The biggest pasta mistake is not salting the cooking water enough or at all.
Pasta absorbs water while boiling, so it's your only opportunity to season the pasta noodles themselves from the inside out.
Chefs and cooks, advise that you make the water taste like the ocean and use around 1.5 tablespoons of salt per 4 quarts of water.
Other pasta mistakes are discarding the pasta water, overcooking the pasta, rinsing the pasta, adding oil to the water and saucing the pasta on the plate.
Pouring the pasta sauce over a pile of plain pasta is not recommended and instead, you should pull the pasta out of the pot, 1 to 2 minutes early and then finish the cooking process of the pasta directly in the sauce pan with a splash of starchy pasta water.
And a common myth is that olive oil prevents your pasta from ticking, but because oil is less dense than water, it just floats at the top and actually causes the sauce to repel the noodles, instead of adhere to the noodles.
And unless you're making cold pasta salad, you should never rinse the drained pasta noodles as rinsing the drained pasta noodles washes away the surface starches that allow the pasta sauce to bind properly to the pasta.
The pasta should also be cooked al dente, which means the pasta should be tender but still pleasantly firm as overcooked pasta loses it's texture and releases starch, which also causes sauce to slide right off the noodle.
And pouring the starchy water down the sink is also a major mistake when making pasta as the starchy water is also the secrete to emulsifying the fat and helping the sauce cling to the pasta noodles.
So before pouring out the starchy cloudy water, always reserve 0.5 to 1 cup of the starchy pasta water before draining the pasta.
The reason why restaurant pasta and spaghetti tastes better than at home, is because chefs and cooks in restaurants use precise techniques like finishing the pasta and spaghetti noodles directly in the pan as well as emulsifying with starchy pasta water and even generously layering fats and seasonings.
The key steps that restaurants use to make pasta and spaghetti taste so great includes, finishing in sauce, the starchy water, generous salting and layering fat and fresh ingredients.
Instead of just simply pouring sauce over plain noodles, chefs and cooks in restaurants pull the spaghetti and pasta from the boiling water a minute early and then they transfer the spaghetti or pasta straight into a skillet of sauce while it's still hot.
The pasta when placed in the sauce that is hot finishes cooking in the sauce and absorbs the flavors of the sauce and creates a unified spaghetti or pasta dish.
Chefs and cooks in restaurants also save a cup of the salty, starchy boiling water and then add it to the sauce.
This salty, starchy boiling water acts as a binder and creates a velvety, cohesive coating, instead of having the sauce slide off the spaghetti or other pasta.
And water in restaurants for spaghetti and other pasta is also heavily salted, which is often described as being salted so much that it tastes like the sea, which flavors the spaghetti and pasta from the inside out.
Chefs and cooks in restaurants also added fats like quality olive oil or butter at multiple stages, when making spaghetti and pasta to round out flavors and get a luxurious mouthfeel.
The chefs and cooks in restaurants also prioritize using fresh ingredients in their spaghetti and pasta dishes, like fresh basil, instead of using dried, stale pantry seasonings.
You can also easily replicate these steps at home and make restaurant quality and restaurant tasting spaghetti at home.
It can also take some practice to get the spaghetti to taste like restaurant spaghetti at home, but it can be easily done.