How To Reheat Leftover Pasta Without Murdering Its Soul

If you are going to reheat pasta in a microwave, it's time to discover what those "COOK TIME" and "POWER LEVEL" buttons are all about.

Instead of taking a bowl of refrigerated leftover pasta and saying "that looks like it needs three minutes" so you punch the instant 3 button, hit COOK TIME 10:00 and POWER LEVEL 3.

LTC Eugene Chu
..."Sautéeing in a skillet works best for sauced pasta.
Let’s say that you cooked a full pound of pasta for dinner, tossed it with your sauce of choice, served it up to your family, friends, roommates or even just yourself, and then ended up with a supply of cooked and sauced leftovers. According to Fernando Scarpati, the executive chef of Ferdi in New York City, this pasta should be “dry sautéed.”

“This means that you heat up a stainless steel skillet, pour a teaspoon of [olive] oil into the hot skillet, add the pasta to be reheated, and constantly toss the pasta, ‘sautéeing’ it for three or four minutes,” he explained. “It will be hot, still firm, and not mushy [through] this technique.”...