PASTA WITH POTATOES, GORGONZOLA AND FRIED SAGE - Very salty!
Have had enormous success with Milk Street recipes and have made it my go-to recipe source since subscribing. This is the first time I feel like I have noticed a typo in the recipe.
2 Tbs salt for 2 quarts water felt like twice as much salt as was needed. Still a 1/2 tsp salt and 3 Tbs salted butter to go after that, but it felt like the first boiling step was where the real saltiness happened.
Followed the recipe to a T, so I'm not sure what could've gone wrong on my end. I guess it's not really a question, just wanted to bring it to your attention!
Comments
I haven’t made this recipe, but I was thinking that maybe you used table salt or another fine grain salt instead of Kosher salt. The level of salt is vastly different between 1 Tbs Kosher vs 1 Tbs table salt. Even different brands of kosher salt are different. I switched to Diamond Crystal after hearing about this difference on Milk Street and have not had any problems since with salt level no matter the recipe source. The flake size between different salts varies and that accounts for the difference in saltiness when you measure it.
Hi Mark - Generally, we cook pasta in 4 quarts water with 2 tablespoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt. This ratio creates starchy water suitable for most sauces. But some pastas, particularly ones with cream- or cheese-based sauces or ones where we really want to thicken the sauce, require particularly starchy water to prevent them from breaking. In those cases, we cook in just 2 quarts water and 1 tablespoon salt to concentrate the starches. For this recipe, Pasta with Potatoes, Gorgonzola, and Fried Sage, we are cooking both potatoes and pasta in the same water which is why we called for 2 tablespoons of salt. Potatoes are bland and need the seasoning as well. As Maureen mentioned, if you are using table salt or Morton's kosher salt (which has a finer grain) you should reduce the amount of salt by exactly half for table salt and just over half for Morton's kosher. I hope this helps! Best, Lynn C.