In Italy Cooking is More than Just Following a Recipe

Go beyond the recipe with these best practices and recommendations on Italian cooking that will give you the right mind-set to properly cook many of your favorite Italian foods.

Every cuisine has its own tips and style of cooking that makes the perfect dish. My Italian notebooks are full of advice and recommendations on the foods of Italy. After eating and cooking in Italy with our Italian family and friends I’ve come to realize the pivotal place food has in the Italian culture and the value it brings to the table. I’ve watched, I’ve listened, I’ve learned the details on the ingredients, practices and preparation of both famous and lesser know regional dishes. I’ve seen the origin of our Nonna’s dishes and spent time with the families in Italy who curate them.

I’ve learned that cooking is more than just following a recipe and having the right mind-set when preparing food with an awareness of the unique details of the dish is important. The following best practices and recommendations on Italian cooking will give you the right mind-set to properly cook many of your favorite Italian foods.

These recommendations come from a variety of sources. Many have been passed down by our Lombardian cousins and relatives in the Veneto in the oral tradition of the great kitchens of Italy. Several are from favorite ristoranti, trattorie and cooking schools that are part of our taste travels in Italy. Some are part of experiences we have had eating and traveling on road trips with our Italian family and friends. Others are from kitchen conversations and hand written notes on index cards stuffed in recipe boxes or accordion folders. All with the belief that preparing a well-laid table to share with your family and friends in a relaxed and tranquil manner is a lost pleasure that must be found again. 

I've sited 10 of the best in-country recommendations on Italian cooking I’ve received over the last 25 years taste traveling in Italy with our Italian family and friends. The first one was given to me stateside many years ago by our Nonna, Epiphania Trevisan. The last one from comes from Marcella Hazan who was responsible for bringing authentic Italian cooking to the American public when she published The Classic Italian Cookbook writing that Italy’s “food is twice blessed because it is the product of two arts, the art of cooking and the art of eating.” She also wrote “the most useful thing one can know about basil is that the less it cooks, the better it is”.

Tip Number 1: Never crowd your meatballs 

I’ve eaten my share of meatballs and I’ve seen many recipes. When making meatballs I always follow the advance of our Nonna. Never crowd your meatballs. Brown in a good olive oil and leave a space between your meatballs when browning and don’t touch them until you see the oil turn a beautiful, burnished gold.

Tip Number 2: Making pasta doesn’t have to be perfect

Making pasta, especially for novice pasta makers, doesn’t always produce the perfect sheet of lasagna or Instagram worthy tortelloni. But a possible negative becomes a powerful positive with Italian malfatti.

I was introduced to Italian malfatti (maltagliata) pasta by my friend Rita from Castello Gropparello near Piacenza.  Piacenza is located in Emilia Romagna, a region of Italy that is at the epicenter of Italian food culture. I was intent on making the perfect pasta dough and worried about my technique for shaping tortelloni when Rita said “no worries, today we are making “maltagliata”. Maltagliata is made from the scraps and off-cuttings left over after other pastas have been made. Once just a way for Italian housewives to use up leftover pasta dough, this “badly made” pasta has become so popular in certain parts of Italy that some companies actually deliberately manufacture it, rolling out large sheets of dough and cutting them into rough irregular shapes. It is as delicious as the most perfectly shaped pasta and the nature of maltagliata makes it an ideal pasta for a variety of broths or sauces.

Tip Number 3: Preparing pasta does have to be perfect

Although making pasta does not have to be perfect, preparing it does. Preparing pasta required lots of water – salted water. A one-pound box of pasta, about six servings, needs to cook in at least five quarts of vigorously boiling, salted water. Cramming a beautifully made pasta into a small saucepan is a little like asking a Ferrari to race on a go-kart track. Basically an invitation for disaster. In this case the unfortunate consequences are likely to be a gummy, overcooked pasta.

