Spaghetti with Simple Tomato Sauce
boiling, simmering, and doing two things at once — Free Time in practice
Kitchen Rookie
Total35 min
Active17 min
Free Time18 min
Tools
- Large pot
- Medium pan
- Wooden spoon
- Colander
- Knife
- Chopping board
- A mug (for the pasta water trick)
Ingredients
Serves
- spaghetti200 g
- onion, finely chopped (1 medium onion is about 110 g)110 g
- garlic, finely chopped (2 cloves, about 3 g each)6 g
- tin chopped tomatoes400 g
- olive oil (2 tbsp)30 ml
- salt, pepper, pinch of sugar (optional), to tasteto taste
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Techniques you'll practice
Why this works
- This recipe is the first time a wait has a task genuinely attached to it — chopping during the boil is Prep Ahead Time, not Free Time, which is why the labels matter: they're teaching you to tell the difference.
- The reserved pasta water and the final toss in the sauce pan work together: the starch in the water helps the sauce cling to every strand instead of pooling on the plate.