7 Mistakes Italian Cooks Would Never Make In The Kitchen

Hint: Unlimited breadsticks and over-garlicked, soggy pasta is NOT the goal.

Ever wonder why Italian food tastes so much better in Italy? It’s a combination of factors, aided in no small part by the delight of consuming Italian specialities at their source: eating fresh seafood in a quaint coastal village, digging into a steaming plate of polenta in a cozy Alpine hut, or savoring handmade pasta at a busy sidewalk trattoria in Rome — of course it’s going to taste better.

But it’s not all about the ambiance. There are methods of cooking in Italy that either never made the transatlantic leap or somehow got lost over the 150-plus years since the first large-scale waves of Italian immigrants began arriving in the U.S. Written recipes and cookbooks likely weren’t among the scarce baggage they brought with them, explains Judy Witts Francini, an Italian food and culinary history expert who’s lived in Tuscany for more than 40 years, as such a large percentage of immigrants of the Italian diaspora were illiterate — especially women. “Recipes were rarely written down,” she explained, “because so few Italian immigrants could read or write. So many of the ‘secrets’ of a nonna or auntie’s cooking were lost over time.”

That lost knowledge, plus an absence of the grown-close-to-home ingredients once available in Italy is what brought us to … unlimited breadsticks and heaping piles of chicken alfredo at Olive Garden. And it’s what’s led to so much insipid or overcooked or over-garlicked Italian food in American homes and restaurants.

But I’m here with some course-correction. Since I moved to Italy and became part of an Italian family 15 years ago, I haven’t become a great cook. But I am a great observer and asker of questions. And according to the Italian home cooks and cooking experts we spoke with, if you avoid these mistakes in how you cook and consume Italian and Italian-inspired cuisine, your food will taste a lot better — even if it’s not quite as good as at that little trattoria on the Amalfi Coast.

Mistake 1: Rinsing the pasta.