Does one add salt to water when cooking pasta for flavor only? I read “somewhere” years ago that the salt changes the temperature that the water boils which makes for better pasta cooking.
Absolutely the most important question of the day.:o
Most sources today admit it’s just for flavor.
I never add salt to pasta and it tastes fine to me, and cooks just fine.
IIRC, it raises the boiling point of the water.
Note, in order to do this any appreciable amount, you’ll need more than a “pinch” in your 2 gallon pot.
Hmm… somebody should come along and correct me, as I’m sure I’m missing some of the facts here.
First off, lots of cookbooks/backs of boxes/etc. will say to add a pinch of salt, if desired, presumably to lower the boiling point of the water. To lower the boiling point of the water by 1 degree F though, you’d have to have like a pound of salt dissolved in it (sorry I don’t have exact numbers, if I could remember where I saw this cited, I’d post a link, but it was a while ago…)
Secondly, I think the main point of adding salt in pasta is because it might help it from getting sticky or something… salt dissolves in water, salty water sticks to pasta, salt helps the pasta to not absorb too much water… something like that.
In the case of vegetables, it helps break down the cell walls, releasing clorophyll, making them nice 'n shiny 'n green. (or something like that).
Read “I’m Just Here For The Food” by Alton Brown (http://www.altonbrown.com) - he’s the smartest cookin’ guy there is.
Adding salt to water lowers the boiling point because it provides `nucleation sites’ for bubbles to form around. A nucleation site is anyplace something coming out of solution (in this case, dissolved gases in the water) can glom onto to form a bubble. But, as TeleTronOne said, it probably takes more salt than is called for to appreciably lower the boiling point of the amount of water you’d use to cook pasta.
Me? I think it’s a mixture of taste and tradition.
I’ve always added a couple tablespoons of oil in the water for this reason. I don’t know if it actually works or not though!
It is well known that adding salt to water makes it boil faster by giving something for the bubbles to form around. Kinda like cloud-seeding as I understand it. Oh yeah, its called nucleation sites.
see what Cecil says
The Bad Chemistry website has this to say here: http://www.princeton.edu/~lehmann/BadChemistry.html#Solutions
Salt raises the boiling point of water. The idea is you can cook faster this way - like a pressure cooker, which also boils at a higher temperature. Salt isn’t very effective, but that’s the idea anyway.
Found a cite that did a simple experiment on this. If you add 10g of salt to 100ml of water, the boiling point goes up to 102 C.
If any of you own the popular cookbook The Joy Of Cooking, check out the “About Boiling Pasta” section on page 295.
“Fresh or dried, pasta should always be cooked in a large quantity of fiercely going salted water. Use about 1 tablespoon salt per 3 quarts water.” [They don’t say why you should use the salt, though. I heard somewhere that it’s to retain the pasta’s flavor.]
“Adequate water and frequent stirring are the two keys to eliminating the problem of pasta sticking together. Adding oil to the water has little effect except to keep the pot from boiling over.”
I don’t think salt, once in solution, is going to provide anything in the way of nucleation sites. Nucleation, IIRC, is a relatively macroscopic phenomenon; at least with respect to atomic sizes of the ions in solution.
But I could be wrong.
Salt after the water is boiling or it will take longer to boil (or so I’m told). Quite simply, pasta absorbs water as it cooks. Many find plain pasta very bland. So, to add flavor into pasta (or rice, potatoes, etc), add salt (lemon, orange, spinach juice, vanilla if you are so inclined) to the water, or use broth. Now flavored water is absorbed, flavoring the pasta itself.
I personally feel it makes a difference if each level of a dish is seasoned. Knowing that each level is going to be seasoned, I adjust seasoning in my sauces accordingly. Some others may want their pasta unsalted and rely solely on the sauces for flavoring. To each their own.
I add it for the flavor. I think other people just add it out of tradition, but there’s really no good argument for it in terms of cooking faster or boiling faster or any such thing, because as mentioned, the amount of salt you’d add would have an utterly negligible effect on the boiling point, and you’re probably not adding enough to really change the time it takes to boil, either.
The salt has to do with altering the taste and perhaps to a very small extent the physical characteristics of the food, but nothing to do with the temperature of the water.
It won’t provide you any extra nucleation sites once it’s dissolved; what Cecil’s article was talking about was super heating water several degrees above it’s boiling point (which is pretty damn hard to do - I’ve tried it several times in the microwave and it never worked) and then suddenly adding a significant amount of extra surface area which will allow all those bubbles to form… and within a second or two they’ll all be gone. The salt would only be useful doing this for the short time that it remains a solid - which ain’t too long at those temperatures. Then again you could get the same effect by throwing a handful of sand into the water. In a pot you’ll never be able to superheat water anyways due to the roughness of the insides and the convective flow of the water as it heats. Add to that the fact that you’ve got food providing all kinds of nucleation sites anyways, and, well, super heating water can be left as a demostration experiment for when you’re bored. 
And as others have pointed out, the amounts of salt used in boiling water will only alter the boiling point by a tiney fraction of a degree. Relative to adding a pinch of salt, you’ll change the boiling time several hundred times more by: looking under the lid, blowing across the water surface, not having the pot sitting completely over the burner, or starting off with colder water.
If it’s something cooks do, you can bet it affects food flavour, not the latent heats of chemical solutions.
“Other people,” of course, is supposed to refer to people who don’t add it for flavor. Just in case that was as unclear as I think it was.
Salt in boiling water
1g salt per quart raises the boiling point of water by ~ 0.016 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to flavoring the pasta, the addition of ions to cooking water alters the texture of the final product by increasing the rate at which the starches are hydrated.
Also see: Why exactly do we salt water for boiling pasta?
It’s true, it’s true, you add salt for flavour. Fine Cooking magazine’s (my bible) method for cooking dried pasta:
Bring lots of water in a pot filled only 2/3 full to a roiling boil. Add in salt, amount depending on the amount of water. The water should taste slightly salty on its own, depending on how much salt you like, so vary this a little. Add the salt immediately prior to adding in the pasta hard on its heels.
(I think this part is so that the “boil up” created by the temporary excess of nucleation sites helps separate the pasta as it hits the hot water and forms a sticky layer of carbohydrate on its outside)
Give it a good stir and put a lid on the pot loosely so that some steam can escape and you don’t get foam. As soon as the water comes back up to a roiling boil you take the lid off. You want this to happen asap, so that the movement of the bubbles in the water moves the pasta around slightly. This prevents it from sticking together, as well as stirring it well while the water’s coming back up.
If you make a pot of plain spaghetti or penne by this method, and then taste one made without the salt, or cooked without enough water or space in the pot, it’s pretty incomparable. The salt in the pasta itself does enhance the flavour, that’s why we salt food. Dissolved salt reacts with the flavour molecules, making them more available for us to taste/smell. Salt needs time to do its work, though, so if you only salt at the table, you end up using more than if you just salt a little bit, gradually throughout the cooking process. Try adding a little bit of salt to the meat in the pan, a little to the veggies before you cook them (steam, boil, or panfry) and then you probably won’t need to add any at the table and you’ll be surprised how much more vibrant your cooking is.
salt is not evil! it is fascinating.
Speaking of Alton, I remember him saying something along the line of: the reason cooks aid salt to boiling water and other sorts of dishes is for taste because salt releases an enzyme in the human mouth (perhaps the taste buds?) which heightens the effect of flavor. Thus why you should add salt to boiling water when cooking pasta, cereals, etc.
I could be wrong, but I’ve remembered this for years, because it’s so obviously true. Ever tried eating cream of rice made without a pinch of salt added to the water? YECHHH! 
Tesa