A new cooking tool for cooking pasta...
 

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!

I never heard of it before and I watch a lot of TV. Sounds interesting because I do most of my cooking in the microwave.

I got mine at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Bought one at BBB yesterday. Can't wait to use it.

I saw a guy on Guy's Grocery Games. He just used a skillet to cook his since he needed the water to boil fast. DH said; "Hey he cooks pasta like you do!" Yep I put it in a skillet then put water and season with salt. Altogether about 5-6 minutes. I make meatball and sauce ahead of time and a large batch for later meals. I can have a meatball and spaghetti dinner on in 10 minutes.

And the texture is okay, not mushy?

The texture comes out al dente, not mushy at all. Another one that I bought and I had to return did make the pasta mushy; however, with this one it has all been good. Made elbow macaroni last night for pasta salad and it came out perfect.

I took a gourmet cooking course when I was a young bride, bored all day waiting for DH to get home. I was't a quilter then. LOL. We were taught to bring enough water to cover the pasta, not drown it, to a boil, put in pasta, stir to separate. We made homemade pasta so it took a couple of minutes to cook. Pre packed pasta was cooked the same way, just took longer. Making homemade pasta is so easy, I haven't bought pre packaged hard pasta in years. Now that good fresh pasta is available to buy at the grocery store I buy that to save time.

I got this pasta recipe online, it's good and I want to share it with you.

Thanks, Rosana, sounds really good. I'll have to try it.