The Pasta Cooking Hack You Shouldn't Follow

For every food hack that changes the way you approach cooking there is a food tip that, if followed, could bake up some tragic results. But while some outlandish food tricks, like using a dishwasher to prepare a salmon dinner, can be quickly flagged as a false claim, sometimes more plausible but equally as unbeneficial hacks may sneak into our daily cooking routines.

You more than likely have heard of a somewhat old-school cooking tip that involves tossing olive oil into your pasta's noodles. According to the Smithsonian, the hack is supposed to ensure that firstly, your pasta doesn't clump together and, secondly, your pasta won't boil over onto your stove. And based on that information, drizzling olive oil into your water seems like a must if you plan on boiling noodles. But topping off your pasta with olive oil is not the innovative cooking trick it may seem to be.

Olive oil and pasta are far from a match made in hack food heaven. In fact, according to Spruce Eats, one of the trick's alleged benefits doesn't actually work. The website reported that the oil is not soaked up by the pasta and so can't keep each individual piece separated. Instead, the oil will float to the top of your boiling water which is, as Spruce Eats puts it, "wasting precious olive oil."

This less-than-stellar culinary tips' other major problem is that, while the claim that olive oil can stop your pasta from boiling over is true, Insider noted choosing to use the hack may compromise your meals' taste. Because the olive oil isn't absorbed, it instead covers the pasta, which may make any sauce you pour onto it slip right off. Insider explained that because of this if used at all, olive oil is reserved for making sure that a particularly robust serving of pasta doesn't boil out of its pot — not a normal-sized batch of bowtie noodles. So if you plan to kick your spaghetti pasta up a notch, you'll want to look for other, much more effective noodle preparation tips.