4w ago

What is the pasta shape you dislike the most?

Mine is orzo. It's slippery and it should grow a spine and be either pasta or rice but not both.

111 comments

About to insult all of Italy - Spaghetti.
Inconvenient to eat and doesn't hold the sauce well.
- All you spaghetti haters in this post need to get bronze die cut pasta. Modern machines produce pasta that's too smooth so sauce doesn't stick. The old school extruders/cutters leave a tiny surface texture that allows sauce to cling on!
  
  Look at mr bourgeoisie over here with his artisan food.
- Give me all the inconvenient food. I at least want to be entertained when I eat. If I wanted the most efficient way to eat I'd just drink Soylent 24/7.
- I like linguine. It gives the sauce traction.
- Spaghetti is perfect for carbonara, most other sauces not so much.
- Italians would say it's a skill issue 😛 In truth is likely wrong sauce or too liquid perhaps not the right consistency.
- I feel the same way. But I have been informed this is because most Itallian American dishes are not the right sauces for spaghetti. And its not bronze cut.
- My mother (I love her so very much) makes this wonderful sauce and amazing meatballs whenever we get together… but she uses Angel Hair (which I like) and RINSES THE NOODLES BEFORE SERVING. Doesn’t finish the noodles in the sauce, just rinses the shit out of of em and plops the sauce on top, which all falls to the bottom of the plate.
  When I make pasta, I use the squiggliest noodles I can find (Radiatore?) and finish the pasta with some pasta water and pasta sauce.
- just use plain elbows in a bowl, really get 'em worked up.
- I miss spaghetti but I’ll never eat it in public. Yeah I know all the ways you can do it without looking like a slob, but I don’t want to still be scooping around that shit 40 minutes after everyone else finished eating.
- I much prefer spaghettini

Hollow spaghetti. Impossible to suck it, because it has a vent hole.
- Ah, bucatini, the devilse pasta. Nothing like accidentally aspirating on your pasta sauce.
- If the sauce is thick enough it's pure heavens.
- Bucatini

Conchiglioni/Conchiglie, the ones roughly formed like a mussel. They tend to stick inside each other during cooking.
Spaghetti are sadly not rough enough for the sauces to stick to them.
- Shells may be my least favorite too.
  About spaghetti: not all pasta is made for every sauce, spaghetti are good for some, bronze cut even better
  
  I know, but for that I can also simply use rough Linguine, or produce my own Spaghetti.

Honestly, farfalle. The middle is always too hard and the sides too floppy.
- Agree. Don't like smaller rotini either.
  Orzo is great, but I get a brand that makes them significantly larger than Barilla. They're quite large, much better texture.
- It is the best to make pasta salads, they say. For me they can stop making it all together.

Honestly, spaghetti
If you're Italian, sorry for the stroke
- Same. Too slippery. Doesn't grab the sauce
  
  Spaghetti is not my favorite either, but if the pasta you're using is not holding onto the sauce, then try a "bronze die cut" brand.
  The brand I use and have had good luck with is Delallo.
  But I completely agree with you, pasta that has a smooth exterior is useless. Since the whole point of it is to be a vehicle for the sauce.
- same.
  I still love them.
  But compared to other pasta? Too boring.
- 💯 Spaghetti, linguine, and similarly shaped pastas are the worst form factor. It holds virtually no sauce, which is the highlight of most pasta dishes. Conversely, spirals, wagon wheels, and texas shaped pastas are great because they have very high sauce:pasta ratios.

Just looked up ‘orzo’ , all I have to say is bros and broettes that is clearly rice case closed
- I had to look it up too. We actually call that shape of pasta "risoni" in Australia. And the meal you make with it is also called "risoni".
  I love that stuff. Definitely better than rice.
  
  Risoni clearly means rice - rice: confirmed 👍

I forget the name, but the one that's kind like penne rigate, but a much wider diameter tube, with ends cut straight instead of angled. That one literally always falls apart and turns to kinda mushy strips when I've tried to cook it or had it cooked by someone else.
- Rigatoni? And I agree!
- Cannelloni
  They are the absolute worst. Shitty to cook and shitty to eat.

ITT: people who apparently struggle to eat pasta

Angel hair. Too fine, way too easy to overcook.
- It was a thing in the 90s when people were doing "light" diets to eat angel hair pasta as a health food.
  
  honestly not hard to overcook if you know how. it's the only spaghetti noodle our family likes. the trick is to take it off the heat and drain it before it's done, it will finish cooking in its own heat

Orzo is great in greece style salad with feta cheese and olives
- My orzo mix is sautéd spinach, butter, and a pepper spice blend with salt
- I only like it toasted.

