Should pasta water be as salty as the sea? About a third as salty
Taste the Route, AI-assisted writing · · updated
"Salt the water until it tastes like the sea." It is one of the most repeated lines in Italian cooking advice, and it sounds like a precise target. Taken literally, it would ruin the pasta. The sea is far saltier than any cook who has tasted both would put in a pot, and the gap is easy to measure.
How salty the sea is
The ocean's salinity averages about 35 parts per thousand, which is about 35 grams of salt in each kilogram of seawater [2]. It varies from much lower near river mouths to over 40 parts per thousand in places like the Red Sea [2].
How salty pasta water should be
In a tasting test for Serious Eats, Daniel Gritzer cooked pasta in water salted at 0.5%, 1%, 2%, 3% and 3.5% by weight [3]. One percent, about 1½ teaspoons of fine sea salt per litre, was his sweet spot, and his verdict on the top end was blunt: never make pasta water as salty as the sea [3].
One percent is 10 grams per litre, about two sevenths as salty as the sea [1]:
| Water in the pot | Salt at 1% [1] | Salt at sea strength, 3.5% [1] |
|---|---|---|
| 2 litres | 20 g | 70 g |
| 4 litres | 40 g | 140 g |
| 6 litres | 60 g | 210 g |
The line about the sea is a figure of speech for "noticeably salty", not a recipe. Read literally, it adds three and a half times the salt [1].
Check yourself
How much salt does a 6-litre pot need at 1%? About 60 grams [1].
How salty is the sea, in grams? About 35 grams per kilogram of seawater on average [2].
What did the tasting test recommend? About 1% salt by weight, roughly 1½ teaspoons of fine sea salt per litre [3].
A notebook entry for tastetheroute.com, written with AI and checked by hand. The figures are quoted from the sources; the grams per pot are computed from them.