Giada De Laurentiis Uses This Science-Backed Pasta Tip (And You Should Too)

Giada De Laurentiis knows food. So when she shares a tip, home cooks listen, especially when she talks about pasta. In an Instagram post, the celebrity chef and cookbook author recommends eating pasta when it's leftover rather than freshly made. This isn't exactly the type of cooking advice you might expect from a chef like De Laurentiis — it actually falls more into the realm of nutrition advice. And De Laurentiis is definitely not a nutritionist, but the tip in question is actually backed by science, so it is worth taking note of. According to De Laurentiis, who is known for great advice on everything from making home-cooked meals to the best cooking tools, when pasta cools, its carbs become a resistant starch, which is easier to digest and doesn't cause high blood sugar spikes.

Warm, freshly cooked pasta releases starches that our bodies rapidly digest and convert into glucose. However, refrigerated pasta slows this process because the starches undergo retrogradation, which means that the structure of some of the starch actually changes, reducing the amount of starch your body digests at once when you eat it. Once those starches retrograde, they become a new category of starch, the resistant starch that De Laurentiis mentions in her video. The body can't easily break down these starches. Instead, they pass through mostly intact without immediately breaking down into glucose, acting like a type of dietary fiber.

The key to Giada De Laurentiis' tip lies in cooling the pasta, which you'll want to refrigerate for at least 12 hours (although 24 hours is better) to maximize the slow digestion effects. From there, you can do just about anything you want with it since reheating it won't reconstitute the starch. In other words, once your pasta has become a resistant starch, it stays a resistant starch, making it ideal for those who love their pasta but want to lower their daily carb intake.

This scientific pasta trick makes meal prepping super easy, as you can cook a big batch of pasta over the weekend and have several days' worth of meals. If you like your pasta hot, you can simply reheat it with its original sauce on the stovetop (never reheat pasta in the microwave), mix it into a fresh sauce, or use it to make a casserole or skillet meal. But pasta also makes a great cold dish. Mix leftover pasta into a salad, such as a flavorful BLT pasta salad, or clean out your fridge to make a pasta salad without a recipe. That gives you great options for meals at home or on the go and is perfect for packing into a picnic basket for a refreshing (and healthy) meal at the park.