mac

I just purchased a "Fasta Pasta." It is a utensil that cooks pasta in the microwave and I love it.

Coming from an Italian family it almost feels wrong to talk about cooking pasta in the microwave, but there it is, I've said it. I tried a couple of other products that are suppose to cook it in the microwave and they didn't turn out so well. But this was recommended on America's Test Kitchen and so I thought I would give it a try.

It does the job without waiting for a big pot of water to boil. It can be washed in the dishwasher (top shelf) and you don't need a colander to drain it. Just put the top on the Fasta Pasta to drain the water out. It comes with a handy cooking time chart and as long as you follow the time, it comes out perfect. There is no heating up the kitchen in the summertime. It doesn't necessarily cook the pasta faster, but clean-up is a lot faster and you don't have to watch the pot to keep it from boiling over. A plus, in my book! Without air conditioning in my house, I find it just too sweltering in the kitchen to cook, but this has really helped.

One thing that I would like to add is that they don't tell you in the instructions to add salt to the water and you should, otherwise your pasta will taste pretty bland. Just add some salt and stir it around before you start to cook.

The only con that I can see is that it does not cook pasta for a crowd. It only cooks it for 1-4 people; so if you have a big family this won't be of any use to you.

Has anyone else tried one of these?

P.S. I'm sure you can probably do the same thing using a bowl in the microwave and taking a guess at the cooking time, but you would still have to mess up a colander to drain the pasta, so to me this means less things to clean. Yeah!