We often treat them the same, because we eat them the same way, but noodles and pasta are really quite different.

Among the things that unite them, perhaps the most prominent are texture and mouthfeel. Both embrace rich sauces, and add a juicy resistance to each bite. The same debate surrounds them too: al dente or not?

I will never forget my dad’s take on this. He wasn’t just firmly in the not-al-dente camp; he relished macaroni that was as mushy as the cheese sauce that surrounded it! Unlike my dad, much of the world prefers these starches to retain a slight chewiness (“al dente” is Italian for “to the tooth”).

We often treat them the same, because we eat them the same way, but noodles and pasta are really quite different.

Among the things that unite them, perhaps the most prominent are texture and mouthfeel. Both embrace rich sauces, and add a juicy resistance to each bite. The same debate surrounds them too: al dente or not?

I will never forget my dad’s take on this. He wasn’t just firmly in the not-al-dente camp; he relished macaroni that was as mushy as the cheese sauce that surrounded it! Unlike my dad, much of the world prefers these starches to retain a slight chewiness (“al dente” is Italian for “to the tooth”).

What separates noodles and pasta? Well, pasta is traditionally made using wheat flour. Noodles can be made from a range of things: wheat flour, but also vegetables, starches, seaweed. Let’s stick with the variants made with wheat flour for a bit.

With packaged noodles, the bouncy nature of the instant variety is popular because of its extra-chewy mouthfeel, but that is not easy to achieve. Whether it is packaged noodles or pasta, it takes some doing to get a mix of flour and water — which by nature should swell up and be squishy when boiled — to retain consistency and texture. Here’s how it’s done.

Most packaged pasta, for one thing, is made with durum wheat. Why durum? Because its distinctive golden hue contributes to the vibrant, translucent appearance of the eventual carb.

During the milling process, the durum is ground down into a granular product known as semolina, instead of being crushed into a finely powdered flour. The combination of water and semolina results in a sturdy dough, which is then extruded through machines with specific perforations, to generate shapes such as spaghetti, penne and fusilli.

Pasta derived from durum has a firm texture because the starch granules do not absorb as much water as a flour-based dough would. This gives them the ability to remain al dente for longer.

Now, manufactured pasta is convenient, predictable and easy to use. But as anyone who has eaten a home-made version will tell you, the irregular, chunky, hand-cut pasta has a flavour all its own. It’s the difference between sliced bread and a freshly baked loaf.

Freshly rolled pasta is generally made from all-purpose or “00” flour. This is a finely milled wheat flour that yields a soft texture when cooked. It is easier to knead than a semolina dough.

But there’s another key difference between the two recipes (one that you may have noticed already). Packaged pasta generally contains no eggs. And homemade pasta has no water. The water is swapped for eggs, to keep the eventual dish from becoming too soggy.

As the eggs are mixed into the flour, the fat in the yolks becomes dispersed between the starch molecules. This prevents the pasta from absorbing too much water when it is boiled. The end result still won’t have the springy bite of the packaged varieties, but it won’t fall apart either.

Moving on to noodles now, the variety here is extensive. These can be strung out of wheat flour, root vegetables, tapioca flour, mung bean starch, seaweed, rice flour. They feature prominently in South-East Asian cuisine, appearing in salads, steaming broths, soups, stir-fries, and desserts.

Texture is so crucial to the noodle industry that factories once had tasting panels to evaluate elasticity, firmness, surface stickiness and cooking tolerances. (Today these tests are conducted by machines.)

Sogginess is a threat here too, one that is warded off rather differently. Instant noodles, for instance, add alkaline salts to the wheat dough to help it retain a springy structure. The interaction between gluten and alkaline salts results in a noodle with increased chewiness and density, reducing its capacity to absorb water. These can soak in broths for extended periods without becoming mushy.

Noodles that don’t use alkaline salts can get quite soggy indeed. It helps to rinse them with cold water immediately after boiling, to wash away the excess starch. Or drop them into ice-cold water, to keep the long-chain starch molecules from gelatinising further from the residual heat.

South India has its own history with the noodle. The idiyappam is made from rice flour at home, extruded in a handheld machine familiar to all traditional households, and steamed rather than boiled. This allows the starch to cook without being immersed in water. And gives the dish a firm bite, whether eaten with coconut milk or topped with kurma. For some reason, that al dente texture worked perfectly for my dad.

(To reach Swetha Sivakumar with questions or feedback, email upgrademyfood@gmail.com)