Overcooking pasta isn’t necessarily a crime. But around here we treat it like one. Getting a bowl of mushy pasta is cheating yourself (and whoever else is at your table) out of a heavenly experience. Good pasta, as you’ve probably heard, is cooked to al dente. But if you’re finishing your pasta by tossing it in pan of sauce—and you should be—and the pasta you're pulling out of the boiling water and transferring to a pan is perfectly al dente, then you're setting yourself up to overcook it.
Al dente (Italian for “to the tooth”) is where pasta tastes and feels the best. It’s chewy and firm, holding its whole shape in whatever sauce you put it in. And we always finish our pasta by tossing it in a pan of sauce. If you think about it though, that sauce in the pan cooks the pasta a second time. That’s why we never boil our pasta to al dente.
Molto al dente is what you want. That’s undercooked pasta, about three minutes from being that chewy al dente we love. If you pull a piece pasta from your pot, bite into it. There should be a chalky, gritty quality to the middle of the pasta, and you’ll be able to see it. If you look at the cross section of the noodle (where you bit), you should be able to see a thin white ring in the middle. That’s the stuff we like to see.
Now, when we transfer our pasta and some pasta water to the pan, we can continue to cook the pasta. Every inch will get coated in a glossy, luxurious sauce, and when it comes out of the pan, it will be al dente. You’ll offend precisely zero Italians, and anyone eating dinner at your place will be seriously impressed.
And remember: you can always cook pasta longer, but you can’t un-cook it. There’s no going back once you’ve hit al dente, so it’s better to move your pasta from pot to pan sooner rather than later. If you need to, add more liquid into the pan to continue cooking your pasta for an extra minute or two. You should be willing to do anything to get al dente noodles, because they’re one of the truly beautiful things on the face of this planet.