The Art of Creating a Perfect Pasta Dish with Chef Symon

When it comes to creating a perfect pasta dish, Chef Symon believes that simplicity is key. "I always try to use a spider when I'm cooking pasta," he explains. "It's a great little tool to have in the kitchen, and it helps me to reserve the pasta water for later use." This technique allows Chef Symon to achieve the perfect texture and consistency in his pasta dishes.

One of the key ingredients in Chef Symon's pasta dish is frozen pasta. "Frozen pasta goes right in boiling water," he notes. "It cooks beautifully, and it's a great option when you're short on time." However, Chef Symon does emphasize that not all frozen pasta is created equal. "Fresh frozen pastas typically have a better texture than dry pasta," he says.

As for adding creamy elements to the dish, Chef Symon is skeptical. "I don't think it needs it," he says. "The starchiness of the pasta water, combined with the olive oil and Parmesan cheese, will give the dish a nice creamy consistency." However, he does leave the door open for those who want to add cream or other rich ingredients to their pasta dishes.

One of the key components of Chef Symon's pasta dish is the sauce. "I start by cooking the spaghetti in boiling water," he explains. "Once it's al dente, I drain it and set it aside." Next, Chef Symon adds a handful of fresh spinach to the pot, allowing it to wilt into the pasta water. This creates a rich and flavorful sauce that complements the noodles perfectly.

As the dish nears completion, Chef Symon adds some crispy salami and chickpeas for added texture and flavor. "The chickpeas provide a nice contrast to the creamy cheese," he notes. Finally, Chef Symon sprinkles some Parmesan cheese over the top of the pasta, adding a salty and nutty flavor to the dish.

When it comes to seasoning the pasta dish, Chef Symon is careful not to overdo it. "I always say that the dish should be seasoned, not sauced," he explains. This means that the flavors should complement the noodles rather than overpower them. With this approach, Chef Symon creates a truly exceptional pasta dish that showcases the simplicity and beauty of Italian cuisine.

The finished dish is a true masterpiece, with each component working in harmony to create a deliciously balanced flavor profile. The combination of crispy salami, creamy cheese, and fresh spinach is a match made in heaven, and it's clear that Chef Symon has outdone himself once again.

For those looking for inspiration from Chef Symon's kitchen, be sure to check out his latest series on the Food Network. With thousands of recipes available through the network's app, you're sure to find something that suits your tastes and dietary needs. And don't forget to use the hashtag #SymonEats when sharing your creations with the chef – he loves seeing what his fans come up with in the kitchen!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyeah all right guys hello how are you it is 5 o'clock its third Thursday it's Thursday all day Wow this is what happens when you're in your house every single day of the week today we are going to make a little Gemelli pasta with chickpeas spinach salami I'm gonna use some chili flakes in mind because election flicks you don't have to and I was pulsing around the earth today and some rosemary survived the winter so we are gonna put a little bit of rosemary in ours also remember we made that fantastic substitution list so you could look at the list and find what you need to use from the list if you don't have the exact ingredients that we have so canned chickpeas which I rinsed spinach we have about you know two cups or two handfuls about 6 ounces of salami just our salami and he launched me would be great that we're just cutting up into strips ham would work here smoked turkey would work here for shoot dope got a goal you name it pick a lunch me pick of here me I have a pan over medium heat to that I'm gonna add bounces of olive oil if you have a lot the further you use it in this if you don't have alcohol another oil or fat will do you could use butter you could use bacon fat you could use grapeseed oil continue blah blah blah these are going the meats and stuff that we put in you're gonna add a lot of flavor so one of my favorite things I love crispy salami have liked it since I was a kid my dad used to sometimes put it in like with eggs with us so I always liked it so I'm gonna put the salami in the oil as the oil is heating up and it's gonna really kind of get it crispy and crunchy and then we'll continue to add stuff in there so in addition to the oil Norman Norman obviously loves salami tune you can smell it liz is trying to call him to get him off camera he's like mom smells salami talk to you later okay before I start this I almost forgot we have boiling water here I'm gonna put the salt in the water and then I'm gonna drop so this is about two boxes in this container chlorine is half this right when you put it in or shortly after you put it in you're just gonna give it a stir so you know you don't have to worry about it sticking and it should be good to go maybe one more sperm between so just water salt I do not put oil on top of the waterfall so lid on top and doesn't allow the water to boil this part so now I'm gonna slice the garlic you could mince it too I'm using fresh garlic I know that something's been hard to find for some people myself included if you don't have fresh garlic you can substitute a garlic powder or a garlic salt but you have pre peeled garlic three chopped garlic pre roasted garlic and that's all you could find you could use that also number one preference