Why Rinsing Your Noodles With Tap Water Can Ruin Mac And Cheese

There are some things that we do instinctively, without a moment's thought. You smell your food before you eat, you question slimy textures, you reach for comfort foods when you're sad, and so on. That's all fine and dandy, but there's one routine that you may want to stop autopiloting. If you're someone who drains a pot of perfectly cooked pasta for mac and cheese only to rinse it under cold water (because that's what you've always done), stop right there.

Rinsing washes away the starches that naturally coat pasta during boiling — and this is a time when starchy pasta is actually a good thing. When left untouched, that light coating helps create a natural bond between the pasta and any sauce you mix in. That's especially important in mac and cheese, where the texture of the dish depends on a smooth, creamy coating.

Rinsing pasta with tap water makes it harder for your cheese sauce to hold on and more likely that it will separate or settle rather than wrap evenly around each noodle. Without starch acting as a bridge between sauce and pasta, the whole dish can feel disconnected, like cheese and noodles are sitting next to each other instead of working together.

Skipping the rinse step may leave the pasta looking slightly stickier right after draining, but that's exactly how it should be. In this case, rinsing it away is a grave mistake that can ruin your mac and cheese. Your sauce just ends up pooled at the bottom of the bowl, and who wants that?.

If washing off the starch wasn't bad enough, rinsing your pasta also cools it down, and that's not great when your next step involves cheese. Cheese sauces (especially ones with shredded cheese or milk) rely on heat to blend smoothly. Cold pasta can chill things too fast, causing the sauce to clump or separate before it even has a chance to have that ultra-creamy consistency people expect from a good mac and cheese. 

Some people have thought of rinsing the pasta in warm or hot water, but that's not actually helpful either. Speaking from experience, that solves the temperature dilemma, but you still end up with slick noodles. Your cheese sauce won't clump, but it won't stick either. So the next time you boil noodles for mac and cheese, resist the urge to run them under the tap. Drain them, leave them a little starchy, and let them be.