Does dry pasta need washing?

Question

When I am cooking at home I usually cook with dry, store bought pasta shapes. Before I cook it I usually partly wash it under the tap so that the water isn't too cloudy when it cooks, I don't usually bother to wash it thoroughly so there is still some cloudiness.

My question is basically, is it necessary to wash pasta before cooking it? Is there an advantage to washing it completely so it is boiling in clear water? I think it is just the starch that is being washed off (please correct me if I am wrong) so by washing it the cooked pasta would not stick together as much but I haven't tested it.

Answer 1

No, there's no need to wash the pasta, and really, it's best not to.

It's good that the water gets cloudy from the pasta starch. If it has enough starch in it, it'll leave the surface of the noodles a bit stickier, making sauce adhere better. And you can also use some of the pasta water in a sauce to the same end. Getting the water that starchy generally requires using less water (see What is the correct water to pasta ratio?). If you're using tons and tons of water, like the pasta package probably says, it's probably going to be too diluted.

The one case in which you might want to wash the pasta is if, even when you start it from cold water and stir enough, it sticks. The only kind of pasta I've had this happen with is orecchiette, which is shaped perfectly for getting it to stick to itself.

Answer 2

The cloudy water indicates the presence of starch. That starch is desirable and necessary to help the sauce stick to the pasta. That's why it's recommended to add a small amount of the cloudy cooking water to the sauce - this also helps to season the sauce, since the cooking water should be heavily salted.

Some pasta recipes call for rinsing the pasta with cold water after it cooks. This is done intentionally to halt the cooking process and remove excess starch. These recipes are usually for cold pasta salads, where the stickiness of the starch is undesirable. It's also commonly done with lasagna noodles to prevent sticking during assembly.

Answer 3

No. There's absolutely no point in washing the pasta before cooking, unless you don't like the starch flavour (which is obviously matter of a person's taste).

Conversely, you may want to preserve all the starch and, to avoid throwing it away, there is a particular cooking technique, in which you put the dry pasta int a pan, and start adding hot water (or broth) little by little, waiting for it to evaporate, until the pasta is fully cooked.