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Types of Pasta

Cooking 101: Types of Pasta

With just these few easy tips, you should be able to make perfect pasta in no time. Demystifying these common questions will help you be more consistent in your cooking technique, so every pasta dish comes out perfect!

There are literally hundreds of pasta variations available to the Italian food lover. Pasta helps improve the overall visual appreciation of your dishes while accentuating the tastes and flavors. With so many types out there, which one should you pick? Here’s a quick guide to help you make the perfect choice for your dish.

Pasta Families:

Even though the varieties of pasta seem endless, they all come from basic types. Knowing these basic variations can help you get a better grasp of any pasta you come across.

Long Pasta/Strand Pasta
Long pasta is best described as long, rounded rods or strings. Different types of long pasta are grouped by thickness or thinness of the pasta strands. Spaghetti is a great example of long pasta.

Ribbon-cut Pasta
Ribbon-cut pasta is similar to strand pasta, but it is rolled flat and then cut. Different types of ribbon pasta are grouped by width and thickness. An example of narrow ribbon pasta is fettuccine, and an example of wide pasta is lasagna.

Short-cut Pasta
As the name suggests, short-cut pasta comes in a wide range of smaller sizes, but there are still four different types of short-cut pasta.

Tubular Pasta
Hollowed out pasta in various shapes and lengths. Well known tubular pasta types are macaroni and penne.

Shaped Pasta
Pasta that is decoratively shaped. Common shaped pasta types are farfalle (bow-tie), rotelle (wagon-wheels), and fusilli (corkscrews).

Stuffed Pasta
Pasta that is built for stuffing. Ravioli is a common type of stuffed pasta.

Soup Pasta
Soup pastas come in many different shapes (they can be variations on the other types), but the defining quality of soup pasta is the size. Soup pasta comes in small sizes to very tiny sizes.

Sauce Recommendations:

Here is a simple rule for sauce pairings: the heavier the sauce, the more complex pasta shape. Thicker sauces work well with more complex shapes since the shapes have lots of spaces and greater surface area for the sauce to get into. Long, thin pasta can’t adhere well to heavier sauces, so a lighter sauce is needed.

Sauce Texture: Type of Pasta:
Light, Oil-based, butter-based:  Long pasta, narrow ribbon pasta, soup pasta, stuffed pasta
Meat sauces, thicker/heavier/chunkier sauces, creamy sauces:  Wide ribbon pasta, tubular pasta, shaped pasta
Broth: Soup pasta, stuffed pasta

Now that you know the basic pasta types and sauce pairings, it’s easy to create a delicious Italian dish that comes together nicely. Effective pairing allows the textures of the sauce and pasta to complement each other to make one stunning dish.