Turns out I wasnt supposed to be salting my pasta water like its a driveway in January
So a few weeks back this older regular at the spot where I work watches me dump like three handfuls of kosher salt into the pasta pot and he just goes quiet for a second. Then he says, kid, are you trying to cure a ham or cook noodles? And I kind of laughed it off but then he had me taste the water and it was basically ocean brine. He said a good handful is plenty for a big pot, you want it seasoned not salty enough to float a body. Ive been doing the three big fistfuls thing for like 6 years at three different kitchens and nobody ever said a word. Now Im wondering if every pasta dish I ever sent out was just low key over salted this whole time and people were too polite to say it. Any of you all actually measure it out or is everyone just eyeballing it like me?
Oh man, the thing nobody talks about is that salt level changes what sauce does to the pasta. If your water is super salty, the noodle comes out already seasoned and the sauce sits on top more, but with lighter water the pasta drinks up more sauce and the whole dish tastes different. I worked at a place that did a big pot with maybe a quarter cup of salt for like six gallons of water and the chef would yell if you went over, and our pasta always came out tasting right. So you might not have been wrecking every dish, you might have just been cooking for a different kind of sauce the whole time.