In this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, chef and cookbook author Joshua McFadden breaks down his Five Rules for Building a Pasta Dish in the Skillet. Drawing from his new book, Six Seasons of Pasta, Joshua shares game-changing insights that demystify the process and empower home cooks to make incredible pasta right in the pan. It’s about intuition, flavor, and letting the pasta do what it does best: bring comfort, joy, and a little magic to the table.

Few things in life hit like a bowl of perfectly cooked pasta. It’s comfort food with soul, a dish that can be humble or heroic depending on what you bring to it. Learning how to master it, how to build flavor, balance, and confidence in a single skillet, is a real key to living the good life. Joshua’s rules take away the guesswork and give you a blueprint for something deeply satisfying. It’s not just about eating better, it’s about cooking smarter and feeling more connected to what ends up on your plate.

Last week marked the first anniversary of the LA Fires. To honor the moment, I sat down with my good friend Travis Hayden for a profile in Fine Dining Lovers by Pellegrino. The piece is about his first year at the incredible Bar Etoile—equal parts celebration and reflection, especially as it coincides with him losing his home in the Palisades Fire. It’s a story about rebuilding, cooking through the chaos, and finding beauty in both the fire and the aftermath.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

Today, I’m joined by author and chef Joshua McFadden, whose new book, Six Seasons of Pasta, is out on Artisan and available everywhere. He shares his five rules for building a pasta dish in the skillet, a method of cooking pasta that he has perfected.

For anyone who’s ever wanted to learn how to salt your water, build the different layers of a dish, and how to finish with a seasonal flair, this is the episode for you. If you’re already an expert at cooking pasta and want to refine your skills, or you’re looking for a new advanced method, this is a conversation for you to enjoy.

Let’s get into the rules.

Joshua, so good to see you.I think it’s been a decade since the last time we ran into each other in Austin at your book event on South Congress. Thank you for making the time to sit down right now. It’s the busy season. Your book’s out. So good to see you.

Good to see you too. Thanks for having me.

I love the book. I think it’s really beautiful. One of the opening musings you have in the intro comparing the practice of cooking pasta to the art of writing poetry—and haiku specifically—are tied together. Why do you see these two disciplines as parallels?

There’s the simplicity of it that really is fascinating to me. And when you really nail a perfect Pomodoro or a perfect pasta from its texture to all the things, it’s just so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s just a really special little moment in life. There’s very few things that give more joy than pasta. And arguably, push come to shove, it’s the most popular thing in the world. Even more than pizza. Start a war.

One of the things I love about the book—and you’ve really built your career around—is the idea of seasonality. You’re known for your Six Seasons. Something that isn’t always tied to pasta is that it is a seasonal dish. Why do you think it is so important to think about pasta in this way?

I think I just think about everything in that way, seasonality-wise. I just think it’s so fun to dive so deep into the moments that we’re in within a calendar year. I had my last strawberry several, several months ago, and I’ll have another one coming up here in early spring. Those moments are just anchoring for me.

I agree. I’ve kind of always just shuffled around that dance with the seasons. I completely redid Thanksgiving this year based on turkey ragu and turkey meatballs. Again, really seasonally. This is the food. This is the flavor. This is the smell. This is the nostalgic idea of it all. And it just really kind of hit home. I’m a geek for it, for sure.

I love that idea of just knowing that when I see spring peas or fresh herbs, it’s a memory. It’s a time of season. Just knowing that I have to wait for something for it to be properly good again, it just adds to the quality and the desire of the dish when the season comes around.

Oh, so much. There’s just something about it. The smell, days are getting longer, lights changing. All those things factor into it. It really is, I think, a really special thing. Understanding that, it changes your life a little bit, I’d like to think.

Knowing that you’ve put so much thought into what goes into cooking the pasta and when to cook it taps into—I’ll call it your rule zero—which is that cooking pasta is not easy.

Mm-hmm.

Which is tricky because it’s also one of the first dishes that most people learn how to cook.

Exactly. I was making mac and cheese for myself—sure, out of the box—but that was in high school.

Why is it such a hard dish to refine?

You know, I remember having this conversation with the chef that I worked with a long time ago. I remember him saying, cooking a piece of fish or a piece of meat is really easy because you know the exact foundational rules of what you’re doing. There’s cues and there’s things and you can do it and blah, blah, blah. And I think when you’re in it with pasta, things can change. When it’s in the water, it might say 10 minutes on a box and it could be 14 or it could be six. Paying attention to those things and having all the right things set up.

I would argue that I don’t think every single time you make it, it’s perfect. Even just the other day, something was a little bit too toothsome and overly al dente, but it was still great. I could have just given it 30 more seconds in the pan. So there’s always those moments. And I think that that’s why when I say it’s hard, that’s what I’m saying. You really should be paying attention because by the time you’re putting it in a bowl and getting ready to eat it, it’s go time. Up until then, there’s all these different things that can be happening. Too much sauce, not enough sauce, too much butter, cheese at the wrong moment—just a bunch of different things that can all go wrong.

