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Given that there were no murders, Abe gaffs, North Korean human rights violations or major Attack on Titan events today, we decided we’d do something a little fluffier and… saltier with our reporting today. After hearing that professional chefs claim pasta should be boiled in a combination of water and salt that closely resembles seawater, we wondered: Why not just use, you know, actual seawater?

Since it’s essentially an unlimited and free resource, it seems like a waste to go out and buy pure water and sea salt and combine the two when you can just head on over to Odaiba on Tokyo Bay and fill up an empty bottle with real seawater.

One of our Japanese reporters did just this, with… somewhat mixed results.

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Our reporter filled an old soy sauce bottle with Odaiba seawater and used one of those weird microwaveable silicone boats to boil a helping of pasta. While he used the highest quality pasta you can generally get your hands on in Japan, he oddly chose to use a contaminated container for the seawater and a less-than-ideal cooking method for boiling the pasta; Not exactly Sukibayashi Jiro levels of culinary thoroughness, but hey, what can you expect from a dude that generally eats instant ramen twice a day?

Ichiro, our intrepid Japanese reporter, says that the resulting pasta dish – which he declined to season with anything more than a dash of pepper in the name of journalistic integrity – was surprisingly good and just the right amount of salty. He mentioned that the seawater pasta would be perfectly complemented by a savory sauce, but that it also smelled and tasted distinctly of Odaiba’s not exactly clean Tokyo Bay water.

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So, is using seawater to boil your pasta a good idea? Well, it’s certainly cheaper than using your own table salt, but it’s safe to say that it’s probably worth venturing out to further reaches than Odaiba for your seawater – preferably a place sufficiently removed from decade-old sandbags, for instance.

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Photos: RocketNews24
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