Water From Pasta Can Replace Most Butter In Recipes

The flour-enriched water in which pasta has cooked “pasta cooking water,” for short appears only occasionally in recipes. But it can replace most of the butter in many traditional sauces, while maintaining a good deal of the original flavor and texture.

The principle is almost the opposite of that used in making a beurre blanc, the rich but simple butter sauce so commonly served on fish a decade ago. In beurre blanc, a great deal of butter is stirred into a small amount of liquid; here, a great deal of liquid is stirred into a small amount of butter.

Substituting starchy water for most of the butter produces a sauce with a perfect balance of weight and flavor. The pasta cooking water adds character of its own but thins the butter so that its flavor coats all the pasta strands evenly.