how do i precook spaghetti and keep it from sticking?

This is what restaurants do

To parboil pasta at home, bring a large pot of salted water (at least six quarts) to the boil. Add one pound of pasta and stir until the pasta wilts (in the case of spaghetti or linguine) and becomes submerged. When the water returns to a full, rolling boil, cook the pasta for exactly two minutes, then drain, shock in ice water, and drain again. Note: Strand pasta like spaghetti or linguine will be brittle, so handle them with care.

Place the pasta in a container large enough to hold it, then add enough olive oil to just coat each strand. Cover and refrigerate until needed. Parboiled pasta will keep, refrigerated, for four to six hours.

Note: Coating pasta with olive oil flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says, "Never coat pasta with olive oil. The sauce won't adhere to the pasta." Well, conventional wisdom aside, sauce sticks to parboiled pasta like glue. What else can I say?

When it's time to cook dinner, bring a large pot of salted water to the boil, add the pasta (You'll note that the pasta has softened over the time you've had it refrigerated. This is perfectly fine.), cook for one or two minutes, then drain in a colander. Be sure to taste after a minute or so. The pasta cooks quickly. Serve as you would any pasta that you had cooked for eight to ten minutes.

If you are going to reuse it with in a day or 2 then just put it in a micrwave safe dish with the sauce on top, then microwave all together.

Or make some up cook to just a bit under done. Drain and rinse with cool water, then goive a very lite toss with olive oil. Put into individual baggies, press all the air out. To reheat, use a 2 cup or larger microwave safe measureing cup. Heat some water for about 2-3 min. Drop the noodles in amd microwave for about anther 30 seconds. Drain the water off the pasta and add sauce.

Or heat some water to boiling in a pot on the stove, Drop the noodles in for 1 min tops. Drain and serve.

It should keep around 1 week.

Use a good brand made with Hard Wheat (Barilla, Del Verde).

Boil it in salted water until it is tender enough to bend, but to hard to eat.

I tell my cooks that it should not get much bigger in the water. If it expands, it is overcooked.

Drain it into a colander, don't rinse and toss it with olive oil until it doesn't stick to it self (Use pomace oil, don't wast the extra virgin on this.

Lay it out on a pan to cool. and when it has cooled down, put it in a plastic container in the fridge.

Re heat it in a basket in boiling salted water. and sauce it.

Different pastas last different times, spag or linguine will last a couple days, Penne and farfale a day or two more.

I usually boil the water, add like half - 1 teaspoon of oil, and add the spaghetti (the oil helps prevent the spaghetti from sticking together). When it's finished I strain it and add some butter. Always works for me!

Good Luck!

well cook your spagetti as usual bring to the boil test after 15 minutes, by taking a piece out of the simmering pan and taste it i like mine a little firm, everyone is different, once you rinse it through a strainer put it back into the saucepan and pour a 1/4 of cold water over the cooked spagetti and stir, this will stop it from sticking and it won't go cold. Enjoy :)

If you're going to cook a lot of it, just freeze it in baggies. When you need some just take it out of the bag, put into a strainer and run under the hot water tap. Even frozen pasta comes back to life quickly.

It is going to stick unless you coat it will oil or the like.

However, you can simply run hot tap water over the stuck spaghetti for 15 seconds or so and it will come back to life and un-stick itself.

I always put mine back in some water and bring to a boil.

Try a glass noodle. They are really cool looking-and they just don't stick!! Like , ever! You could leave them on a plate for hours and they will just slide right off.

You can put oil in the water as you are makeing.