I'd have to say shells, particularly the "shells & cheese" size. I always have quite a few shells stick together and end up undercooked, and I don't really encounter that challenge with other shapes.
I actually like orzo a lot, but I've always had it in dishes where it behaves like (and is possibly mixed with) rice. I think it adds a nice (creamy?) balance to some other carby things, such as a veggies. Trader Joe's sells one that really like that has orzo mixed with spinach, sundried tomatoes, and feta(?) cheese.
- i use shells a lot, even for bowls of just pasta and sauce (vs a plate of sauce over spaghetti noodles). it's just easier to scoop 'em up with a spoon.
  use plenty of water and stir the pot frequently. i only have a problem with them sticking together while cooking if i neglect to do those two things.
  they're great in pasta salads or mac & cheese when you're using peas in whatever you're making. some of the peas work themselves into the shells. it's like they were made for each other.

Angel hair is probably my most disliked. It just tastes terrible and gets overcooked so easily. I also dislike ditalini but not nearly as much since that usually only goes in like minestrone soup and it might just be that I'm not a fan of minestrone.
For the best pasta shapes, look no further than Buccatini (the objectively better spaghetti), cellentani (idk it's just fun), and gemelli (perfect texture for lightly sauced dishes).
I used to hate farfalle, but I'm okay with that one now. We've made our peace. It's another example of a pasta shape that I only had in one particular dish that I didn't care for and I formed a negative association as a result.

~~I love orzo how dare you~~
Honestly I'm a huge pasta lover so it's difficult for me to say. Probably farfalle whenever I eat it raw. The middle parts are always a pain to eat because of the shape.

Probably bowties AKA fucking farfalle. Difficult to grasp, harder to keep a hold of, don't retain sauce. Who thought this would be a good idea? probably some british designer
- Either sloppy and overcooked on the outside, or raw in the center. Choose only one option.

I'm ashamed (as an Italian) to discover only now thanks to this post that "orzo" can be a pasta format and not just another cereal (it also means "barley"). I always heard the term "risoni" for it but "orzo" apparently is used as well. And I agree, it sucks.
In case you did not know there is a cylindric variant too called "tempestina" which is even more awful (mainly used for soups, or for small children). It's uncommon to see grown adults eat them but, unfortunately, they exist.
- I did not know this!
- But… the Convenient Format!
- If it puts your mind at rest, I've only just heard about it now.
- I've known the latter as just "pastina" and I agree with it being the worst.

Notably missing from all the answers here is dinosaur pasta since everyone likes them.

Spaghetti or any other long ones. Annoying to eat.
- So spaghetti: grab a small amount with your fork and twist the fork to grab more. If the amount is too much grab fewer pieces of spaghetti and try again. if everything sticks it's been overdone or the sauce is too dense.

Idk I kind of like all pasta shapes to be honest. I think my favorite is elbow shape.

I mean, what's the point of pipe rigate? Most of them are too small to eat a single one at a time by stabbing them and they are the perfect shape to wiggle free from any attempt to hold more than one on a fork. I've seen them slide right off of a large spoon. I'm pretty sure if you could make molecules in that shape you'd invent some perfectly frictionless hydrophobic material that would revolutionize several industries.

I don't think I care about shape, as long as it's made from durum wheat. Now, we have a lot of pasta here that's made from regular baking flour, it's still very common in EE countries, and it's damn cheap. You must boil it for 40 seconds and not a second more, or it instantly clumps all together and turns into a wallpaper glue.
- Oh that is NASTY.
  My SO made gnocchi with whole wheat flour once and it was so very wrong.

Hard to say because different pastas are made for different uses, and might not work as well if used for other things.
But if I had to pick one I'd say Angel hair. It's just too thin and it makes me uncomfortable.

Shells. Large and small. Trash pasta. Miserable texture, and worse if it's stuffed with ricotta.
- You monster ;)

Hilbert curve, it doesn't leave any space for the sauce

Large shells and tubes. It feels like noodles were not meant to be that big, like it's unnatural. They always look so wet, and then it reminds me that all noodles are wet, but are at a proper size so you can ignore it.
- Hah, you made me think of manicotti, which I loved as a kid (cheese tubes!) but can't even stomach the idea of now.

