Different Types of Pastas and Their Uses

It is one of the most consumed, tasty, affordable, and nutritious foods around the world. Shapes of pasta and thickness vary. You should choose the right pasta, to make the right meal. Here is some info about different shapes of pasta, the cooking time for them, and which sauces do they go well with.

Penne

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This pasta variety is cross-cut on both sides approximately 2-3 cm long. Among the most preferred types of pasta. You can prepare with tomato sauce. If you are looking for a difference you can try it with tuna and tomatoes.

These quill shapes are completely hollow, which makes them great for chunkier sauces. That’s one of the reasons that this penne is so popular - it carries thin sauce well due to the ridges on the outside, and thick sauce well due to its hollow nature.

Farfalle - Bow Tie

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It is made by squeezing from the middle part of the pasta, which has been cut into a rectangular shape and then made into a butterfly shape. Great cold pasta used in salads. You can also create delicious recipes with vegetable sauces.

This is a brilliant pasta to use in smooth sauces. It has a lot of surface area, which means it typically picks up and holds smooth sauces well. Personally, we really like to use pesto as a sauce for farfalle - it’s great for a simple, easy, and delicious dinner.

Rigatoni

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Rigatoni is a great pasta shape that doesn’t get appreciated enough. On a basic level, rigatoni is similar to penne. The difference is that rigatoni is not cross-cut, making it simply a tube with external ridges. Rigatoni typically has an inner diameter of about two centimeters, making them quite large indeed.

Rigatoni is ideal for sauces with chunkier things in the sauce. For example, a sauce with chunks of tomato or sausage meat in it would be ideal for serving with rigatoni.

Fusilli - Twirl

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It is one of the most known and consumed pasta types. Cooked in the form of al dente, you can create great combinations with meat and tomato sauces.

Of all the recommendations we make in this short article, this is the strangest one, perhaps - try fusilli with a cheesy sauce. The twirling shape catches and holds a lot of the thicker, but still smooth, sauce. Give it a go!

Conchiglioni - Sea Shell

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It is cut in the form of seashells. Tomato and spinach varieties are available. You can prefer sauces prepared with fresh cheeses. Heavy sauces will also be very tasty with this pasta.

This is a wonderful type of pasta that often goes unappreciated - it holds a lot of food from your sauce within the shell, allowing you to more easily eat chunky vegetable sauces. Conversely, you could try serving this pasta with a white sauce that has chunky additions, for example, bacon or sauteed bell pepper.

Spaghetti

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It is a long, and thin pasta type. It is the most popular pasta out there. Varies according to size differences. You can get legendary flavors with many sauces and even with an olive oil sauce in its simplest form.

Spaghetti bolognese is a classic dish across the world, as many people utterly adore it. However, you might not know that bolognese sauce wasn’t originally a tomato-based sauce. Instead, it’s actually based on stock made from whatever animal your mince is from. For example, a traditional beef bolognese will use a beef stock that has been reduced and combined with mince and other vegetables to form a rich sauce.

Fettucini

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It has a flat and long shape. You can do wonders with chicken pieces, mushrooms, and tomato sauce. Fettucini alfredo is a very popular dish you can find in many places.

Fettucini differs from a number of other flat pasta shapes by being wider. Linguine, another popular flat shape, is essentially the same as fettucini, though less wide. Fettucini alfredo is wonderful comfort food, as the sauce is typically very rich, thick, and creamy. People adore it the world over!

Lasagna Sheets

These are another of the most well-known types of pasta in the world, mostly because they’re a very basic shape. Lasagna sheets can either be bought in consistent sizes which are made and then dried or can be made fresh for layering within a lasagna.

Interestingly, while most fresh pasta takes less long to cook, lasagna sheets still take roughly the same amount of time as dry lasagna sheets - thirty minutes.

To use lasagna sheets to their full potential, there are a couple of things to bear in mind - moisture and coverage.

The coverage of sheets within a lasagna can be a tricky thing to get right. When using dried sheets, it’s wise to cover as best you can with whole sheets, and then start to snap sheets in half. Eventually, you’ll have a more or less consistent layer which will serve to add great texture to your meal.

Finally, you’ll need to bear the moisture of your dish in mind when using lasagna sheets - they’ll only cook well in quite wet conditions. Typically, lasagna is made with a sauce of ricotta, mozzarella, and egg.

This is great for flavor, but poor for moisture. Instead, we’d suggest making a quiet bechamel sauce, and using that in place of a traditional sauce. It will be more moisty, and the overall flavor could actually be improved - you can add a lot of different cheeses or spices to a bechamel to boost it and make it extra delicious.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Pasta Good for Health?

Pasta can certainly be good for your health if eaten in moderation. The NHS recommends that you base your diet around healthy carbohydrates, like rice, potatoes, and pasta. Therefore, they should make up an important portion of your diet while being supplemented with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

How Many Types of Pasta Are There?

There is an enormous number of different types of pasta! It’s difficult to pin an exact number on it because pasta is made in a number of different places in Italy, as well as around the world.

For example, would you consider Chinese egg noodles to be fundamentally different from Italian spaghetti?

There are roughly 350 types of pasta out there, according to Italy Magazine - which is certainly a huge number. In the course of most people’s lives, it certainly doesn’t feel like you’d see quite that many - unless you went out of your way to explore them all!

Who Invented Pasta?

Well, this is another often-disputed fact.

It’s commonly regarded that Marco Polo, an Italian explorer, went to China and learned how to make egg noodles. Then he returned to Italy and spread that knowledge like wildfire. However, this is hard to prove true or false.

According to archaeological evidence, plenty of people have been combining egg and flour for centuries, leading to pasta being made for an awfully long time. At the end of the day, this means that we don’t really know who invented pasta!

Is Pasta Healthier Than Rice?

Well, this is another thing that’s up for debate. Realistically speaking, it’s a trade-off. In a healthy diet, you’ll find fewer calories and carbohydrate content in rice. On the other hand, protein and fiber can be found much better in pasta.

To sum up - it’s hard to say. It really depends upon what you’re looking for!

What Pasta Is The Healthiest?

Beyond almost all doubt, wholewheat pasta is the healthiest. Most types of pasta are essentially the same, but wholewheat pasta has a really high fiber content. This is great for bowel and gut health. To include more wholewheat pasta in your diet, simply swap standard pasta for wholewheat!

Check out our other articles:

• How to Make Healthy Fruit and Vegetable Chips?
• Different Types of Cheeses
• Top 5+ Bread Types Around the World