would be so Adam has a question he says yes you know he's asking if you recommend heating up the pan dry before adding in your cooking fat yes I had the pan on this already when I was before we even started I put the pan on low so the pan was heating up before the fat went in and then I put the fat in that oil started to get warm and after we had at our salami and now that's starting to kind of crisp up could see the salami has a little bit of moisture in it so be careful because it will pop the oil will pop a little bit I'm gonna let that get a little crispier before I add my garlic because I don't want the garlic to burn before the salami gets crisp now chickpeas I'm using chickpeas a lot of people said they wanted to use can because that's what they had where you can from Princeton very early white beans would work here black bean the work here kidney beans the work here any kind of being product to work we're using spinach you could use broccoli rabe you could use green beans they've been kinda cut up you could use asparagus so there's a lot of or any other leafy green will work beautifully Swiss chard eats tyler's any of those we look great so a lot of different options here but tomatoes I'm sorry like fresh tomatoes cut up would be great in here too I looked at the lime is starting to crispy be careful if I don't want you to get pop no popping now we're gonna add our garlic the garlic is gonna we don't want it to really drop but we do want it to get like translucent and very aromatic which is only gonna take 15 seconds or so then we are going to add our chick peas chickpeas garbanzo beans same the same thing cities are great whether you get them dry and boiling yourself of similar yourself in center or Burke and they're great and pastas are great and salads you can make hummus with them super versatile so if it's something that you see a lot of have a grocery store this is something you should pick up because it could do a lot of things you could use as a place of anything and you can make several other dishes with it too who doesn't love a delicious hummus I don't know delicious all right rosemary so it was lucky enough to found some in the yard today the garden giving me nothing yet but it does have some stuff from last year so a little bit on any hard herb would work pretty nice here when I say fart herb I mean rosemary marjoram oregano like those stubby kind of earth they're just gonna go warm for the past couple classes with this is gonna go in harbors going earlier in the procedure because they're harder and make it pull up to the cooking so as soon as I put those in live will tell you now my whole kitchen smells like rosemary hmm we're just it just opens up really fast I have some chili flakes also gonna add those not because they're gonna open up I did somehow so crazy total optional item if you want it hot or not hot you could add it as you see fit a couple people are asking about how this freezes the pasta like you don't pastas not a dish that you want you know it's hard to make a pasta then freeze it but you could make everything before you put the pasta in and freeze it if you'd like a lot of the dishes that we've done up under this point have been like you know 20 to 30-minute cook times some like even those like we did a stew last week that we actually was about an hour and a half cook those I think are the kind of dishes you always want to freeze a dish like this is real gonna take us 10 or 15 minutes to make it's gonna pull very quickly I think that's when you just make it as you need it as opposed to freezing it but if you do just need to freeze it I would freeze it before you add pasta so I'd make the sauce let the sauce cool and that frees up okay so the pasta it's going pretty good see Gemelli is a great pasta it um it literally means it's like they say twins because it looks like two intertwined exact pieces it's actually one noodle that gets bent and then twisted but it means twins Marilyn is asking what size your frying pan is be my guest I don't know the exact size of it yeah but it's about three four fish you can't have any salami buddy yeah you can't you get dog food to death if you argue it are no big caps for you all right so now I'm gonna take about eight ounces or so of this pasta water no you gotta stay down you got to stay down stay down mister so the pasta water goes in very important part of the dish the pasta has released starch into the water the water is already seasoned this becomes the base of our sauce so we have the olive oil we have the garlic we have the Chile plates the salami the rosemary all which create all this big flavor then that starchy pasta water brings it all together and at the end we'll add some of our spinach and we'll also add our parmesan once we're off the heat and then we're going to have this great sauce and the super quick pasta Kelly's asking if you ever use a cast-iron skillet to cook I just guess it's all the time I don't it just kind of depends I use them a lot outside I like to use them on the grill you don't have to cut the spinach I'm just working my pastas not ready so I'm gonna cut a little bit of spinach yeah it's it's a great tool to have I don't use it when I'm cooking something that is acidic any of acidic sauces which this isn't but like if I was doing a tomato sauce or a sauce with vinegar or wine I stay away from cast iron at that point what I do like to do it if I'm using I love it outside on the girl just bacon and I do Rosen at shepherd's pie is delicious for it so a lot of good options all right pastas ready so I'm gonna take my spinach now I'm gonna put the spinach in one sauce let