Stir-Frying Your Leftover Pasta Is The Best Way To Bring It Back To Life

The pasta you had for dinner was delicious, but it seems your eyes may have been bigger than your stomach. You are now experiencing the rare occurrence of having leftover pasta! What do you do? Simply reheating the leftover pasta for lunch the next day doesn't sound particularly appetizing. Sending the leftovers to the trash would just be too wasteful. We've got a solution: stir-fry your leftover pasta.

It may sound odd at first, but hear us out. Fried noodles are popular the world over. Just look at how these different countries use their noodles. Fried noodles are loved in many places. And what is pasta but ... noodles?

Many of us tend to underestimate portions of pasta — especially short pasta shapes — and end up with too much for the amount of sauce we have. Leftover pasta tends to dehydrate slightly when stored in the fridge, which makes its texture less than ideal to be revived in classic pasta preparation. Dishes like carbonara or cacio e pepe rely on wheat pasta's soft yet al dente bite. But this somewhat drier state of pasta makes it a perfect vehicle to be stir-fried into something new.

To make quick work of leftover pasta, always remember to separate your leftovers before storing them in the first place: cooked pasta in one container and sauce in another. Stir-frying pasta works better for undressed or lightly dressed pasta, especially if you want a fresh flavor boost. Leftover aglio olio or undressed shorter tube pasta like penne or rigatoni are perfect candidates. As to what you should cook it with, anything goes! Think about what goes into your favorite summer pasta salad, and rejig the recipe to turn it into a stir-fry. It'll give the flavors a new, warm dimension.

A shortcut for turning a pasta salad recipe into a stir-fry is this: Heat your preferred cooking oil in a pan, then add protein, vegetables, and aromatics. (Ingredients that need longer to cook go in first!) Once everything is cooked through, add the leftover cooked pasta and any sauces. Crumble the cheese on the pasta before serving, and you have a unique pasta dish.

That said, even if your pasta is dressed, stir-frying is a much better way to reheat than zapping it in the microwave, as the heat is more evenly distributed. You'll even get the bonus of extra crispy caramelized bits of sauce. This works well if you want to keep Italian flavors like celebrity chef David Rocco stir-fries his leftover pasta with olive oil and extra parmesan.

Many other cultures have their own takes on pasta. Whether putting it in pasta bakes like makaronilaatikko in Finland, or Hong Kong-style macaroni soups, these cultures treat pasta like any other noodle. As for stir-fried preparations, fried macaroni is a popular party dish in Malaysia and Indonesia. If you're at a loss as to how to work with your leftover pasta, think about your favorite noodle recipe and sub in pasta. Pork lo mein and Yakisoba are both doable with leftover pasta. The textures may not be exactly the same as in the original recipes, but they'll still taste great, and you'll avoid food waste. Win-win!

If stir-frying isn't your jam, you can easily find other things to do with leftover pasta. The bonus of using leftovers for these recipes is that you'll have one less pan to clean up. And if for some reason you have leftovers of your leftovers, did you know that you could freeze pasta?