Recommended cooking times on a package or box of artisan pasta will generally give you good results if you follow the directions on pot size and amount of water. Experienced pasta makers look for the “white ghost”. When you cut into a strand of cooked pasta, it will appear cooked through, except for the white ghost, a tiny spot of not-quite-rawness at the center of the strand. This is what is generally referred to as pasta al dente, pasta that is tender but still retains a pleasant, slightly chewy texture. Timing, testing, draining, saucing and serving immediately ensures that your pasta is done right.

Tip Number 4: Pasta water is an important ingredient in Italian cooking 

You may not have thought of the boiled water that you cooked your pasta in as a valuable ingredient but it is. The liquid left behind after cooking pasta is the key to creating creamy and emulsified sauces. A good quality pasta produces a cloudy, sightly salty water when boiled carrying forward the nutritional value of the grain and the flavor of the pasta itself. When preparing pasta reserve about 1 cup of the cooking water before draining. Drain the past loosely to keep the pasta moist. Add the drained pasta to your saucepan. If needed add a little of the reserved pasta water to the saucepan to loosen the sauce and help bind the ingredients together, resulting in a creamy and more flavorful dish.

Tip Number 5: Combine the pasta and sauce in the pan not on the plate

Combining your pasta and sauce together in one pan ensures an evenly sauced pasta with a consistent temperature and flavor where every bite of pasta has the right amount of sauce.  It also prevents a pool of sauce in the middle of your plate with a pile of naked pasta on top. Pasta water’s binding and thickening abilities ensure the perfect plate of pasta so be sure to finish your pasta and sauce together. 

Tip Number 6: Whatever you eat or drink should bring health to the body and joy to your day 

Italians take time and effort to prepare a well-laid table where there is beauty and grace in the smallest detail. Meals are an essential part of Italian life. Not that they obsess about food or over indulge. Italians truly value food and its preparation. Generational family recipes bring meaning to what is eaten. Shoppers rely on traditional and local ingredients. Excellent ingredients stand out in a dish providing both taste, nutrition and bright lively flavors.

Tip Number 7: Spend time sourcing your ingredients

Eating in Italy is about making conscious choices. Italians commit their time, effort and food budget to better ingredients and better preparation. Shopping is ingredient driven. Italians favor traditional ingredients and local markets and will travel to taste a regional dish or source a regional ingredient and value the authenticity of local foods that are unique to Italy. On one of our many road trips in Italy our cousin Roberto insisted we drive an hour and a half from Parma to a certain town in northern Tuscany to buy testaroli, a special type of pasta with a crêpe-like texture cooked over a fire on a testo (a terracotta or cast iron pot with a flat, rounded bottom). The pasta is then cut into triangles that are boiled and served with pesto, mushroom sauce, or oil with cheese. Was the drive worth it. Absolutely!

Tip Number 8: If you’re buying pasta buy a good quality pasta

My friends from Perugia, Pinota and her son Luigi who has a doctorate in agronomy gave me my best lesson yet on pasta. Not all pasta is created equal. Good quality pasta is roughly textured because the rougher the outside of the pasta the better the sauce will adhere giving a more uniform and consistently delicious flavor to each bite.  Choose a good quality pasta made from organically grown heritage grain which generally has a higher protein content and easier to digest gluten. 

Tip Number 9: When making risotto be sure to consider “the Pause”

Read more about the best practices to make a true Lombardian risotto.

Tip Number 10: Use garlic sparingly

The idea that garlic is a main ingredient in Italian cuisine is unfounded and misunderstood. The use of garlic in Italian cooking varies significantly among regions and from dish to dish. One of the keystones of Italian cuisine is balance allowing every ingredient to have its moment. Although garlic is an important part of regional Italian cooking both for its taste and health benefits it is not overrepresented.

Marcella Hazan, who was responsible for bringing authentic Italian cooking to the American public wrote that “the unbalanced use of garlic is the single greatest cause of failure in would-be Italian cooking”.

This post is brought to you by Matt Monogrono Felicetti Pasta