Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Many Shapes of Pasta | La Famiglia Reno (2024)

FAQs

Why are there so many different shapes of pasta in Italian cuisine? ›

Combining the wrong sauce and pasta shape together will result in your dish getting soggy and mushy, making it tougher to eat. Different pasta shapes hold different thicknesses of sauce better than others. The shape of pasta you pick will determine what sauces can go with it.

There are hundreds of varying shapes of pasta. There are at least 350 shapes of pasta you can buy.

The Italian rule – which pasta shapes go with which sauces

A general guide is that lighter, more delicate sauces of thinner, more liquid consistency are best suited to thinner pasta shapes or filled pasta, stuffed with gently-flavoured ingredients.

It's no great surprise that spaghetti tops the list of favourite pasta shapes.

Sorpresine (meaning little surprises) is a really easy pasta shape to make at home. Roll out some fresh pasta dough and spend some time folding these little squares. They are made to look like a stuffed pasta shape, a little pasta trickery!

Ravioli. This is the most well-known stuffed pasta. The singular form is “raviolo” and they are usually made by putting the filling between two sheets of pasta (versus using one piece of pasta and folding it over). The most traditional filling is cheese-based, and it varies in its specifics from region to region.

Capellini (also called "angel hair") is commonly cited as the world's thinnest pasta shape, but the accolade goes to su filindeu, an unfathomably thin type of pasta that also happens to be the rarest and most expensive pasta shape on earth.

The Bucatini pasta shape resembles thick spaghetti but with a hollow center, known as the "buco" or hole.

Join me as I take on the challenge of making the elusive Buciate pasta shape. Learn how to overcome the difficulties of shaping these noodles and enjoy a delicious homemade pesto al chapanese.

Testaroli has been described as "the earliest recorded pasta". It is also a native dish of the southern Liguria and northern Tuscany regions of Italy. Testaroli is prepared from a batter that is cooked on a hot flat surface, after which it may be consumed.

What is the new pasta shape called? ›

Pashman's “Anything's Pastable” features dishes using 34 different pasta shapes, but especially features his cascatelli, a graceful, ruffled-edged curved shape that resembles a quotation mark. Time magazine declared cascatelli one of 2021's best inventions.

One of the primary differences is in what they use as ingredients. Pasta at the best Italian restaurant in Los Angeles gets its unique texture and nutty taste from semolina flour, coarsely ground with durum wheat. The dough is usually prepared with water and semolina without using eggs.

In Italian, it's called pasta mista, which translates to “mixed." You can buy packages of pasta mista in stores, which include an assortment of different pasta shapes.

Spaghetti is the most popular pasta in Italy–at least according to a July 2021 poll by the Unione Italiana Food ranking the country's top ten pasta shapes. Spaghetti nabbing the number one spot will hardly come as a shock; it's undoubtedly the pasta shape most strongly associated with Italian cuisine.