Try Making Pomodoro Pasta Easily with a Single Frying Pan; Pasta Cubes, Meal Kits Also Making Cooking Simpler

By Midori Yamamura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

14:00 JST, June 30, 2024

Made entirely in one frying pan, a single serving of one-pan pasta can be prepared easily and help cut down on dish washing. Try this time-saving recipe for when cooking in the warmer seasons or even while outside.

Usually, at least two pieces of cookware are used for making pasta: One to boil noodles and the other to cook the ingredients and sauce. With one-pan pasta, uncooked pasta is tossed in with the cooked ingredients and sauce in a frying pan to be rehydrated. There are concerns that this will make the pasta bland, but the flavor is actually retained as the water is boiled off.

Italian cuisine chef Fabio, who posts his one-pan pasta recipes on his YouTube channel, Fabio Meshi / The World of Italian Chef, has a variety of recipes that can be cooked in about 10 minutes. He recently published a book of his popular recipes.

What makes one-pan pasta special, Fabio says, is that “the pasta’s starch dissolves into the water and thickens the sauce made in the same frying pan.”

Fabio recommends this time-saving recipe as “perfect for busy people, novice chefs and those who are reluctant to use stoves in the hot summer.”

Fabio shared a recipe for rich pomodoro.

According to Kaori Saito, deputy editor-in-chief of recipe video company Delish Kitchen, one-pan pasta is suitable for one to two servings. Working from home has become an established lifestyle after the pandemic, creating a need to cook for a small number of people at home.

“Recipes that are tasty and easy to make for one person have become popular,” Saito said. Recipes for one-pan pasta are available on Delish Kitchen.

“It is hard to imagine boiling noodles and cooking ingredients in a single frying pan, but the popularity of cooking videos has made it easier to put this into practice,” she said.

Special seasonings and cooking kits are also available for those who want to whip up pasta more easily.

Ajinomoto Co.’s Pasta Cube, which was released in February and retails for around ¥270, is a cube-shaped seasoning that contains soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger and other ingredients. The product comes with two flavors: peperoncino and Japanese style with soy sauce. To cook pasta with the cube, stir-fry ingredients in a frying pan, toss noodles, water and a cube into the pan and simmer down. The cubes are said to resolve concerns such as the difficulty, of figuring out seasoning.

Seedscore Inc.’s Pasta Kit is a meal kit consisting of pasta, ingredients and seasonings. The pasta can be prepared by combining all of the items in a frying pan and cooking with water. The garlic peperoncino (¥680) and vongole (¥745) pasta kits are popular.

“The product is lightweight and produces no cooking liquid. Dumping cooking liquid is a no-no, and our product is suitable for outdoor cooking,” a Seedscore spokesperson said.

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One-pan pomodoro

Ingredients (Serves 1):

• 25 grams olive oil
• 1 clove of crushed garlic
• 1 basil batch
• 25 grams tomato paste
• 80 grams pasta
• 6 grams cheese power



Directions:

1. In a frying pan, put olive oil, crushed garlic and basil stems and heat over medium heat. When it starts to get aromatic, remove the stems and reduce the heat to low. Add tomato paste and stir gently.

2. Add 370 milliliters of water and 3 grams of salt into the pan, bring to a boil and add pasta. Submerge the pasta in the water, cover with lid and cook over medium heat for the time indicated on the package.

3. Take off the lid and cook over high heat to simmer down if too much liquid is left in the pan. Add torn basil leaves and cheese powder and mix.