Quickly reheat cold noodles with hot water

Pour hot water over refrigerated noodles to quickly de-stick them and warm them up to kid temperature. Works better and faster than the microwave. Also works well to "de-sauce" pasta for picky eaters.

Related: Cool down hot pasta with cold pasta sauce

Comments

[Nathan]

Do you mean hot tap water? Or boiled water?

Tap water is faster, but the microwave is faster than boiling.

[Parent Hacks Editor]

Hot tap water is fine, but I also have a cordless electric kettle that's generally full of freshly-boiled water, so I use that.

[Meetu]

To prevent sticking alltogether add little oil while boiling the uncooked noodles.Same goes for rice.

[Char]

It never even crossed my mind to de-sauce for picky eaters - I do have one though. I'll have to try it.

[Bronwen]

You can use this method (hot tap water) for frozen pasta, too. I always cook a pound of pasta and freeze the leftover (toss in a gallon ziploc bag with some olive oil then freeze) for a quick dinner. Put the frozen pasta in the colander and run it under the hot tap until it's hot and ready to serve - usually about a minute.

[Adrienne]

Where, oh where, were these tips when I was growing up? I still cringe at the thought of a Corningware concrete block sized brick of spaghetti that my mom would trot out night after night. Needless to say, I was a skinny child....

[Chaya]

Brilliant! Why did I never think of that?

[hedra]

Similar, for mixing leftover-but-not-enough-for-everyone pasta (without sauce) with freshly cooked. Right before you drain the freshly cooked pasta, dump in the cold fridged leftovers. Give it a stir, and by the time you can get it to the sink, it will be warm. :)

(Oh, and one of my kids prefers the bricks of stuck-together reheated stuff... go figure!)