How much water does pasta absorb when it is cooked?

penguin_pam

How much water will dry semolina pasta absorb when it is properly cooked? For example, how much water would one pound of farfalle or spaghetti absorb? I am guessing the shape of the pasta doesn't matter, just the absolute weight. I am not looking for how much water is required to boil it, nor what temperature is required, just how much should be absorbed. I like my pasta cooked a minute or so past the box "al dente" stage. The application is...

Originally asked by SAJ14SAJ on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

You need 1.1x as much water as pasta for al dente! I measured this myself, cooking penne rigate (in water, not sauce) - 200g of pasta weighed 420g after being cooked and thoroughly drained. The estimate below from the nutrition facts is 1.4x, which probably corresponds to typical American overcooked pasta - a surprisingly large difference from mine. I'm guessing you'll be somewhere between, maybe 1.25x. You can also ballpark it from nutrition facts. Cooked spaghetti has 31g carbs per 100g pasta, and dry spaghetti has 75g carbs per 100g pasta. So 100g dry pasta turns into 100g*75/31 = 242g of cooked pasta, meaning the added water was ~1.4x the weight of the pasta. So for a pound of pasta,...

Full answer by Cascabel: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/42491 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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