Is pasta cooking quality affected by the power rating, water-to-pasta ratio and mixing degree?

Abstract

In this work, the main chemico-physical cooking quality of commercial spaghetti was evaluated using two typical home gas- or electric-fired hobs by setting the cooking water-to-pasta ratio (WPR) and power supplied (PC) during the pasta cooking phase in the presence or absence of stirring at 3 or 10 L kg-1 and 0.15 or 1.0 kW, respectively. The average values of cooked pasta water uptake (1.3±0.1 g g-1), cooking loss (38±4 g kg-1), degree of starch gelatinization (12±1 %), hardness at 30 % (6.0±0.4 N) or 90 % (15±1 N) deformation, and resilience (0.60±0.02) resulted to be practically constant and independent of the cooking system, WPR and PC values used at the 95 % confidence level. The overall energy efficiency of the induction hob was about the double of that of the LPG-fired one. Moreover, at WPR=3 L kg-1 and PC=0.25 kW, it was possible to cook spaghetti under mild mixing in no more than 15 min with a minimum energy consumption of 0.54 Wh g-1, this amounting to about the 35 % of that consumed with the same sustainable cooking procedure at WPR=10 L kg-1. The intermittent mixing degree at a rotational speed of 50 rev min-1 appeared to be sufficient at WPR=3 L kg-1. The induction hob was thus eligible to develop a specialized appliance for pasta cooking.