Hey!
Ok, so here’s what you need to look at when you’re getting pasta.
Colour
Don’t get yellow pasta! This is the stuff that’s dried really quick, so it loses its flavour real quick and is just generally more disappointing when you eat it. Faster dried pasta is also less nutritious, but mostly honestly I avoid it because it lacks flavour. If it’s yellow, let it mellow (on the shelf).
Ivory, or just generally lighter coloured pasta is the better way to go. This means it’s been dried at a lower temp (I think about 30c) for a longer time (often a few days). This is one of those situations where there are three main ingredients to a pasta: flour, water, and time. The yellow pasta doesn’t have the last ingredient.
Yellow:
Ivory:
Texture
Ok so now that you’ve ruled out the yellow pasta, it’s time to look at the texture on the pasta itself. The most joyous part of eating pasta (I feel) is when the bit of pasta takes on the max amount of sauce it has with it.
So, I’ve found that a rougher looking pasta is almost always going to be best: there are more sauce pockets.
Generally, this is an extruded pasta (one that’s pushed out of a die, I’ll show you a pic down the bottom). Also, different dyes have different roughness, but apparently the bronze dyes are the best ones.
You basically just want a light coloured pasta with a rough texture on it. Sandpapery. You want it to look rough. The smoother the pasta, the more sauce slides off. No.
Here are some pasta shapes that can be extruded, and have great little pockets for sauce. Just make sure they are more ivory than yellow.
Fusilli
Radiatori
Rigatoni
Mafaldine
Penne
Rigatoni
Special mention goes to orecchiette though! They’re not extruded, but they’re made by scraping a knife against a little piece of dough so they get all torn up. Ridges galore.
Further reading
Dan Pashman did a whole series on creating The Perfect pasta shape (and he did it!), which taught me a lot about how to think about, look at, and make food with pasta. You can listen to it if you want the full deep dive, which I personally loved.
So when you go to the shops:
Get the lightest colour pasta with the roughest texture.
See you whenever I’m next struck by inspiration!
PS. None of this is referring to egg pasta, because that’s already going to be pretty yellow. If it’s yellow and has a rough texture I reckon just take a look at if it’s got egg in it, hey.
