Salt your pasta water like you mean it (and 2 other things I got backwards)

I cooked pasta for fifteen years with a timid pinch of salt in the water, the way my mom did, the way most recipes vaguely gesture at. Then I measured what actual Italian kitchens use: roughly a tablespoon per quart, water that should taste like the sea.

That one change did more for my pasta than any sauce technique I had picked up in the meantime. The noodle seasons from the inside as it cooks; a bland noodle cannot be rescued by a good sauce poured on top later.

Two more reversals: I used to rinse pasta after draining, which strips the starch that helps sauce cling — now I never rinse, except for cold pasta salad. And I used to add oil to the boiling water to "stop sticking," which mostly just makes sauce slide off the noodle later; a good stir in the first minute solves the sticking without the tradeoff.

None of this required a new skill. It required unlearning three small habits I never questioned because nobody ever explained why they existed in the first place.