Knowing all the things that can go wrong and how to make them go right is something that anyone who cooks pasta always wants to know. And you have your own method, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for building a pasta dish in the skillet.

Some of these rules are things that people think they innately know or they know how to do correctly. And it’s not saying they don’t know how to do it correctly, but to your point, it’s about refining it more and more every time.

Rule Number OneGetting the water right.

You have to have an alarming amount of salt for everyone that doesn’t understand it. But then you’re also understanding that it’s just seasoning the noodles that are in the water. It’s not about putting a bunch of salt in your body. It’s really just seasoning all that. You need a lot in the amount of water because you need a lot of water to be able to, when you put the pasta in, not lose its boil. And those things are very, very important.

In the book, we give a ratio for it. Following that and understanding that and weighing that out and getting good at that—knowing that this is the pan I use and this is how much water is in this thing and then weighing out the salt, putting it in—I think is a really, really important thing because then you can check that off as that thing you’re not guessing.

I think it’s really important to understand how the building blocks of “I learned from this and then I did this and then it didn’t work.” You follow all the things through. Which one did you not do? Maybe you didn’t add any salt because that can happen and it doesn’t taste like anything. It is definitely the most important thing.

A lot of times I absolutely ignore the water-to-pasta ratio. I just throw as much water as I can into a pot where I think it’s going to be enough to cover. Same with the salt. And I go, let’s dump half a box of pasta in without thinking about the right amount. But you have dialed in a specific weight to the ratio of a perfect serving.

Rule Number TwoPerfect portions for two.

We did the whole book based on recipes for two people. Going back to the idea that I don’t think pasta is easy, that was the perfect way to start getting people to understand how to do it. Also, how to mess up, because they think that, oh, I got this. And then invite people over for dinner and all of a sudden they’re making pasta and it’s like, wow, it doesn’t taste like that.

We would have gone the wrong way if we did it for four people, which is kind of typical. You have all this stuff for pasta, you don’t really need it. You can kind of double things up in a really beautiful way with pasta. So we really anchored it around two people and typically four ounces per person of pasta. That changes a lot with the shape of a noodle—rigatoni might look like the biggest bowl—and it’s still just a good generic rule, if you will, to follow, to really start understanding what’s right and what’s wrong, what tastes good, al dente, all those things that will actually teach you how to make pasta.

Rule Number ThreeChoose the right pans.

Obviously having a big pan for the water is super important so it doesn’t lose its boil. And then having a nice size 10- to 12-inch pan to be able to have the pasta and the sauce and being able to build it so you can all come together is really important.

It’s one of those things that is, I would like to think, a very different mindset for when people are reading this book. They’re like, “Oh, it’s all going into the sauce for two minutes or 30 seconds.” And that is, I think, a radical transformation from the way people think about it. So having the right size pan certainly helps to be able to do the thing justice.

Rule Number FourDon’t let your oil smoke.

You’re really trying to do things slowly and over a period of time to really build flavor. That smoke flavor, especially when you start throwing something in there, is going to just scorch the outside of garlic or it’s going to ruin the chilies or things will be spitting all over the place. So it really is about being with it and building that slow caramelization of the things that you’re trying to either toast or caramelize.

Rule Number FiveFinish like a pro.

You’re going to learn when you’re looking at how much liquid—or a.k.a. sauce, ragu—is in the pan, right? You’ve already put in the pot of water. You’re bringing it down. You’ve tasted it. You know it’s at that moment. I almost like to take it off the heat and then start adjusting with the cheese, adding a really nice oil. If you’re going to use acid, now’s the time to use that because literally if you cook a lemon, it’s going to taste really sweet, like lemonade, if you will. It balances itself out because it’s like cooking the sugar.

Herbs at the same time. I’ve already put them in the beginning, so I love to put them at the end as well—big handfuls of herbs. And that’s kind of the order that you really want to always follow. That same idea. Because the cheese is emulsifying, it’s doing a big thing, it’s taking on a lot, and then you’re just building from there. Foundationally, if you will, it’s just the right order to think about things.

Josh, the book is beautiful. The “build in the skillet” method works—as someone who has practiced it. And all you need to do is make about 10,000 of these pasta dishes and you’ll eventually maybe get to the level that you’re at.

If people want to pick up the book or see where you’re going on tour or just follow along with what you’re cooking, where can they go?

I guess the good old Instagram is always great. I have a website as well that will show some events that are coming up.

Amazing. I’m looking forward to cooking some of your winter dishes. Mushrooms are in season and what goes better than mushrooms and pasta during a cold, chilly night here in California.

Hope to see you soon. Congrats on the book and thanks for making the time.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate you.

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