that start breaking down and I always like removing pasta with the spider that way I have the pasta water reserved if I need additional pasta water so I never do the portal verse trainer thing I always try to use a spider it just works best for me it's a great little tool to have in the kitchen so pastas out I feel good about a minute less than it needed to cook 30 seconds to a minute lesson need to cook by taste that way when I put it in here and start mixing it up that pasta water that we put in is gonna finish cooking our pasta how beautiful to that look you could see how tomatoes would also look really nice in here for yet laura is asking if she has froze frozen pasta does she defrost it before boiling frozen pasta goes right in boiling water always and it'll cook beautifully so fresh frozen pastas typically fresh pasta that has been frozen not a dry pasta so you just go right from freezing from freezer to water and we're good taste Natalie's asking could you add any creamy aspect to it to this dish umm now that you could do whatever you want I don't think it needs it I wouldn't say to add quote-unquote free if you were gonna do that butter may be a better option but it certainly doesn't need it it's gonna have really great mouthfeel just because of the starchiness of the pasta water the olive oil and you're gonna see how it's gonna get a little bit on a creamy side once I had the cheese so the pastas now closed you have enough of that liquid reduced I'm gonna take Parmesan parmigiano-reggiano and we're just gonna go very liberally with it you don't want to be the reason I turn the heat off is if the heat was still on this cheese would get clumpy could you have use your fake parmesan you made the other day here yeah but I wouldn't what you could if you wanted to you could or if you're a dairy I mean yeah dairy intolerant but I mean this this has meat and stuff in it so it certainly wouldn't be vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination see and you could see how CL it's got a nice kind of creamy consistency because of that Parmesan that we added in there and that start to do if you were to use broccoli rabe in this would you have to put it in earlier to cook more would it be the same time the broccoli rabe you would put it in earlier with the chickpeas look because it takes a little bit longer to cook or you could have blanched it first in a little bit of boiling water and then I'm gonna put a little more cheese never enough cheese no I mean even though Gary and I are friends I can't not have a problem on my pasta sorry look it's everybody happy live I think so people love pasta dishes man does a little pasta so look you got the chickpeas you have the crispy salami and the spinach the garlic a little bit of chili flake just a kiss of heat like I said that's optional finished with the cheese oh yeah it's great but you get the saltiness from the meat the chickpeas give it some really nice texture also a little bit of saltiness from the cheese the the spinach is kind of breaks up the richness of it when someone asks like creamy should we add cream it still has a nice nice creamy mouthfeel and it's not over sauce remember the sauce the pasta is like a dressing for sailing it should cope the noodle not drowned it there's you know my grandmother used to always say she's like the dish is called pasta not sauce so you you know you want it to just beautifully coat the noodles and that's what it did so one more bite I'll be back here tomorrow at 5:00 Eastern same time same sandbox with Norman those still researching in search of salon if you make one of the dishes that we've done in the first 11 days now make sure the hashtag I'm signing dinners that we could follow them build a little community and comment on them all kinds of fun nothing critical ever so don't worry about that I'm not gonna Gordon Ramsay anybody it's all love up in here and you could also go to at Food Network value tag at Food Network you could tag at chef symon with ally just and lastly oh if you want more recipes Food Network kitchen app thousands of them thousands of them probably where these will eventually be someday so thanks for watching you're welcome Mormon movie thanks for watching we'll see you tomorrow Norman says I say behind door manyeah all right guys hello how are you it is 5 o'clock its third Thursday it's Thursday all day Wow this is what happens when you're in your house every single day of the week today we are going to make a little Gemelli pasta with chickpeas spinach salami I'm gonna use some chili flakes in mind because election flicks you don't have to and I was pulsing around the earth today and some rosemary survived the winter so we are gonna put a little bit of rosemary in ours also remember we made that fantastic substitution list so you could look at the list and find what you need to use from the list if you don't have the exact ingredients that we have so canned chickpeas which I rinsed spinach we have about you know two cups or two handfuls about 6 ounces of salami just our salami and he launched me would be great that we're just cutting up into strips ham would work here smoked turkey would work here for shoot dope got a goal you name it pick a lunch me pick of here me I have a pan over medium heat to that I'm gonna add bounces of olive oil if you have a lot the further you use it in this if you don't have alcohol another oil or fat will do you could use butter you could use bacon fat you could use grapeseed oil continue blah blah blah these are going the meats and stuff that we put in you're gonna add a lot of flavor so one of my favorite things I love