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This shape of pasta easily nests inside each other. A lot of times if you just pour it directly from the bag/box into boiling water, you will get stacks of them together.

Once they are cooking this way it is a major endeavor to separate them. The pasta won't cook evenly because they are stacked together. The ones stacked in the middle will have more al dente centers.

How do we prevent this? (One way is to make sure they are separated before entering the water.

Once they start cooking and some of them are stacked, what is the best way to separate them?

milesmeow
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Adding your pasta to cold water before boiling it may help. You will need to stir more often overall, but the shells won't initially stick together as soon as you add them to the water, and then you can stir to prevent the sticking as they become softer.

Harold McGee in a New York Times column wrote this:

I prefer starting with cold water, because the noodles don’t stick together at all as they go into the pot, and because I don’t notice a difference in flavor once they’re drained and sauced.

What happens is that the starch on the noodles gets rinsed off in the water before it can gelatinize and stick to everything. So you will have to stir even before the water gets warm.

Cascabel
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Kareen
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It's a kind of silly answer, but if all else fails, try a different brand. I've tried everything (including plenty of rinsing) on the Trader Joe's orecchiette, and never had much luck: they're smooth and identically shaped so they just stick anyway. But other brands have some variation in shape and ridges, so they can't stick as easily.

Cascabel
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If you stir the pasta a couple of times in the first minute or so in the water, it should then finish cooking without undue sticking.

This is because the surface starches gelatinze and become gluey and sticky first, but are not yet dissolved into the water. At this early stage, it is easy for sticking to become permanent. If you agitate a couple of times before they can stick together, once the surface starch dissolves into the main body of water, the pieces won't be so sticky any more, and will tend to stay separate.

SAJ14SAJ
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OK, I battled with this Shell Shapped Pasta inside each other for a couple years while using trial and error to try and identify a fix.

All my other pasta shapes are perfect everytime. (Gluten free still give me trouble)

Science helped work out why it was a problem. And why the solution is different for everyone.

Different Cookware and cook tops make the answer different for everyone.

Don’t do anti stick pasta techniques this just makes the layers slide into each other easier!!!!! Aaaarrrgggghhh

Different Brand is best option. Usually a physically larger shell will only be a 2 layer issue.

Smallest Aldi shell shape. Worst up to 4 and 5 layer in each shell.

And the shell sit inside shell occurance happens at end of boil and drain. So while Cooking, everything looks ok, with very few layered. To complete disaster As they happily slide into each other with gravity assistance. And even more so if you’ve lubed your pasta with oils etc.

Washing the starch out of the pasta first doesn’t help, and makes pasta task wierd

If you don’t find the right brand that is consistently bearable.

Just use a different shape like bow ties or something.

Michael Pickard
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