Pasta water usually has one destination once dinner is done: the sink. Saving it makes sense when a sauce needs a splash, but freezing a pot of cloudy cooking water sounds like taking that advice too far. Pour the leftovers into an ice cube tray, though, and the water becomes something more useful. Each frozen cube gives you a small portion of starchy liquid for a sauce or soup, even when pasta isn’t on the menu.
The trick works because boiling pasta leaves starch behind in the water. Freezing gives you a way to keep that ingredient instead of making another pot of pasta when you need it.
What the frozen cubes are supposed to do
Pasta water can add body to sauces and soups.
The starch suspended in the water helps bring liquid and fat together while giving a sauce more body. Instead of reaching for flour or making a slurry, you can add a small amount of pasta water.
Freezing it in cubes turns one leftover pot into portions you can use later.
Let the water cool before freezing it
Save the cooking water after removing the pasta.
Let it cool before pouring it into an ice cube tray. Place the tray on a flat freezer shelf so the portions freeze without spilling.
Silicone trays make the cubes easier to remove once solid.
Smaller wells work well when you want to add only a little liquid to a sauce.
You can concentrate it first
There’s another option before the water reaches the freezer.
Simmer it to reduce some of the liquid, then let it cool and freeze the concentrated water in smaller portions.
Reducing increases the starch concentration, but it concentrates something else too: salt.
If the pasta water was well salted, account for that when seasoning the dish where the cube ends up.
Move the cubes into a bag
Don’t leave the frozen pasta water in the ice tray for months.
Once the cubes are solid, pop them out and transfer them to a resealable freezer bag. Label the bag with the contents and date, then return it to the freezer.
The source recommends using the cubes within about six months.
Moving them also gives you the ice tray back instead of sacrificing it to pasta water.
Drop one into your next sauce
The cubes can go into sauces or soups when you need a small amount of starchy liquid.
Start with one and add more if needed. A small frozen portion gives you more control than pouring in a large amount at once.
They can also rescue the familiar mistake of draining fresh pasta before remembering that the recipe called for some cooking water.
Freezing pasta water may sound excessive until the next sauce needs a splash and there isn’t a pot of pasta on the stove. Cool the leftover water, portion it into cubes, then keep them together in a freezer bag. What usually disappears down the drain becomes an ingredient waiting for another dinner.
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