Pasta - it's just a simple starch, isn't it? The more you look into it, the more of its complex properties you'll discover. A pasta dinner is a quick unfussy option for most of us, but did you know it's the pasta water itself that can give the whole dish a real depth of flavour. It naturally contains a bit of starch and protein from the pasta as it boils and is essential for emulsifying with the oils in a sauce base to make a good tasty sauce. Pasta itself does not contain any salt, so add 1~1.5% salt to the amount of water you boil it in to get flavour right into the heart of the starch. This is about 10~15g salt per litre of water. Now, to go one step further, why not add a stock cube into the boiling water for the pasta to become flavoured in the same way? Of course, cookbuzz was right on the case. Our Super Delicious Spaghetti with Smoked Kipper (using a fish stock cube pasta water) was really delicious. So too, our Herring Rigatoni. We don't want to offend or scare off any Italian mamas by these recipes, we hope they may even try it themselves. See what you think.