My sous chef swore I was over-salting the pasta water. I proved him wrong.

Last Tuesday during brunch service in Boston, my sous kept telling me to cut the salt in half for our pasta water. He said it was wasteful and overkill. I let him run the station for a shift with his method and the customer feedback was immediate - three plates came back complaining the pasta was bland. I went back to my usual 2 tablespoons per gallon and the complaints stopped. Has anyone else had a younger cook try to change a basic technique that was working fine?

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drew_chen16d ago

I mean, "overkill" is a funny word for something that costs like 3 cents more per batch. I've seen this a bunch with younger cooks who got trained in places that were trying to save money on ingredients, but pasta water is basically the only free seasoning you get. 2 tablespoons per gallon is actually pretty standard for most kitchens I've worked in, and if your sous isn't tasting the final product after a full service run, that's the bigger problem. Might be worth letting him run a side-by-side tasting with a few different salt levels and actually recording the feedback numbers, that's what got through to my last line cook.