Some people like to add oil to the water when boiling pasta. Adding oil helps keep the noodles from sticking to one another, and it also helps keep the water from boiling over out of the pot. However, adding oil to boiling pasta also results in an slightly oily pasta when done, and if you are going to be serving the pasta with sauce, this will keep the sauce from properly sticking to the noodles. For this reason, you should generally *not* add oil to the water when boiling pasta.

The two exceptions to this rule are: 1) when the pasta will not be used with a sauce, such as when boiling pasta for a pasta salad; 2) when the pasta will be baked after cooking, such as lasagna noodles, manacati, ziti, etc.