Pasta Shapes, Ranked

No, "zoodles" are not on this list. Ack

Unfortunately for humanity, not all pasta shapes are created equal. As much as I wish I could say that every type of pasta is good, my strict moral compass will not allow it. I cannot tell a farfel-lie.[1] Many pasta shapes are bad, barely worthy of the name pasta. Others are amazing, a modern marvel akin to the Kuala Lumpur Towers. To ensure that my dear readers do not have to suffer through such subpar designs, I’ve ranked the pasta shapes below. You’re welcome.

If your favorite pasta shape isn’t on this list then you need a new favorite pasta shape. Grow up!

Also, I know that I’m doing weird things with plurals here. I didn’t want to write out “linguinii” or whatever the hell the singular of linguini is. Get over it.

15. Fettuccini – The bastard’s pasta. Fettuccini is what you get when your idea of high-quality Italian food is a night out at Olive Garden. Fettuccini looks like worms and tastes like it was invented by someone who hates Italy. To mangle a quote from Patrick Henry: “Give me fettuccini, give me death.” I’d rather only eat raw potatoes than be forced to eat fettuccini ever again.

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14. Linguini – Same deal as fettuccini, but just ever so slightly less noxious because it sounds like it’s named after Luigi, beloved Mario brother. It’s still way too big, and useless outside of encouraging small children to pretend that they’re eating millipedes. Sauce slides right off linguini, leaving you with a pool of marinara you have to eat with a spoon. I guess it looks cool when twirled into a tight spiral around a fork, but this isn’t the ‘90s anymore, we’ve got way more options.

13. Spaghetti – The Karen of pasta shapes. Spaghetti will call the cops on you if you try to add anything more than parmesan cheese from a can and warmed-up Ragu to it. Food for 3rd-graders and adults stuck in adolescence. Popularity does not equal good quality. Never has, never will. This goes for linguini and fettuccini as well, but the length of spaghetti makes it a real hassle to cook. You need way more water to cook one of these long boys than you do for a tortellini or macaroni.

12. Orzo – I am brave enough to admit that I used to be an orzo lover. I was a fool to like this insipid pasta shape. It’s pasta for people who are afraid of rice. Pointless outside of a limited subset of soups and pasta salads, orzo is a pea-sized drop of nothing. The answer to the question, “What if we made a pasta shape that actively gets in the way of people’s enjoyment of Italian food?” That’s a big no from me. I’ve had a half-full box of the stuff in my pantry for about three years now, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

11. Gnocchi – Look, we get it. It’s pasta but made from mashed potato. Wow. I’d be impressed if this was the 16^th Century and people hadn’t walked on the moon yet, but c’mon. Whatever. You eat like four of these things and you feel stuffed. Pass. This is something a stoned culinary student invented and tried to pass off as a family recipe. Every food TikToker tries to make gnocchi with a fork and they all end up looking like a blob of paste. No thanks. I’ll stick to real pasta.

10. Cannelloni – Honestly, a tube is not a bad idea for pasta. Simple, easy, sort of looks like those plastic tunnels they used to have at playgrounds. If only you didn’t need a piping bag and eight hours to stuff these things fully. We’re not all retired nonnas listening to Il Fortuno who have all day to make pasta like this. I will get this at a nice red sauce joint if they have it though. I’m not that much of a hater.

9. Macaroni – Now we’re getting to the good stuff, the actually useful pasta shapes. Macaroni is a workhorse pasta. They’ll throw six innings of three-run ball whenever you need them too. Not great but certainly not bad. Best known for its use in Mac and Cheese, macaroni can hold its own in any number of dishes. A pasta that is neither too formal nor too informal. A great balance. Sometimes it slides into obscurity because it doesn’t have one thing that it really shines at, but it’s better to be a jack of all trades than a master of one. 

8. Cavatelli – There are parts of the internet, dirty, seedy parts, that will try to convince you to handmake cavatelli. Do not listen to them. Insanity lies down that path. Just buy it from the dang store. Cavatelli are great because they can soak up a sauce, hold an ingredient like a meat chunk or vegetable bit in its crevice, and still have a little bit of that pasta chew. Its only drawback is that it looks a bit like a slug. That part isn’t great.

7. Bucatini – During the pandemic, there was a bucatini shortage. Longreads dot com published an overly purple article by Cheri Lucas Rowlands about it in 2021. A great time capsule of the period if you want to re-visit peak COVID America for some presumably heinous reason. All that aside bucatini is great. It’s just spaghetti with a hole, but as Shia LeBeouf will tell you, sometimes all you need are some holes.[2] Its got a better bite than spaghetti and draws up sauce in a way that other pasta can’t. The length still makes cooking it a hassle, but everything has a drawback.

6. Radiatori – I buy this stuff whenever I can find it in the grocery store. I love that the name is such fake Italian bullshit. I can just imagine the marketing team for Barilla or whoever came up with it going “Well it looks like a radiator and those dumb Americans won’t buy pasta unless they think it’s Italian so let’s just add an ‘i’ to the end of it.” Perfect. That is how everything should be named. Outside of the name, it’s also a good pasta. It looks cool, holds sauce, is easy to cook, and goes in a lot of things. The only reason it’s low on the list is that it can be hard to find.

5. Tortellini – Stuffed pastas are tricky for some people. Not me, I accept all pasta, even the bad ones, with grace and generosity. But, not everyone has the same spirit as me. The world is a wide place full of terrifying people I guess. Tortellini, no matter what they are filled with, are a beautiful thing. Little flavor bombs, ready to explode on your tongue. Simply amazing to behold. I love a spinach ricotta tortellini, but a pancetta and parm, or veal and hazelnut, is just as good.

4. Lasagna – Lasagna is a single-purpose noodle, a simple sheet with wavy edges. It is named after the dish that it is used in. Normally that would drop it way down in the rankings. However, it does the job of making lasagna so well that I will not rank it any lower than this. Like how Rudy Goebert is a great defender but literally cannot do anything else on the basketball court.[3] An iconic noodle known the world around. Lasagna is so great that you don’t even need to cook it all the way through when you use it. Just flash boil it and let the oven do the rest. Man. A great noodle.

3. Campanelle – I played trumpet for part of elementary, middle, and high school. Not well, but I did play. That’s probably where my love of campanelles comes from. Their bell-shaped ends remind me of the most beautiful of instruments, the trumpet. It’s not just misplaced nostalgia that attracts me to this pasta. The cracks and crevices of the campanelle are perfect for holding onto a beautiful pesto or a wonderful primavera. Hell, they’d probably even be a great substitute noodle for a macaroni and cheese. You can just go to town on these bad boys.

2. Ravioli – Ravioli are tortellini’s grown-up sibling. Great boiled or breaded and fried, ravioli slap. The filling options are endless as are the sauce variations. Talk about a perfect bite. Ravioli will provide that in triplicate. The only issue is that they don’t heat up particularly well and have a tendency to break apart when you make them at home. But that’s just small stuff.

1. Cascatelli – The newest member of this list, cascatelli is the hot new shape on the block and it is a phenom. It’s got everything, twirls, ridges, cracks, and crevices. It’s perfect. Great for a red sauce, white sauce, green sauce, or anything in between. It’s got bite, a good texture, and is easy to cook. If I go to your house and you serve me pasta and it’s not cascatelli I will be questioning our friendship. Like, live a little you know. If you haven’t had a chance to try it, go out and get some right now. I promise that you will be in love.

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[1] Sorry

[2] This is a reference to the 2003 family movie Holes and nothing else.

[3] Or give a lot of people in the NBA COVID.