What am I doing wrong? Pasta in a thermos.

[PennyGold]

Hello,

I'd really appreciate some help. I saw someone eating pasta from a thermos.. and I fancied a change from soup.
I cooked the pasta on the morning (loads of sauce) and popped it in my thermos. When I went to eat it at lunch it was so dry (absolutely no sauce) and stuck together, making it impossible to eat?
Why does this happen, and is there a way of stopping it from happening?
I really don't know if I'm being an idiot?

So you put the pasta and the sauce in the thermos but it was all stuck together? I advise you to add a generous slosh of olive oil to the pasta and sauce and mix it up. Then put in thermos. But prior to that, warm the thermos up by putting boiling water in it...put the lid on loosely and then tip it all out before you add the food.

In my experience pasta tends to do this. You'll need either loads of sauce (so more like a soup) or have it cold as a pasta salad.

Could you have added some boiling water to it & shaken it up?

If you see this person again, ask them how to do it !

When I’ve cooked the pasta, I take the it out of the boiling water and immediately rinse it in cold water. I rinse until the pasta has cooled completely. Make sure to drain it well. Basically I'm trying to stop the pasta from continuing to "Cook" in the sauce.
Also, cooked pasta releases gluten, which thickens your sauce. "Washing" your pasta before putting the sauce in it will prevent this, but probably the most simple thing to do in general is to keep your sauce a bit more liquid, and mixing your pasta with a bit of olive oil just before you add your sauce. This way your pasta is somehow "coated" with oil which could prevent a bit the soaking of your sauce.

Thank you everyone! You've been a real help.
I'll give your ideas a go!