I was floating down the currents of the Internet, which is rarely a good idea, when I encountered a food question that shook me to my core.

This was the question: "My partner made spaghetti, but didn't rinse the pasta. I couldn't eat it or serve it. Isn't rinsing pasta a must?"

The question made my blood boil, and then it made my blood run cold. Coincidentally, that is exactly what happens to pasta when you cook it and then rinse it.

The answer, I should mention, is no. No, rinsing pasta is not a must. Rinsing pasta is a mistake in all circumstances except one — if you are making pasta salad, rinsing the pasta will quickly cool it down so you can assemble the salad.

The question was asked on a website called Cooktop Cove, and to their credit they did a fine job of explaining the question and then answering it. They even began with why rinsing pasta is a good idea.

People rinse pasta, they say, as a way to remove excess starch, which can make the noodles sticky and clump together. And then I suddenly remembered: My mother rinsed her pasta. I was raised to rinse pasta.

At least the pasta wasn't sticky. It was smooth.

But more sauce sticks to the pasta if the pasta is sticky. Less sauce, if any, sticks to the pasta if the pasta is smooth. And we may as well admit that the whole point of pasta is the sauce.

Still, nobody wants pasta that is too gooey and too clingy. When pasta clumps together, you wind up with a displeasing ratio of too much pasta, and not enough sauce, in each gross bite.

The solution is not to wash the pasta. The solution is to cook it properly, which is to say in a sufficient amount of water and with a sufficient amount of salt.

In general, you should use four to six quarts of water to cook a pound of pasta, and you should use at least a tablespoon of salt for every four quarts.

Don't tell anyone, but you can get by with using a little less water if you stir the pasta frequently as it cooks.

Ideally, you should take the pasta out of the water a minute before it is done, add it to a ladle or two of the hot sauce and cook that together — stirring constantly — for one final minute until it is done.

Actually, you should really heat an unpeeled clove of garlic in garlic-flavored oil, add some vegetable stock (turning your head so you don't get burned when it splatters out of the pot), add more stock in a couple of additions while taking the same precautions, and adding some of pasta cooking water before taking the pasta out of its water two minutes before it is done and cooking it in this boiling flavored vegetable stock for two minutes before serving.

But that's a lot of work for a Tuesday.

The other problem with rinsing pasta is that, along with the starch, you rinse away the heat. You end up with cold pasta.

Which is fine if, as mentioned, you're making pasta salad. But I'm pretty sure that is not what the person who asked the question was talking about.

Some people apparently reheat their cold, rinsed pasta, which they then have to drown in sauce that doesn't adhere to it. Or they could make their lives easier, and their pasta dishes tastier, if they just don't rinse the pasta in the first place.

And another thing: Some people add olive oil to the water they cook the pasta in, to keep it from sticking.

Don't do that. It just floats on top of the water, wasting perfectly good olive oil.

If you want pasta not to stick to itself, cook it for the right amount of time (it's listed on the package) in the right amount of water. Stir the pasta frequently as it cooks, and serve it while it's hot.

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