As much as I love lasagna, the noodles are the worst part of preparing the dish. They're awkwardly large and heavy (for a noodle), and God help you if you overcook them even a bit as they will disintegrate under their own weight.
- Am I missing something? You don't have to precook lasagna noodles, you put them straight in the lasagna and they cook in the sauce.
  
  depends heavily on the recipe. Due to my "enthusiasm" for pasta in general I prefer to make a much smaller portion, which is very easy to do with a lasagna in a mug, the only real downside is that the noodles need to be pliable first.
- Overcook? Never had that problem so you boil them before hand or do sth. Weird like that?

I also choose orzo. It's the only type of pasta I've ever had where the pasta itself tasted bad, with the added bonus of having a texture similar to rice due to its size and shape, which just added to the unpleasantness because it was like wet and overcooked rice.
- Yes that's the problem, it's wet and slippery. I did make a toasted orzo, corn, and summer squash bake that was good though.

Capellini.
Spaghetti (or even linguini) is the minimum thickness for being able to cook with a soft outer layer to pick up sauce while still keeping some toothiness inside.
- Not a problem if you eat them with pesto.

for common ones spaghetti but im sure there are likely escoteric ones im unaware of thats worse. I like smaller ones that are a nice bite amount and hold sauce well. Spiral and tortellini are my favorite.

Angel hair. Undercooked, undercooked, overcooked.
- angel hair (Capelli D'Angelo) is fresh pasta to be had with a broth, so it shouldn't may too much possible to have it undercooked or matter too much if it's slightly overcooked.

Spaghetti
- How dare you

linguine fine
it's just too damn fine
- So are you but we don't go around saying it damn

Probably either rotini or rigatoni, neither of which seem to be very durable and nothing's sadder than broken pasta
- I hate you too.

Any made with super processed flour that extrudes poorly out the human. The textures and flavors of a whole grain pasta are far more versatile and a whole world most seem to never explore. A sprouted grain can hold sauce while adding complexity and texture instead of eating a blank canvas. The additional natural fiber will take longer to digest leaving you sated for far longer and feeling that much better in the days to come.

And now I am hungry.

Any kind small enough to be inconvenient to eat with a fork.

elbow macaroni

Buccatini. Still good, but its basically spaghetti with a weirder texture.

Best: Ziti, fusilli, fetucchine, ditalini, macaroni, mezze rigatoni, small/medium shells, pipe rigate, cut spaghetti, orzo, cavatapi on a good day
Worst: Rotini, acini di pepe, rotelle, farfalle, angel hair, cavatapi on a bad day
Ziti and rotini are the polar opposites for me. Can't stand rotini, actively seek ziti out at all times.
- I also hate rotini. But love ziti. I don't know why but yes I agree. Acini de pepe is for soup.

Orecchiette
Slippery little bastards fall off the spoon or scoot out from under a fork when you try to spear them.
- Orecchiette is one of my favourite shapes. What brand do you buy and what kind of sauce do you combine it with?
  Under no circumstances you should be boiling pasta for more than what indicated or it risks becoming too soft.
  
  Probably Barilla, I haven’t bought it in a while but if we do buy pasta it’s usually that brand. Yeah, I do all the cooking and pasta is generally not an issue as far a doneness goes. Sauce? Varies. Alfredo, pesto, or some variant on red sauce.
- And I can never cook them right! For some reason, even if I cook them for twice as long as the package instructions say, they're still tough and gluey!?!
  
  Yep, the time between done and mush is pretty narrow.

Ricearoni

Bucatini, they are so needlessly hard to pick up for almost no gain over Spaghetti. Same for some Linguine that want to untwist from your fork and try to splatter you with sauce.

orzo is really good in marry me chicken, one of fiances signature dishes
- I am vegan so I make marry me chickpeas instead. Very good!

Tagliatelle, and all thick noodles, bleurgh

Gnocchi is an abomination.
- My spouse made whole wheat flour gnocchi once. Absolutely horrible.
- How dare you?!? lol but have you tried garbanzo gnocchi?

None? They're noodles. You put sauce or whatever on them. The shape doesn't matter. I'm honestly confused as to why there are so many; if the ingredients are the same they all taste alike.
- Texture, ability to handle more or less sauce with each bite.

Honestly most Italian noodles suck. Weird shapes or too thin. I prefer Lanzhou lamian, daoxiaomian, or Hefen
- Spaghetti in particular is the worst and rarely even okay tasting

111 comments