Cheap pasta breaks because it's weak

Yes. Low-quality pasta and aggressive boiling are the two main reasons spaghetti snaps in the pot.

Good pasta is dried slowly and evenly. Cheap pasta gets rushed through the drying process, creating microfractures inside the noodle. Once it hits boiling water, those cracks expand and the strand falls apart. Same thing happens if the pasta is old and brittle — the starch degrades over time.

The second culprit is you. If you’re boiling in a small pot with too little water, the noodles are crammed together, banging into each other and the sides. That physical abuse, combined with a violent rolling boil, snaps them. Stirring too hard right after adding the pasta can also do it — the noodles are still stiff and fragile.

Fix: use a large pot with at