Pasta 101

Suddenly I am overwhelmed by the desire to rid the world of a few misconceptions. This is a grand, ambitious plan, I know, so to make it a bit more manageable I'll just stick to misconceptions about cooking pasta. For now.

First of all, should you really add salt to the water to you cook your pasta in?
YES!
There is a saying so wonderful that to read it once is to remember it forever and it is this: You should always cook your pasta in water as salty as the Mediterranean.
Now, salt will not influence the actual cooking, it will not (in any significant way) alter the boiling point. Nor will it not stop the pasta from sticking or any such nonsense. It will simply season the product. And you should always season, whatever you're cooking. Pasta itself isn't much of anything and unsalted pasta just tastes of a flabby nothing.
Adding salt after cooking doesn't do anyone any favours either; you'll just have a flabby nothing with bits of salt clinging to it. Adding the salt to the water means it will infuse the pasta and this will give it body and bite (in terms of flavour).
So add it, and quite a bit of it too, seeing how most will go down the drain. Just remember when you were a kid, swimming off the coast of Italy or Spain and accidentally swallowing a mouthful of water. That's the level of salt we're talking about.

And about adding oil or butter to the water you’re cooking pasta in?
DON’T!
It’s another bizarre misconception that oil will stop the water from boiling over. Why would this be the case? The mind boggles.
If your water is boiling over, your pan is too small or you should turn the heat down a bit. You don’t need a raging inferno to maintain a steady boil; a moderate flame will do just fine.
Another so-called reason for adding oil is (again) that it will stop the pasta from sticking. Pasta needs plenty of water to move around in. If it doesn’t have enough water, then it’ll stick. So use a big pan with lots of boiling water and stir the moment you tip the pasta in and a minute after, it’ll be fine.
Adding oil will make the pasta slippery, that’s true, but that just means any sauce you’re planning to add later will slide right off as well.

One last thing:
Testing whether spaghetti is cooked by flinging a strand at the wall does sort of work: when it’s cooked, it will stick. It’s also great fun. Just biting into a strand does give you slightly better results however. Sorry about that.