Dry pasta, by weight. It's actually plenty to be a serving when you measure it out that way. I don't know how people measure things like penne with measuring cups. O.o
Oh, this is where I SOOO recommend spending the money for a small kitchen scale. I got mine at GNC for ten dollars, although it may have been on sale, and that's where it came in the most handy. I think the odd shapes are why the serving sizes are almost always described by weight, LyndsayLouWho; like you said, how could you effectively measure penne in a cup?
It's also REALLY handy if you're baking with shortening or peanut butter or something that's a pain to scrape out of the cup - lay a piece of Saran wrap over the top of the scale and scoop the food onto that. Generally, eight ounces is close enough to a cup to make no difference, and you just drop it out of the saran wrap into the bowl. No muss, no fuss!
Not that I do much baking with Crisco or peanut butter lately...
I have a really hard time with pasta because I'm cooking for 3 - 4 people. I'm not going to cook my serving in a separate pot so... I just limit myself to a small serving and leave it at that.
A typical serving of pasta is 2oz dry weight. It cooks up into quite a bit. I usually add tons of veggies to my pasta dishes to bulk them up even more.
Absolutely agree that a kitchen scale is helpful. Even if we aren't using much peanut butter or Crisco! I like papardelle and you sure can't measure it in a cup.
I <3 my kitchen scale!!! It makes things so much easier. I can see not wanting to use another pot. You could always cook one serving separately to gague what a serving of cooked pasta looks like and weighs....
I don't cook my own serving in a separate pot, I just cook however many servings and eyeball dividing that into individual servings. A kitchen scale is very useful and if you were that gung-ho, you could measure out your pasta, cook it in a pot, and then when it's done, drain it and pour the cooked contents into a bowl on the food scale to get the total weight cooked and then divide that into the number of servings. This is what I do with soups where I weigh the pot beforehand and subtract that from the total weight, since eyeballing servings there is somewhat difficult.
Dry or Cooked Pasta... which is the proper serving amount?
