How to match pasta shapes to sauces
Choosing a pasta shape to suit the nature of your sauce makes a big difference to the finished dish. Do it the Italian way with help from our guide to expert pairings and how to cook your pasta to perfection.
While spaghetti Bolognese is one of the world's most well-known pasta dishes, it is fundamentally inauthentic. Italian cooks would seldom serve a thick, saucy ragu with thin pasta ribbons - they're far more likely to team such a sauce with large shells or tubes to capture the sauce, or thicker long pasta, like tagliatelle and pappardelle.
Generally, the larger shapes work better with thick, robust sauces, while skinny shapes, like strands of delicate vermicelli, suit light, cream sauces. Follow our suggestions of what shape to combine with what accompaniment - and share your own ideas with us below.
Long & skinny pasta shapes
Serve long, skinny pasta shapes such as spaghetti, linguine, fusilli lunghi, vermicelli with light seafood sauces, cream- or oil-based sauces.
Long ribbon pasta shapes
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Serve long ribbon pasta shapes such as tagliatelle, pappardelle, fettuccine, mafaldine with rich, meaty sauces.
Shell pasta shapes
Serve shell pasta shapes such as conchiglie and lumache with heavy cream or meat sauces; large ones can be stuffed.
Twist pasta shapes
Serve twist pasta shapes such as fusilli, trofie, strozzapreti, caserecce and gemelli with lighter, smoother sauces which will cling to the twists, such as pesto.
Tube pasta shapes
Serve tube pasta shapes such as penne, rigatoni, macaroni and paccheri with hearty vegetable sauces, or baked cheese dishes. Also good with Bolognese or ragu.
Mini shapes
Serve mini pasta shapes such as orzo, fregola, canestrini and stelline in soups and stews or as pasta salads.
Filled pasta
Serve filled pasta shapes such as ravioli, tortellini and cappelletti as the filling contains lots of flavour, these are traditionally served with a light butter or oil sauce.
Top cooking tips
• Always cook pasta in a very large pan of salted, boiling water. If you don’t give the pasta enough space to move in the pan, it will stick together. Italians say the water should be as salty as the sea to flavour the pasta.
• There is no need to add olive oil to your pasta when cooking. It won’t prevent it from sticking together, and will just end up down the drain.
• The classic British version of spag bol usually consists of cooked spaghetti topped with saucy mince, but in Italy, the pasta and sauce are always combined in the pan to ensure every piece of pasta is coated.
• Don’t cook the pasta all the way through in the water. Instead, drain it when it still has a little bite, then add to the sauce and continue cooking for a few minutes more until the pasta is cooked and has absorbed a little of the sauce.
• When draining the pasta, make sure you save a cup of the pasta water. Then, when you add the pasta to the sauce, splash in a little of the water if it looks too dry. The starch in the water will help the sauce cling to the pasta.
What are your top pasta tips? Share your thoughts with us below... We also have plenty of pasta recipes to get you inspired, plus a guide to the pasta shapes of Italy.
