Cook pasta for a cold pasta salad differently than normal pasta.
Making pasta salad is one way to express your culinary creativity. You can use almost any foods you can imagine in a pasta salad; small fruit pieces like raisins or apple chunks can add an extra dimension to earthy vegetables, meats, nuts and herbs. Cooking pasta for a pasta salad is very similar to cooking it to serve with sauce or in other common uses. For the best results, however, you should make a couple of modifications to normal pasta-cooking procedures.
Instructions
1. Pour enough water to easily cover all of your pasta into a large pot. Add 1 tbsp. of salt per quart of water, then bring the water to a boil.
2. Add your pasta to the boiling salted water. Cook it for as long as the package directs, stirring regularly to prevent the individual pieces from sticking together. Taste the pasta after the amount of time the package says is required to cook it to al dente.
3. Boil the pasta for approximately one more minute after it reaches what would normally be the perfect al dente consistency. This will help prevent the pasta from becoming dry and chewy after it cools.
4. Pour the pasta into a colander and immediately rinse it thoroughly with cool water. This is not generally a good idea when you make pasta, but pasta salad is the exception. Rinsing your pasta in cool water will stop it from cooking further and make it less sticky than it would have been otherwise. Your pasta is now perfectly ready for inclusion in a pasta salad of your choice.
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