sea, rather than how to cook pasta, because the Caldesis go on to recommend a mere 5g of salt per litre. And while it’s true that most of the salt will disappear down the plughole when you drain the pasta, if you try cooking it at the same level of salinity as the Med, with 38g salt per litre of water, you’ll find it’s still completely unpalatable. I admit this notion does have a certain romance – it’s nice to think you’re tasting the Adriatic while eating spaghetti alle vongole in Enfield – but if you’ve ever been smacked in the face by a wave you’ll know that level of saltiness is far too much for human consumption.
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