We’ve been in quarantine for almost 40 days now, but there’s no end in sight yet. So, in the spirit of the Italian “quarantine,” I have decided to make a post rating pasta shapes.
Dry pasta is a great food item to have in these times, since it’s cheap, easy to make, stores well, and is relatively versatile. I’ve been eating a lot of it lately and since my Quarantine Madness™ has set in, this seemed like a fantastic use of my time and writing skills. Without further ado...
THE LIST
(Pasta Shapes Ranked from Worst to Best)
SHIT-TIER PASTA SHAPES
Manicotti - #15
Conchiglie - #14
This graph is for a blobby cell-shape, a sphere or ovoid similar to a shell.
Shell pasta has even less starting surface area, since they aren't entirely enclosed,
so the intersection of the surface area and volume slopes occurs sooner.
Small shells are acceptable, though if too small, they end up having the reverse problem: there’s a wad of chewy pasta starch with not enough sauce. On the graph above, you want to find the sweet spot where the surface area and volume are roughly equal. Most shells fail abysmally at finding this sweet spot, and I'd rather not have my meals complicated by math, anyway.
Cannelloni, calamarata - #13
Straight tubes. The only difference is length; calamarata is shorter than cannelloni. Slippery, boring, and shapeless, these pastas are unimaginatively terrible for conveying to your mouth with a fork. (I give a pass to ditalini, which are the tiny version used in minestrone.)
I include elbow macaroni in this category, by the way. The gentle bend in the tube doesn't make it less of a tube. It's still a tube and it's still one of the worst shapes because of their slipperiness and general sadness, and inexplicably popular. A cheap and common pasta shape. If elbow macaroni were a person, it would have a YouTube channel with a million followers, most of whom were bots and 12-year-olds, and its channel would consist entirely of “It’s just a prank, bro” videos and titles like “CALLED MY EX’S MOM AT 3 AM (GONE WRONG!) (SEXY!)”
Now, about ziti. Ziti is a tube and most ziti has striations. I don’t like ziti because it’s too big. Smaller, striated tubes, or tubes with pointy ends, like penne, are reviewed later in this post. But “ziti” is too manicotti-ish for my liking, so striated or not, it’s getting lumped in with the cannelloni and calamarata.
Tagliatelle, fettuccine - #12
Pictured: pad see ew, which we'll get to in a sec.
Like spaghetti, fettuccine is a one-note pasta. (Note: linguine means “little tongues” in Italian. Gross. No thank you.) Fettuccine noodles have potential, but they always seem to be used for the same dish. You order fettuccine and you’re getting a creamy Alfredo sauce, every time. Also, it tends to stick and clump together, making leftovers into a pasta-blob nightmare that no one wants to eat.
This post is about Italian pasta, but I want to give a shout-out to pad see ew, a Thai dish which uses flat tagliatelle-like noodles in the best way possible.
Farfalle - #11
“Bowtie” pasta. Not a bad shape, considered its ruffled flairs and the ease with which one can spear it onto a fork, but often overly-slippery due to the flatness.
This might just be an anecdotal observation not based in fact, but I have a notion that "bowtie" is the pasta most likely to be dyed a stupid color, as seen above. Pasta should, in my opinion, be Italian-colored: greenish, whitish, or reddish. Any other color is incorrect.
Also, I think I have a personal bad association with this particular type. I closely associate bow-tie with buttered noodles and Kraft parmesan, a phone-in meal my mom made on nights when she was tired, and I think that association has ruined bow-tie for me.
Ditto “wagon wheels.” In general, I guess I just don’t like pastas with English non-food names.
A pass is given to “dinosaur” pasta, however. For obvious reasons.
MID-TIER PASTA SHAPES
Spaghetti, capellini #10
On the other hand, spaghetti escaped "shit-tier" placement because of its meme-worthiness and its cultural necessity in films about the mob and/or dogs who are in love.
"Capellini” is basically just very fine spaghetti, and it's more commonly known in English as “angel’s hair,” a thoroughly unappetizing name.
Penne, rigatoni - #9
The slightly better version of macaroni, but only slightly, due to the striations along the outside. The striations allow for better sauce adhesion and also make the pasta a little easier to get onto a fork.
Bucatini - #8
Speaking of tube pastas… it’s spaghetti... with a hole! This is the only “tube” pasta that makes sense. Also it’s sea-turtle friendly. Bucatini is a big improvement on spaghetti and I wish I saw more of it.
Orecchiaetti - #7
Let the record show that this is officially the point in this article wherein I have gotten hungry.
Campanelle - #6
This pasta has ruffled edges folded into a cone to create a tubish interior. A lovely flower-like shape. My only complaint is that it very vaguely looks like labia to me.
HONORABLE MENTION to the mid-tier list: radiatore. This pasta occupies an awkward place between "small shell" and "orecchiaetti." Had I thought of it at all, I suppose it might have taken spot #8 or #9. I was not originally included in this list. When Andrew discovered his favorite pasta shape wasn't included at all, he demanded I rank it, and then grew outraged that I compared it to a small shell, where the starch:sauce ratio is potentially too large, and that, at its best, it's only a mid-tier pasta, ranking below ravioli.
After a brusque argument, he has written his own counter-article on pasta shapes, titled "Radiatori: The Best Pasta Shape, Fuck You Tony."
GOD-TIER PASTA SHAPES
Pansotti, tortellini, ravioli - #5
Casarecce - #4
I wish this shape were used for Mac n’ Cheese, honestly. (“Cas n’ Cheese?”)
Strozzapreti is another scroll-shape, but with the widths bent in opposite directions, like an "S." The name is Italian for “priest-strangler,” making it the most badass of the pastas on this list.
Gemelli - #2
Fusilli - #1
The fusili above is not in the cork-screw shape I most prefer, but even without the corkscrew, I like the ruffles. Look at how fancy this pasta is! He's going to have a nice time at the ball. :)
Congratulations, fusilli, on your well-deserved win. I can’t wait to stop eating you. I can't wait for quarantine to end, for grocery stores to go back to normal, for this whole mess just to be over with. Except that deep down, I know it won't go back to normal any time soon. Maybe never. But it's easier to write about pasta than it is to write about the pandemic, so here is where we find ourselves in these frightening, uncertain times, where the only thing we know for sure is that manicotti, like Covid-19, can go fuck itself.
May the pasta-gods have mercy on our souls.
Personally offended that fettuccine is not on this list
ReplyDeleteI did enjoy this very much however
ReplyDeleteConchiglie it the best and you are stupid for thinking otherwise
ReplyDeletethis is the truth of the matter Conchiglie is the best by far because of how the shell absorbs all the sauce and the shells stick together making all the bites very flavor full. Also Fusilli is the worst shit ever and this list is not valid and i will bomb the creators house
ReplyDeleteif you can not read this shoot your self
ReplyDeleteNigger
ReplyDelete