American exchange students in Italy start fire while cooking pasta

The girls did not know you need to add water to pasta.

Three 20-year-old American students on an exchange programme in Italy reportedly started a fire while cooking pasta without water.

The students placed spaghetti in a pan, with nothing else, and, unsurprisingly to anyone who's ever cooked pasta, it caught fire.

The students called emergency services and firemen quickly extinguished the fire.

Italian readers did not sympathise with the American students and comments on social media mocked them for not knowing that you need to add water to pasta.

"Return to the USA to eat hamburgers & chips from [McDonald's]," an Italian reader on La Nazione said.

A Florentine chef, Fabio Picchi, was kinder to the girls and offered them four hours of Italian cooking lessons at one of his restaurants.

We think it's probably going to take a bit more than that before they can cook themselves a proper meal.