This Is The Best Way To Save Your Leftover Pasta
Pasta can be the perfect meal prep dish. It's quick, easy, and tastes absolutely delicious. But while you could make a big batch of pasta for dinner and save enough for lunch the next day, when it comes time to reheat pasta, it often gets clumpy and tastes as dry as sawdust. But what if there was a trick to making leftover pasta taste just as good as it did when you cooked it fresh?
According to Delish, it's all about making sure that your pasta has enough moisture even when you put it in the refrigerator overnight. The site suggests storing pasta in a sealable plastic bag. Doing so will make sure that cooked pasta doesn't get too hard in the cold temperature of your refrigerator. When it comes to storing pasta with the sauce, you should ideally store the pasta and the sauce separately so that the pasta doesn't get mushy when you reheat it (via The Spruce Eats).
If you do store it together, do so in a sealed bag or container, making sure that you get all the air out and eat within a day. You could also store plain pasta in the freezer but coat the pasta with some oil or butter before you freeze it and use it within two months to enjoy the pasta at its best.
How to successfully reheat leftover pasta
Once you've stored your pasta properly, the next step is learning how to reheat it well. When you're ready to cook plain pasta that's been stored in the refrigerator, Delish says that all you need to do is pop the pasta in boiling water for a few seconds. Bon Appétit goes on to explain that you only need to put your pasta in water for about 30 seconds. The idea of re-cooking already cooked pasta may seem bizarre but the point is to warm refrigerated pasta and not cook it again.
When it comes to reheating sauced pasta, microwaving it may seem like the obvious (and convenient) answer. Thrillist says that using the microwave is an absolute no unless you like your pasta dry and unevenly cooked. Instead, you should cover the pasta with aluminum foil to keep it from drying out and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes. If you have no other option but to resort to using a microwave, they recommend putting extra water or sauce in the pasta and covering it. Heat it for a minute at first and then do so in 30-second intervals, making sure to stir the pasta in between.
Now that you know the best ways to save and reheat leftover pasta, you can go ahead and make a batch without any worry.