If you talk to someone who always rinses their cooked pasta and ask them why they do it, the answer is usually because that is how their parents or grandparents did it. But should you actually be rinsing your pasta once it’s cooked?
You do not want to rinse your cooked pasta. When you rinse your pasta, regardless of whether you’re rinsing it with hot or cold water, you’re actually rinsing the starch that is still on the surface of the pasta noodles. And when you remove the starch, this won’t allow any pasta sauces to stick to the noodles easily.
Not only does rinsing the pasta noodles not allow the sauces to stick to the noodles probably, there’s actually no possible benefits from rinsing the pasta noodles. Rinse pasta will not taste better.
So if you ever have a pasta dish where it seems like the sauce just will not cling to the noodles, chances are pretty good that it has been rinsed.
