Hong's Recipe
You can make pasta without any special tools, but having a few on hand makes the whole process a lot smoother. Most of these aren’t pasta-specific either — they’re useful across all kinds of cooking, so it’s worth picking them up one at a time.
1. Mixing bowls
Used as a catch basin when separating boiled noodles from pasta water, or draining liquid off other ingredients. Essential for recipes like cold pasta where you need to toss the sauce in ahead of time. Having 3-4 in different sizes is handy.
2. Pasta tongs
Used to toss ingredients, sauce, and noodles together in a pan or bowl, or to transfer finished pasta to a plate. Silicone tongs won’t scratch your pan, while stainless steel ones are sturdier but can snap noodles or scratch nonstick surfaces. A long pair of wooden chopsticks works fine if you don’t have tongs.
3. Gnocchi board
A dedicated tool for pressing ridges into gnocchi dough so sauce clings better. Without one, you can press lightly with a fork for a similar texture.
4. Cheese grater / lemon zester
Used to finely grate hard cheeses like Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s also handy for lemon zest or finely grating garlic and ginger, so it’s worth choosing one that’s comfortable to hold and easy to clean.
5. Measuring cup
Useful for setting aside pasta water in advance, or measuring exact amounts when blending pesto. Glass doesn’t discolor and has some heft to it, making it more pleasant to use than plastic.
6. Measuring spoons
Fill liquids just short of overflowing, and level off dry ingredients across the top for an accurate measure. Substituting a regular spoon can throw off liquid measurements in particular, so be careful.
7. Scrub brush
A small brush useful for washing dirt off potatoes, carrots, or shellfish, and also handy for scrubbing a cutting board or the bottom of a pan.
8. A pot for boiling pasta
Use a pot or pan wide and deep enough for the pasta to be fully submerged. For 1-2 servings, you don’t need a dedicated pasta pot — a regular pot actually has better heat efficiency than a narrow, tall pasta-specific one.
9. A pan
For a single serving, a pan around 18-24cm in diameter works well. Too large a pan loses heat quickly, which can burn thinly sliced ingredients like garlic. Unless your recipe just tosses the noodles in right after sautéing, cooking more than 3 servings at once makes it hard to cook everything evenly, so it’s not recommended.
10. A colander
Used to separate boiled noodles from pasta water, or to drain liquid off other ingredients.
11. A spatula
A silicone spatula handles heat well and lets you scrape every last bit of sauce out of the pan, while a wooden spatula is useful for stirring firmly against the bottom of a pot or for serving.
12. A serving spoon
Paired with tongs, it lets you plate finished pasta neatly, sauce and all. Especially handy for pasta with a lot of liquid.
Wrap-up
You don’t need all of these at once, but picking them up one by one makes cooking pasta a little easier each time. The “Equipment” listed on this site’s pasta recipes is based on this same list.
