Cooking pasta in the microwave

Question

I have a microwave "pot" that I use for steaming vegetables. The instructions say it can also be used for cooking pasta, which seems sacrilege to me.
Does anybody know if the result would be a good al dente pasta if cooked in the microwave? I'd hate to waste a batch of my home made pasta just to try it.

Answer

You know, I'm right there with you on the sacrilege part, but nowadays I microwave pasta all the time. You need to use a non-starchy pasta for this to work. I use plain store-bought Barilla Plus because I love it anyway. For fresh pasta, you could try a small experiment; I've never tried with freshly-made pasta.

It takes less time than boiling on the stove for me because I do this:

1. Fill up the electric kettle with water and turn it on.
2. I use a 1/2 gallon Pyrex measuring cup as my "pot", and I put an inch or so of water in that and pop it in the microwave for four minutes to warm it up.
3. When the water's boiling in the kettle and the oven timer expires, I take out the Pyrex container, add the pasta and a little oil and some salt (optionally a little vinegar), and then pour in the boiling water to cover by an inch or so.
4. Dumpling-like pasta (rotini or penne) take about 8:30 to cook on high (I've got I think an 1100 watt oven; experiment); spaghetti 5:30, thin spaghetti 4:30.

I know it sounds like a horrible sin, but I started doing it when I needed to cook small portions of pasta for my kids. I tried it myself, and realized that I could tell absolutely no difference from the results I got in my big pasta pot. When I need to boil a lot of pasta (like 2 14oz boxes) I still use the big pot of course, but a pound or less actually cooks up perfectly fine. My pasta cooker is enormous and takes a long time to come up to the boil.

Now once I tried this (not thinking clearly, obviously) with some very starchy, fancy pasta, and it did not work at all. But maybe because it's got so much extra protein, Barilla Plus comes out absolutely fine. (It's good for you too.)

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