A Chef Weighs In On Cooking Pasta In Wine

Pasta, as a meal rather than an ingredient, can come in so many forms that there's genuinely no way to list them all. You could make pasta salad as a side dish one day, warm yourself with pesto pasta soup the next, and cap off a hard week with chocolate ravioli.

If there's one aspect that connects all of these dishes, it's that the pasta must at some point be boiled and softened. This usually happens off to the side with a pot of boiling water just for those noodles, but are there liquids besides water that will do the job? To wit, Daily Meal asked Matthew Cutolo, third-generation Italian-American chef at Gargiulo's in Coney Island, Brooklyn, if it's okay to cook pasta directly in wine. He plainly stated, "Red and white wine are both not used to directly boil the pasta, however, both are utilized in sauces for many pasta dishes throughout Italy."

As any toddler worth their salt would do when faced with a "don't do it," we asked Matthew Cutolo "Why not?" He said, "It is a must to add a little bit of pasta water to finish [pasta dishes] because the starch released from the pasta while cooking [combines] with the sauce to [thicken it, creating] a cohesive sauce that coats your pasta really well."

He went on to give us an exclusive example based on one of his favorite dishes: pork chops with red wine and spaghetti. Once he's given the chops a good sear, he deglazes their pan with red wine, in this case specifically a Chianti. This creates a nice, simple sauce that the pork chops continue to cook in. Once they're ready, plate the chops, add "a fistful" of grated parmigiano to the sauce, toss your pasta in it and enjoy.