crispy salami have liked it since I was a kid my dad used to sometimes put it in like with eggs with us so I always liked it so I'm gonna put the salami in the oil as the oil is heating up and it's gonna really kind of get it crispy and crunchy and then we'll continue to add stuff in there so in addition to the oil Norman Norman obviously loves salami tune you can smell it liz is trying to call him to get him off camera he's like mom smells salami talk to you later okay before I start this I almost forgot we have boiling water here I'm gonna put the salt in the water and then I'm gonna drop so this is about two boxes in this container chlorine is half this right when you put it in or shortly after you put it in you're just gonna give it a stir so you know you don't have to worry about it sticking and it should be good to go maybe one more sperm between so just water salt I do not put oil on top of the waterfall so lid on top and doesn't allow the water to boil this part so now I'm gonna slice the garlic you could mince it too I'm using fresh garlic I know that something's been hard to find for some people myself included if you don't have fresh garlic you can substitute a garlic powder or a garlic salt but you have pre peeled garlic three chopped garlic pre roasted garlic and that's all you could find you could use that also number one preference would be so Adam has a question he says yes you know he's asking if you recommend heating up the pan dry before adding in your cooking fat yes I had the pan on this already when I was before we even started I put the pan on low so the pan was heating up before the fat went in and then I put the fat in that oil started to get warm and after we had at our salami and now that's starting to kind of crisp up could see the salami has a little bit of moisture in it so be careful because it will pop the oil will pop a little bit I'm gonna let that get a little crispier before I add my garlic because I don't want the garlic to burn before the salami gets crisp now chickpeas I'm using chickpeas a lot of people said they wanted to use can because that's what they had where you can from Princeton very early white beans would work here black bean the work here kidney beans the work here any kind of being product to work we're using spinach you could use broccoli rabe you could use green beans they've been kinda cut up you could use asparagus so there's a lot of or any other leafy green will work beautifully Swiss chard eats tyler's any of those we look great so a lot of different options here but tomatoes I'm sorry like fresh tomatoes cut up would be great in here too I looked at the lime is starting to crispy be careful if I don't want you to get pop no popping now we're gonna add our garlic the garlic is gonna we don't want it to really drop but we do want it to get like translucent and very aromatic which is only gonna take 15 seconds or so then we are going to add our chick peas chickpeas garbanzo beans same the same thing cities are great whether you get them dry and boiling yourself of similar yourself in center or Burke and they're great and pastas are great and salads you can make hummus with them super versatile so if it's something that you see a lot of have a grocery store this is something you should pick up because it could do a lot of things you could use as a place of anything and you can make several other dishes with it too who doesn't love a delicious hummus I don't know delicious all right rosemary so it was lucky enough to found some in the yard today the garden giving me nothing yet but it does have some stuff from last year so a little bit on any hard herb would work pretty nice here when I say fart herb I mean rosemary marjoram oregano like those stubby kind of earth they're just gonna go warm for the past couple classes with this is gonna go in harbors going earlier in the procedure because they're harder and make it pull up to the cooking so as soon as I put those in live will tell you now my whole kitchen smells like rosemary hmm we're just it just opens up really fast I have some chili flakes also gonna add those not because they're gonna open up I did somehow so crazy total optional item if you want it hot or not hot you could add it as you see fit a couple people are asking about how this freezes the pasta like you don't pastas not a dish that you want you know it's hard to make a pasta then freeze it but you could make everything before you put the pasta in and freeze it if you'd like a lot of the dishes that we've done up under this point have been like you know 20 to 30-minute cook times some like even those like we did a stew last week that we actually was about an hour and a half cook those I think are the kind of dishes you always want to freeze a dish like this is real gonna take us 10 or 15 minutes to make it's gonna pull very quickly I think that's when you just make it as you need it as opposed to freezing it but if you do just need to freeze it I would freeze it before you add pasta so I'd make the sauce let the sauce cool and that frees up okay so the pasta it's going pretty good see Gemelli is a great pasta it um it literally means it's like they say twins because it looks like two intertwined exact pieces it's actually one noodle that gets bent and then twisted but it means twins Marilyn is asking what size your frying pan is be my guest I don't know the exact size of it yeah but it's about three four fish you can't have any salami buddy yeah you can't you get dog food to death if you argue it are no big caps for you all right so now I'm gonna take about eight ounces or so of this pasta water no you