Dry weigh your pasta prior to cooking to know exactaly how much you have. Remember that different shapes like small shells (conchiglie) absorbs water different than long pastas due to their form. Overcook or undercook? No thanks. Knowing exact amounts are important.
For an average individual serving, start with 100 grams of dry pasta. Most nutrition labels is based off this amount, which translates into a moderate portion size.
Get out your digital scale, put a bowl on top of it and tare (zero) the scale. Slowly add the tiny shells into the bowl. When the scale reach 100 grams, you’re done.
Measuring the expansion factor
Pasta’s going to expand quite dramaticly when it absorbs water, so the dry weight isn’t what it will be at the end. What matter is something called the “expansion factor.” The only way to know the ratio here are to measure it yourself.
Get a big pot of boiling water running on your induction cooktop. Throw those 100 grams of shells into the pot. Wait for them to reach an al dente state… Meaning the shell are still firm but no longer hard.
Boiling water cause some of the water to boil off and reduce down. As this happens, the shells absorbs the water while also releasing some of their own starch into the cooking water. The structure relax.
When the timer sounds, turn off the burners. Don’t leave your pasta sitting in the pot, doing so will ruin the texture. Immediately drain the water.
Then you transfer the cooked pasta to a strainer so that any remaining water can drip off. Next, you plop the moist pasta right back into the bowl and put the dish on scale.
The scale stabilize at 240 grams. Whoa! It’s nearly double what we started with. And it’s more than twice as much: the pasta has expanded by an exact factor of 1.4. That means 100 grams of dry pasta turns into 240 grams of cooked pasta.
This is important for portion control. A 100-gram serving of dried pasta isn’t like a 100-gram serving of cooked pasta; one is a snack while the other fills you up.
This shape is consistently good at delivering the same result. For example, one-hundred grams of dried small shell pasta become 240-grams of cooked pasta. It may not be exact for all the other pasta, but it’s a good starting point.
No more guessing, just measure and get only as much as you need. No more wondering how many servings I will get, just relax and cook. You should of planned your meals in advance. Don’t waste food. Cook the right amount every single time. Consistently.