Cooking Secrets For Angel Hair Pasta Dishes

By Shelley Lindt...

Before you start looking for recipes for an angel hair pasta dish, it will be helpful to review what angel hair pasta actually is. It's a type of pasta known as strand pasta, and this encompasses all of the different types of long, thin pasta. So this category includes things like spaghetti, spaghettini and vermicelli. However, angel hair pasta, also known as capelli d'angelo, is much thinner than the others. It usually comes in the long strands, but is sometimes curled into nests, which loosen into individual strands when put into boiling water. And you may need a few cooking tips to use it properly.

The optimum time for cooking this delicate type of pasta is about two to four minutes, which makes it useful if you need to make a pasta recipe in a hurry. But this also means you have to keep a close eye on it, so you don't end up with a soft, overcooked clumpy mess. If you buy this pasta fresh rather than in a package, the cooking time might be even less, so watch it carefully. You may think making something with this pasta will be quick and easy, but it could just as easily be quick and disastrous.

Many recipes seem to assume that everyone knows how to deal with this pasta, but it takes some work to use properly. During cooking, it needs stirring at the beginning so it won't stick, but this worry can also be helped by putting olive oil into the boiling water before putting in the pasta.

Of the various pasta and noodle dishes, those made with angel hair pasta are among the most limited in what works best. For example, this is not the type of pasta that you can use a heavy sauce, a sausage mixture or even a thick and creamy Alfredo sauce. The pasta would simply be overwhelmed; it works best with a very light sauce. Sometimes all it needs is to be tossed with olive oil and sprinkled with fresh basil and Parmesan cheese.

It's interesting how the various pasta dishes run the gamut from very delicate to complex and robust. Angel hair definitely falls into the most delicate end of the spectrum, and all good recipes will take account of that. The key is to save the heavier pasta sauces for the more robust types of pasta, and don't neglect the careful handling and lighter sauces required for angel hair pasta.

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