When you boil pasta, you have to pour it through a sieve into a sink, before you can tip the pasta onto your plate. It would be much (well, a bit) more handy if you could just hold the sieve over the plate, pour the contents of the saucepan into it and have pasta and no water fall out the bottom. It could work by having a drum which spins round, sending the water flying out the small holes in side of the drum into a container on the outside of the sieve. A trapdoor then opens at the bottom of the sieve, letting the remaining contents fall onto the plate.

Percy
-- percy, Jul 22 2002

Pasta Pentola http://www.allclad....layimage.asp?id=488
This is what I cook my pasta in - just as [angel] suggests, the sievey bit fits inside the other bit so that when you lift it out, Viola! Your pasta is drained. Before anyone asks, I paid considerably less than $320 for it. [hippo, Jul 22 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Pasta Spoon http://www.koziolshop.com/11001.html
Transfer only pasta and not water to your plate. (Also available in less obnoxious versions.) [DrCurry, Jul 22 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

You'd almost have to have a different setting for each type of pasta in conjunction with a fast timer what with the different shapes and gravities and lack of punctuation if it's alphabet pasta like now for eggsample
-- thumbwax, Jul 22 2002


Cook your pasta in something like a chip pan with a smaller-mesh basket.
-- angel, Jul 22 2002


A centrifuge, then.
-- TwoSheds, Jul 22 2002


I wondered about that too - salad spinner?
-- thumbwax, Jul 22 2002


I tend to boil pasta dry. Doesn't do much for the taste (or the pan), but you sure don't need to drain it out. Oh what a bother that is.
-- sappho, Jul 22 2002


This is Baked on a molecular level (filters that pass large molecules and not small ones, which is really pretty cool). It is also Baked on a kitchen level if you use a pasta spoon to serve people.

(Btw, your example is really a regular sieve, since you are expelling the water first; then again, so is mine.)
-- DrCurry, Jul 22 2002


You don't need any kind of straining device really. Just grip the pan firmly and shake it rapidly up and down; the hot water will fly all over the room while the spaghetti falls readily back into the pan.
-- hob, Jul 23 2002


The 'pot that has a valve in the bottom' is also baked; many deep-fryers use a similar arrangement.
-- angel, Jul 23 2002


is it really that difficult to drain the pasta beforehand? I can't see spending a large sum of cash for a spinning sieve to save me 15 seconds of valuable dinner time that would have been otherwise wasted by a telemarketer (had it not been for the ZaPhone)
-- Mr Burns, Jul 23 2002



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