There you sit with long noodles and only a short pot in which to boil them. Suddenly the age old conflict of breaking your noodles or not is upon you. Some say it's bad luck, some say it's bad form. Where do you stand?
Most Italians will tell you that breaking noodles is bad luck. Some folks are ok with the chaos that noodle breaking might create and snap away to make everything fit in so they can walk away from the stove. (Let's face it: the 5 minutes it takes for pasta to boil you can get several things accomplished! Plus, sometimes it's easier for pasta to be twirled up on a fork when it's shorter anyway, right?)
If you want to avoid breaking your pasta and want it all in a pot, try adding it in, waiting a few minutes once boiling and the rest of the noodle should be soft enough to fold down into your pot.
Where do you stand on the pasta breaking front? Are you a breaker and a snapper or do you leave those long starchy strands whole? Let us know below!
Related: Make Great Fresh Pasta at Home: Tips From My Italian Mother-in-Law
(Image: Flickr member The Traveling Bum licensed for use by Creative Commons)
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They usually soften pretty fast, stand there for less then a minute gently pushing the noodles onto the bottom of the pot they will bend into the water.
Breaking pasta in half is not permissible. Also, you only have to wait like 15 seconds for it to be pushed down into the pot and totally submerged. I definitely wouldn't wait a few minutes before doing so, otherwise half the pasta will be under cooked.
This is an age-old argument between my boyfriend and I. He prefers them broken, but to me it's bad form AND bad luck. It's just makes it feel like you're cutting up a child's food for easier handling because they aren't good at twisting the fork.
I am guilty of breaking pasta in half. I've never done it for the sake of time-saving, but to make the twirling factor when eating easier for the little one in the house. And had never considered it an "offense" or lines-in-sand kind of move. Hmm.
I've never even thought about breaking them. My family always just shoved them into the pot and waited for them to soften enough to be gently pushed down.
My mom always broke the noodles and as a high schooler/college kid I did the same. Until I saw Mario Batali say on his old show that that was an insult to all those nonne who spent decades perfecting their long, thin noodles, engineered to hold the sauce in just the right way. And I've not done it since!
It's simple... spaghetti/fettucinne/linguine are supposed to be long noodles. Don't break them! They will bend to fit in about 15-20 seconds like the above commenter mentionesd. If you want short noodles, buy Penne/rigatone etc. :)
I've never felt the need to break them. If I want short pasta, I'll pick a shorter variety. Even when all we have had is a smaller pot, I just wait a few minutes until the bottoms soften then push the remaining part of the noodle into the water.
Eh. I break them. I like to break them! It's a challenge to snap briskly and avoid flying shards. If they are too long, even if you poke them down, seems like some bits stick up and stay hard. Never heard the bad luck story, or the disrespecting the chef idea. On the other hand, if I spill salt, I can't help but toss some over my shoulder into the devil's face.
If I am using spaghetti or fettuccine in a hot dish, I do not break it. It soaks up the sauce and twirls so wonderfully! (I don't usually have any little ones to worry about) However, I do make two cold pasta salads and for those, I do break the spaghetti in half. Cold, the spaghetti is just easier to pick up on the fork. Anyway, the salads are Asian not Italian, so, the bad luck doesn't count, no?
No need to break it. If you don't wanna wait for them to bend into the pot, simply use small pasta. No reason you can't have elbows and meatballs.
My very favorite quick/delicious dinner is pasta with clam sauce. It takes longer to cook the pasta than it does to assemble the sauce.
I use shells for it -- get it? Shells/clams! Then I eat it with a soup spoon. That way I can slurp up all the lovely brothy sauce. I find with the traditional linquine all the sauce and some of the clams are left behind on the plate.
Always break them, & not just to make them easier to cook. I eat my dinner at work, & would rather not spend half my shift with sauce on my scrubs, listening to snarky comments from my co-workers. I do mostly buy shorter pasta, but last week whole wheat spaghetti was on sale for 88 cents a box.
Plus my dogs & cats all love uncooked pasta, & gather round to clean up what I drop breaking it.
So sue me. :))))
i never realised this was such a heated issue!!
Really, lol, never given it any thought. I've done both. Don't believe in luck & if there's a guest who might be offended, he's welcome to cook while I prop my feet up, sip a glass of wine & watch. The little ones always liked it long though, both kids & now g-kids.
In my pasta-eating days, I broke pasta all the time. I didn't know it was a major offense. Learn something new every day.
Wow, can't believe this a topic, haha. I always break them. Never had I thought twice about it. Whatever factory made my pasta won't know that I broke them, and I don't believe in good or bad luck, and I think it makes it easier to eat in the long run. To break pasta, or not to break pasta? THAT is a first world problem!
Please. Breaking pasta is "not permissible"? It works for me, so I do it. What a silly thing to take offense over. Give me a break.