16 Classic Italian Pasta Recipes Everyone Should Know How to Make (2024)

FAQs

What are 4 famous Italian pasta dishes? ›

There are four classic Roman pasta dishes: cacio e pepe, carbonara, amatriciana, and alla gricia. Each one is a variation on the other — alla gricia is cacio e pepe plus guanciale, carbonara is gricia plus egg, and so on. These four dishes are famous in all of Italian cooking, not just in Rome.

Penne. Italy's most popular pasta is penne. This quill-shaped pasta is unusual in that it has a very precise origin. It was born in 1865, with a new device patented by Giovanni Battista Capurro in the small town of San Martino d'Albero, near Genoa.

Barilla Pasta is Italy's largest dry pasta brand and dominates the European and American markets. With a long-standing reputation as one of the best Italian pasta brands in the United States, Barilla's products are made with high-protein durum wheat flour, ensuring top quality.

Commonly known around the world as spaghetti bolognese, in its authentic form 'Ragu alla Bolognese' is recognised as the national dish of Italy. Its origin can be traced back to Imola, a town near the city of Bologna, where a recipe was first recorded in the 18th century.

To be sure that your pasta is cooked correctly, it is enough to follow a few, simple rules. To begin with, you should keep in mind the right quantities. In Italy, the golden rule for cooking pasta is 1, 10, 100 or 1 liter of water, 10 grams of salt for every 100 grams of pasta.

The addition of salt is imperative! The water used for cooking pasta should be as salty as the sea.

Chicken Parmesan, despite the very Italian name, is as American as the hot dog. There's no authentic Italian recipe for combining pasta with chicken, and the two are always served as separate courses.

Italians call spaghetti “spaghetti “ and pasta “ pasta “.

Etymology. Spaghetti is the plural form of the Italian word spaghetto, which is a diminutive of spago, meaning 'thin string' or 'twine'.

Is Barilla or De Cecco better? ›

You might even find yourself taking out your phone to Google reviews of two familiar Italian imports, Barilla and De Cecco, much to the chagrin of your fellow shoppers. Instead of hemming and hawing, make the following mental note: While both companies use pure semolina flour, De Cecco is technically higher quality.

There are four great Roman pastas, all connected: Gricia, Cacio e Pepe, Carbonara, and Amatriciana. They each play off of the others and reveal different sides to the same concept.