You don't have to pre-boil pasta for baked dishes

[LyfordJL]

I love how Adam basically gives us an abstract to his video up front.

No BS, no trying to hook you to the end, just “here’s what I found, and show you how I found it if you wanna stick around”

[slimee]

Lets take a minute to appreciate Adam's commitment to time and dishwasher space saving.

[noj]

Both my parents worked shortly after the 2008 crash so I was responsible to cook the meals. As a lazy teenager I quickly discovered this on my own. I hated doing dishes, especially after cooking so this helped.

[fruitshuit]

I'm not sure if this is also the case in America, but here in the UK you can get jarred sauces which are sold as "Pasta Bake" sauces. They actually tell you to follow almost the exact same process you describe, put in the dry pasta, any additions like meat/veg/cheese, pour in the sauce, then half fill the jar with water and pour into the dish. And again, unsure if this is the case for the US but almost all dry lasagne sheets here say that you don't need to par-boil them before use!
Edit: a lot of replies assume this is a way to sell the same stuff at higher prices, but the pasta bake sauces are basically the same price as other jarred sauces, they're just slightly different kinds of sauce, most commonly the baked sauces contain cream, plus potentially other things like bacon or whatever.

[ssboxermotorcycles]

Adam tops off his baked pasta dishes with white wine

[OrNaurItsKat]

I literally just left the grocery store with all the ingredients for a pasta bake tonight and I see this. I feel this must be a sign from the universe itself that I have been making things unnecessarily complicated in the kitchen

[TJStellmach]

If you have trouble finding sodium citrate, you can add just enough lemon juice or citric acid solution to a bit of baking soda to fizz it all off. The reaction products of citric acid and baking soda are CO2 and sodium citrate. I've tried this for emulsifying a cheese sauce and it works fine.

[aimeelinekar]

This is why I love your work, Adam - you consider the stuff that surrounds cooking (the buying, the cleanup, the will-the-kids-eat-it) in a way that other recipe purveyors just don’t. In my experience, the actual active cooking time is always less than the prep and cleanup. A recipe is no use if I don’t have time to make it and reset my kitchen afterwards. I really care about any steps that save on dishes (I’m British and we “do dishes” as much as “washing up”; not sure if I’m alone in this?). So: thank you!

[Ripheart]

The bravery of Adam to shove his hand right under the broiler in a hot oven to deposit some cheese

[FutureCommentary]

I LOVE that there's no weird music, intro, stuff and stuff before getting to the subject. It's one of the first things I noticed positively about Adam Ragusea and I still appreciate to this day.

[klaudiaszymanska]

I think the reason why this dishes use parboiled pasta is because they were originally a method of using up leftover plain boiled pasta, same way as "leftovers pie" is supposed to be topped with leftover, not freshly made mashed potatoes

[laraleepn]

For those times you do want to boil your pasta, you don't even need to keep the heat on. Bring your water to a boil, add the pasta, stir to make sure it doesn't stick together, then put on the lid, turn off the heat & let it sit for the desired cooking time. In my years of using this method, the pasta cooks without additional heat in about the same amount of time as if you were boiling it. This would also be a good Adam Ragusea experiment.

[adamJKpunk]

I like how Adam is slowly but surely migrating everything over to the metric system. (I’m American by the way, but I work in Canada a lot so I thinKMetric)

[oAvalono]

I am speechless. Not only did you answer all of my questions before I could even ask, this was like finally being able to experience the "what if" of cooking without me wasting food. Beautiful work.

[unnaturalredhead]

I really appreciate the addition of a segment where you find the exact measurements of things you say to eyeball- I really struggle to do stuff without clear directions, and it makes your recipes so much more accessible to me. Thank you!

[EAKugler]

I think another reason that you see this is stuffed pasta, like shells or manicotti. You just cannot stuff a raw shell or manicotta. And those are some of the most common baked dishes still around.

[mattv]

Another pasta hack is no-drain stovetop pasta. You can cook it like rice. Add the dry pasta to a pan and add about enough water to cover. Bring to a boil then simmer until it's done. Ideally there should be just a little starchy liquid left after cooking which is great mixed with any sauce.

[Caymon]

Years of experience watching Adam's videos yet in only a week, I've managed to squeeze in 17 of his podcasts into my commute. If you haven't discovered them yet, I find them exponentially superior to the simpler cooking vids like this one, (which I love, don't get me wrong). In his pods, he simply breaks out into tangents that I don't think even he plans for. They're so very entertaining and I just can't get enough. I guess I'm within my "personality, subject and moment" spectrum with him.

[joeyd]

Honestly I would not at all mind if you put out another video just making more baked pasta dishes, with this method. Kind of like a buzzfeed tasty "5 recipes" compilation.

[gaboversta.]

I quite enjoy that you are as committed, if not more, as I am to getting as few dishes dirty as possible. I recently tried the spanish omelette and my tactic is to have it in the frying pan a bit longer before flipping, that way I can reuse the plate when serving. To myself. Cooking is way more fun when you do it for just yourself, nobody will have to suffer through the experiments.