Science
Nobel laureate found cheaper way to cook pasta – Italian chefs are furious
How do you cook your pasta: energy-saving or like the Italians?
The scientist and Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi has found a way to cook pasta more energy-efficiently. To the displeasure of many Italian chefs, who call the method a “disaster.”
The method is very simple: you take a pot with two liters of water, boil it, salt it generously and slide in the pasta of your choice. Then just turn off the stove. “After you bring the water to a boil, you just put in the pasta and wait two minutes,” Italian scientist and Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi, who studies some of the most complex problems in the universe, explained on his Facebook page. “Then you can turn off the gas, put the lid on and add a minute more than the stated cooking time. This method saves you ‘at least eight minutes of energy’ – and those minutes add up.
He never expected that Parisi’s proposal to save energy would trigger a worldwide controversy. Italian chefs in particular took his method to heart and fumed: Antonello Colonna, whose restaurant in Labico (Italy) has a Michelin star, explained to “La Republica”that this method would only result in a pot of gummy noodles. “I remember well at my parents’ house the gas bottle ran out while the spaghetti was cooking and when that happened we had a problem because the consistency of the product was now compromised,” he said.
It is “a disaster” to cook pasta in this way
Chef Luigi Pomata was more explicit, calling it “a disaster” to turn off the heat while the pasta was cooking. “Let’s leave the cooking to the chefs while the physicists experiment in their lab.”
David Fairhurst, a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Science & Technology, must have drawn even more ire from Italian chefs with his suggestion. He suggests soaking the dried noodles in cold water for two hours first, then halving the recommended amount of water and gently simmering the noodles instead of boiling the water. Meanwhile, the lid should remain on the pot the whole time. Fairhurst writes that this is the most energy-efficient method: “We are not all chefs or Nobel Prize winners in physics, but we can all change something in the way we cook to reduce energy bills and still prepare a tasty meal.” What do you think Colonna and Pomata would say to this proposal?
Sources: “La Republica”“the conversation”