The Pasta Cooking Rules Olive Garden Blatantly Ignores

If you were taught to cook pasta by someone in your family, you were likely told to salt the pasta water. It's a longstanding tradition that many do simply because they know it works, but there are concrete reasons why salting pasta water gets you the best results (and you probably need to make it even saltier than you think). Knowing this, though, it might surprise you to hear that Olive Garden, a chain known for its pasta, doesn't salt its pasta water.

Because salt has been known to damage pots over time, eliminating the use of salt gives Olive Garden a longer warranty on its pots, saving it money. But salting pasta water not only adds seasoning to the noodles much more effectively than salting it afterwards, as the salty water seeps into the noodle itself, but it also makes the pasta less sticky and gives it a better consistency. It's a very basic step most chefs know by heart, so for Olive Garden to forgo it in favor of saving a bit of money seems criminal. And that's not the only "crime" it is committing.

In addition to opting against salting its pasta water, Olive Garden also fails to serve its dishes al dente. According to reports, this is because some customers don't enjoy firm pasta, and Olive Garden tries to appeal to the broadest audience possible. However, any true pasta fan knows al dente is the way to go, as it gives you a firmer bite and an overall tastier result. It's the standard in Italy, the birthplace of pasta, for a reason.

The combination of unsalted pasta and soft noodles led Tasting Table, in a ranking of Olive Garden pasta dishes, to state that its lasagna featured mushy noodles and was goop-like, and worse than one from the freezer section of a grocery store. This is a pretty unforgivable quality when it costs $18.49 in the Cincinnati area (over five times the cost of a frozen Stouffer's lasagna from Walmart). And this wasn't isolated feedback, as customers on sites like Reddit have echoed similar complaints.

While the soft noodles might simply be an unfortunate side effect of consumer desires, the unsalted pasta water means there's often little redeeming quality to a plate of Olive Garden pasta, unless the other ingredients save it. Tasting Table didn't hate every Olive Garden pasta dish, but ironically, you may be better off ordering a non-pasta dish from the pasta chain.