The fastest pasta dish in Italy just got healthier! A favorite in Italy for lunch breaks or for a midnight snack. This is a healthy PastaAglio e Olio recipe, perfect for those looking for healthy pasta recipes or wanting to follow a Mediterranean diet!
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Do not add salt to the water. We will be adding ladles of this hot water to a skillet to finish cooking the spaghetti. If you add salty water to cook the pasta, the water will evaporate in the skillet leaving too much salt in our dish.When the water is boiling, cook the pasta for just 2 minutes. In the meantime…
Prepare the Ingredients
Thinly slice the cloves of fresh garlic. Remove the seeds from and mince the red chili peppers. Mince a handful of parsley and set it aside. Save the parsley stems for flavoring the oil!
4 cloves fresh garlic, 4 red chili pepper
Prepare the Soffritto
Cover the bottom of a large skillet with the olive oil (use the amount of olive oil in the ingredients, not the full fat version shown in the photo). Over medium heat, add: the garlic, chili pepper and some parsley stems. Cook for about 2 minutes or until the garlic has turned golden. When the pasta has cooked for 2 minutes…
¼ cup olive oil, 1 handful flat leaf Italian parsley
Finish Cooking the Pasta in the Pan
Transfer the spaghetti immediately to the infused olive oil along with 2 ladles of hot pasta water. Save the hot pasta water—we will continue adding it to the skillet to cook the pasta!
8 oz spaghetti
Cook the pasta like a risotto over medium heat. Set your timer for the rest of the cooking time required on the pasta package instructions for al dente pasta. Total cooking time for the average spaghetti brand is about 11 minutes. In this case, you’d set your timer for 9 minutes since we already cooked the pasta for 2 minutes.
When the first ladles of pasta water have been mostly absorbed, add a few ladles more. Continue adding water a few ladles at a time until the pasta is cooked to al dente.
When the pasta is cooked, salt to taste and add some minced parsley for freshness and color. Buon appetito!
fine salt
Video
Notes
Do NOT salt the pasta water.Unlike other pasta recipes, in this recipe calls for cooking the pasta mostly in the pan with ladles of hot pasta water. We cook the pasta in this way to help us concentrate the starch coming from the pasta in order to create the creamy sauce. If you salt the pasta water, you will likely have too much concentrated salt left in your skillet when the water evaporates.For this reason, we treat this pasta dish as we would a dish with salty seafood broth: salt at the end (if needed)!