How much pasta for 25 people

Just make a circle with your thumb and forefinger that a quarter will fit in, and fill that with your pasta. Each bunch is a serving for one person. Guess what, the PET bottles for soda and bottled water have standard-sized mouths that are also the width of a quarter. You can recycle a soda or water bottle as a handy-dandy pasta measuring tool. Just wash and dry the bottle, then fill its mouth with pasta.

Each bunch is a serving. Short pasta like elbow macaroni can be measured using the same measuring cups you use for baking. You can also figure out the amount of pasta you need by the desired serving size.

Because most pasta doubles in volume after cooking, the amount of pasta you need is equal to half the volume of how much you want to serve each person. For pasta with big hollow air spaces like penne, we need to allow for the amount of empty space in each noodle. This adds about half again the volume, so a cooked serving is about 1.

You can also eyeball the amount of pasta needed by simply heaping raw pasta onto your dining plate. Since the pasta will double in size on cooking, this amount equals two servings. To count in single servings, divide the amount on the plate by half. Filled pasta like ravioli can be portioned by piece. A typical ravioli serving should contain about 8 pieces, double that for smaller filled pasta like tortellini.

This will yield medium portions. The typical box of lasagna noodles is 16 ounces and contains 12 pieces. I always used to put them in soup, but I just found some interesting new ideas for using leftover lasagna sheets on this site , check it out! The Italian benchmark is 6 quarts of water per pound of pasta, but you can save energy and water , and still get good results, with 16 cups 4 quarts, or 1 gallon of water per pound of pasta.

You will just need to stir a bit more with the latter option, but it will save you quite a bit over the longer term.

For best texture, make sure the water is boiling before adding the pasta. NY Times food writer Harold McGee experimented with cooking pasta in even smaller quantities of water, which will take less energy and time to heat up, and found that you can cook a pound of spaghetti in as little a 1. However this required frequent stirring and pre-wetting the pasta. Having tried this myself, I have to say I prefer using a full gallon to make sure I get no clumps.

Also, the greater the volume of water you have, the easier it is to keep the pasta from sticking to each other. Figure on using about a tablespoon of salt per gallon of water. Adjust as needed for your tastes and requirements. Hubby is hypertensive, so we always cut the salt in recipes by at least half. You should keep pasta from sticking by stirring the pot often instead of adding oil, as oil keeps the sauce from adhering to the pasta.

Different kinds of pasta cook at different times and even different brands of the same kind can have very different cooking times. Once the pasta is done, stop your timer and mark how much time you took; you can now cook that brand by timer alone from now on. Share your post with your fan club! I'm having a party for my boyfriend's birthday this Saturday.

I plan to make bruschetta pasta with chicken. I also plan to serve a Caesar salad and of course garlic bread. For an appetizer we are having antipasto. So my question is, how many lbs of linguine should I make? I'm thinking lbs but I don't want a TON of leftovers. I am also making the bruschetta myself and I honestly have no idea how much to make of that either since I'm used to just cooking for 3 people my boyfriend, my father and me. I've also noticed that when people are drinking wine and talking they tend to consume less food.

One pound equals about grams. If you have a gram package of dried spaghetti, and you want to serve 1 pound to 4 people , you will have some left over, but not much -- a little less than half a serving will be left over. For small portions , for a starter, allow 50g dried or 90g fresh pasta per person. For normal portions , for a lunch with a salad, say, cook g dried or g fresh pasta per person. Everything depends, of course, on the quality and the shape of the pasta , and on appetite.

It would take approximately 10 pounds of dry pasta to feed 40 people as a main course. The exact amount it would take depends on the type of pasta being served, the size of the portions and the sizes and ages of those eating it. In general, it takes 4 ounces of dried pasta to make one serving.

For oil-based sauces, use 1 cup per 1 pound of pasta. Go even lighter with creamy, rich sauces. According to Medline Plus, the serving size for spaghetti noodles is usually 2 ounces of uncooked noodles, or 1 cup of cooked pasta. On the other hand, 20 pounds of pasta for people is a portion size of only about 1. That is a very, very small portion, less than side-dish sized. For side dishes, 2 ounces of pasta is more typical. If you are serving it as a main dish, ounces would be more typical.

The easiest way to measure out a perfect single serving of spaghetti is to use the hole in the center of your spaghetti spoon. Just take a handful of spaghetti and see if it fits, filling in the extra space as needed, until the bundle fits tightly in the space.

A 12 ounce box of these shapes will have six servings. For long pastas like spaghetti , angel hair, linguini, and fettuccini, your best bet is to hold the pasta on end to measure it. A 16 ounce box of these shapes will have eight servings.