gotta stay down you got to stay down stay down mister so the pasta water goes in very important part of the dish the pasta has released starch into the water the water is already seasoned this becomes the base of our sauce so we have the olive oil we have the garlic we have the Chile plates the salami the rosemary all which create all this big flavor then that starchy pasta water brings it all together and at the end we'll add some of our spinach and we'll also add our parmesan once we're off the heat and then we're going to have this great sauce and the super quick pasta Kelly's asking if you ever use a cast-iron skillet to cook I just guess it's all the time I don't it just kind of depends I use them a lot outside I like to use them on the grill you don't have to cut the spinach I'm just working my pastas not ready so I'm gonna cut a little bit of spinach yeah it's it's a great tool to have I don't use it when I'm cooking something that is acidic any of acidic sauces which this isn't but like if I was doing a tomato sauce or a sauce with vinegar or wine I stay away from cast iron at that point what I do like to do it if I'm using I love it outside on the girl just bacon and I do Rosen at shepherd's pie is delicious for it so a lot of good options all right pastas ready so I'm gonna take my spinach now I'm gonna put the spinach in one sauce let that start breaking down and I always like removing pasta with the spider that way I have the pasta water reserved if I need additional pasta water so I never do the portal verse trainer thing I always try to use a spider it just works best for me it's a great little tool to have in the kitchen so pastas out I feel good about a minute less than it needed to cook 30 seconds to a minute lesson need to cook by taste that way when I put it in here and start mixing it up that pasta water that we put in is gonna finish cooking our pasta how beautiful to that look you could see how tomatoes would also look really nice in here for yet laura is asking if she has froze frozen pasta does she defrost it before boiling frozen pasta goes right in boiling water always and it'll cook beautifully so fresh frozen pastas typically fresh pasta that has been frozen not a dry pasta so you just go right from freezing from freezer to water and we're good taste Natalie's asking could you add any creamy aspect to it to this dish umm now that you could do whatever you want I don't think it needs it I wouldn't say to add quote-unquote free if you were gonna do that butter may be a better option but it certainly doesn't need it it's gonna have really great mouthfeel just because of the starchiness of the pasta water the olive oil and you're gonna see how it's gonna get a little bit on a creamy side once I had the cheese so the pastas now closed you have enough of that liquid reduced I'm gonna take Parmesan parmigiano-reggiano and we're just gonna go very liberally with it you don't want to be the reason I turn the heat off is if the heat was still on this cheese would get clumpy could you have use your fake parmesan you made the other day here yeah but I wouldn't what you could if you wanted to you could or if you're a dairy I mean yeah dairy intolerant but I mean this this has meat and stuff in it so it certainly wouldn't be vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination see and you could see how CL it's got a nice kind of creamy consistency because of that Parmesan that we added in there and that start to do if you were to use broccoli rabe in this would you have to put it in earlier to cook more would it be the same time the broccoli rabe you would put it in earlier with the chickpeas look because it takes a little bit longer to cook or you could have blanched it first in a little bit of boiling water and then I'm gonna put a little more cheese never enough cheese no I mean even though Gary and I are friends I can't not have a problem on my pasta sorry look it's everybody happy live I think so people love pasta dishes man does a little pasta so look you got the chickpeas you have the crispy salami and the spinach the garlic a little bit of chili flake just a kiss of heat like I said that's optional finished with the cheese oh yeah it's great but you get the saltiness from the meat the chickpeas give it some really nice texture also a little bit of saltiness from the cheese the the spinach is kind of breaks up the richness of it when someone asks like creamy should we add cream it still has a nice nice creamy mouthfeel and it's not over sauce remember the sauce the pasta is like a dressing for sailing it should cope the noodle not drowned it there's you know my grandmother used to always say she's like the dish is called pasta not sauce so you you know you want it to just beautifully coat the noodles and that's what it did so one more bite I'll be back here tomorrow at 5:00 Eastern same time same sandbox with Norman those still researching in search of salon if you make one of the dishes that we've done in the first 11 days now make sure the hashtag I'm signing dinners that we could follow them build a little community and comment on them all kinds of fun nothing critical ever so don't worry about that I'm not gonna Gordon Ramsay anybody it's all love up in here and you could also go to at Food Network value tag at Food Network you could tag at chef symon with ally just and lastly oh if you want more recipes Food Network kitchen app thousands of them thousands of them probably where these will eventually be someday so thanks for watching you're welcome Mormon movie thanks for watching we'll see you tomorrow Norman says I say behind door man\n"