Chicken Bow-tie Pasta Salad Recipe Chicken Bow-Tie Pasta Salad (2024)

FAQs

How long do you boil bowtie pasta for? ›

For authentic "al dente" pasta, boil uncovered, stirring occasionally for 11 minutes. For more tender pasta, boil an additional 1 minute. Remove from heat. Drain well.

Small Pastas

Farfalle: Bowtie-shaped pieces named after the Italian word for “butterfly,” farfalla.

Farfalle (Bowties): 10-12 Minutes

Farfalle pasta takes longer to cook because of the way the pasta is pinched together. This pasta has a large surface area and is thick enough to hold rich tomato or cream sauces.

If you're making a dish that will be served chilled or at room temp—think cold soba, rice noodles, pasta salad—you do want to rinse so that you get toothsome (sorry) individual strands rather than one big gummy clump. Certain types of noodles benefit from a rinse in almost all applications.

Use dried pasta, not fresh pasta

While fresh pasta is a delicious choice for hot dishes, it's not ideal for pasta salad. It's softer and more delicate than dried pasta, which leaves it vulnerable to becoming soggy when it sits in the fridge (or on the serving tray) covered in dressing and mix-ins.

There are approximately 4 cups of dry pasta in one pound. This is a general rule of thumb that can vary slightly depending on the shape and size of the pasta.

The word farfalle means butterflies in Italian and is commonly referred to as bow tie pasta because of its shape. To make farfalle, simply cut fresh pasta into small rectangles and pinch the centers together to form the unique shape.

For smaller shapes like penne, elbows, rotini, and bowties, approximately ½ cup of dry pasta is two ounces, so that's a good rule of thumb. A 12 ounce box of these shapes will have six servings.

Spaghetti means "little twine," and variations include spaghettini (thinner), spaghettoni (thicker), bucatini (thicker and straw-like, with a hollow center), capellini (very thin) and angel's hair (thinnest).

How long to cook 2 cups of bowtie pasta? ›

How Long Should Bow-Tie Pasta Boil? Boil the pasta until al dente, which is usually 2 minutes less than package instructions or about 11 minutes. To check if the pasta is al dente, remove a piece from the water and either cut or bite in half.

Cook your pasta ahead of time, in a very large pot, with a lot of salt in the water, not oil. You can make your pasta up to a full day in advance. Make sure your pot is large enough to hold the full amount of water called for in the instructions on the box (for whatever quantity you intend on making).

Angel hair, or cappellini, is the fastest dried long pasta to cook, oftentimes al dente in just three minutes. Spaghetti typically takes 8-10 minutes. Linguine is thicker and may take 10 or more minutes to cook. Fettuccine can also take 10 or more minutes.

Toss the pasta when the water is cold

This is probably the most common and also the most serious mistake you can make in cooking pasta. Pasta should be tossed when the water boils, not before. And two or three bubbles are not enough to consider the water boiling!