Cooking pasta

[Georgyporky]

Just seen a YouTube video where the cook (NOT Italian) fries penne in olive oil then adds a limited amount of chicken stock to finish cooking.

Anyone tried it? I could try it myself, but would rather it was endorsed by a fellow MNer before I wasted time & money before discovering it wasn't good.

You can do this. It makes a rather gloopy sauce as the starch from the pasta migrates into the cooking liquid. It's a popular camping method because you don't waste fuel heating up a huge pot of water.

@BlackForestCake Thank you, I'll give it a miss. I'm so glad I asked.

It is good, though. It's just the same as doing pasta bake really, but you're cooking it on the stove.

I've done this with orzo. It was nice.

If you like that gloopy starchy consistency it would be good, but it would be different from normal cooked pasta, as that gets drained before you eat it or put it in a pasta bake, and a lot of the starch released when you boil it goes down the drain with the cooking water. Wouldn't frying the penne make it crispy? I'm assuming it was dried pasta, not fresh. I expect that would make a difference.

When I was in my teens in the 1970s my best friend's family made a weird dish that I rather liked. As far as I can remember, you broke up strands of spaghetti so they would fit in a baking dish. They were laid across the bottom of the dish, and possibly some sliced or chopped raw onion was sprinkled on top, then a tin of tomatoes was tipped in, along with some Marmite dissolved in boiling water. There was some grated cheese on top as well. The whole thing got baked in the oven until the spaghetti was cooked. I did try making it myself years later but (not surprisingly) it wasn't a great success.

I think when I was young one of the main things I liked about it was the taste of Marmite, which we didn't have at home. Also, the only pasta dishes we ever had at home were macaroni cheese (not tinned) or spaghetti rings or strands in tomato sauce (very definitely tinned). For special occasions we would go to a local Italian restaurant and I loved the pasta dishes there, which seemed excitingly exotic.

@Reallybadidea Totally forgotten about orzo . I make a Y.O. dish that uses fried orzo & ends up like a risotto.
@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g We had macaroni as a pudding at home, in a sort of sweet custard made with Bird's custard powder. I told DM about macaroni cheese at school, so she added some cheddar to the pudding (boak).