Pasta Express

I swear I'll move out of the kitchen soon, but the boys and I saw this Pasta Express thing at WalMart this morning and it just called to me.

I'm not sure if the appeal here is supposed to be safety or ease of cooking. If it's safety, well, I don't know what to tell you. Boiling water hurts, and I'm sure we've all experienced an encounter while draining pasta. If you cook relatively often, I'll bet you burn yourself once a year at least - or maybe that's just me. When I splash myself, I tend to whine about it for an evening while soaking my hand in ice water, but I've never gone to the hospital or anything. You'll live.

If it's ease of cooking, then I just don't get it. Put water in pot, bring to boil (cover the pot for a faster boil), put in pasta, bring back to boil, stir every so often to prevent sticking, cook for as long as the package says. It's really that simple. You can add salt to the water if you really want to, but it's not necessary. The thing is, the cooking of the pasta isn't where people get tricked up, it's figuring out what kinds of sauces go best with which pastas*** - and this gadget isn't here to help with that. And I'm guessing that spaghetti in this contraption is going to come out quite clumpy and sticky. Maybe macaroni or shells might work (if you can safely shake this thing up every few minutes), but not your straight pastas.

The one and only benefit I can think of with this product is energy savings - once you boil the water that you add to the Pasta Express, you're finished with your stove. But here's a secret: If you aren't a pasta snob and want to save energy (or heat in the kitchen, if you're cooking in the summer), bring the water in your pot to a boil, add your pasta quickly and give it a nice big stir, put the cover back on, and turn off the burner. You'll have to give it about 20 minutes, but your pasta will indeed cook that way. I've done it on occasions when the rest of dinner isn't coming along as quickly as I'd planned and it works just fine.

As usual, this dumb thing doesn't cost very much, about $10-20. But that isn't the point, is it? The point is that every single one of these dumb things adds up, not only in cost but in clutter. You just don't need it.

*** In general, the chunkier the pasta, the heavier the sauce it can handle. That's why you don't see "Angel Hair Alfredo" on menus. Keep your lighter sauces with smaller or thinner pastas (or use the really small ones for soups), and pair the shells & tubes & twisties with heavier, creamier or meatier sauces that can really stick to the individual pieces of pasta.