Saucing Fresh Pasta

1. Less is More

Cooked fresh pasta readily absorbs sauce, so a light hand is better so that you can fully enjoy its delicate taste and texture without overwhelming it with sauce. Combining cooked pasta with hot sauce causes the pasta to keep cooking, which for fresh pasta in particular can easily lead to overcooking.

2. Undercook Your Pasta

In recipes where you need to finish your pasta and sauce together, you will undercook the pasta slightly and then toss it with the sauce to finish. Likewise for baked pasta recipes, you will undercook the pasta when boiling it. For most recipes, though, a quick but gentle toss to combine pasta and sauce is sufficient.

3. Be Gentle

Since fresh pasta is more delicate and breaks more easily than dried pasta, we don’t generally recommend that you stir the pasta and sauce together, since this action is more vigorous than tossing. We treat filled pasta even more gently, saucing it more lightly than strand pasta or shaped pasta, since you want the flavors of the filling to shine as well. We also take extra care when tossing filled pasta with its sauce to prevent the pieces from bursting open.