Serious question, why does everyone rinse pasta after draining?

I spent 35 years rinsing spaghetti in the colander like my mom taught me. Then I watched my Italian neighbor just dump sauce right onto the unrinsed noodles and it was way stickier and held the sauce better. Tried it myself last Tuesday and now I feel like I wasted decades of watery pasta. Anyone else have a cooking habit they only just fixed?

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mitchell.nancy3mo ago

You can't rinse pasta unless you're doing something like making a cold pasta salad where you need it to cool down fast. The starch left on the noodles is what helps the sauce cling to every single noodle instead of sliding off into a puddle at the bottom of your bowl. Took me years to figure that out too. Now I just dump the pasta straight from the pot into the sauce pan with a little bit of that starchy water still clinging on. Total game changer for weeknight dinners.

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carr.xena3mo ago

Is it really that deep though? I rinse mine half the time and the sauce still sticks fine.

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