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

FAQs

What is Italy most famous pasta dish? ›

Spaghetti Bolognese

It is commonly served with parmesan cheese. The dish is one of Italy's most popular exports, and thought to have originated in Imola, a northern Italian city west of Bologna some time around the late 1800s - when the first reference to the dish's ragu sauce was recorded.

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.

Italian Pasta Rule #4:

Al dente – signifying “to the tooth” in Italian” – is Italians' preferred pasta texture. Generally, this means your pasta will still have a little bite when served. No matter where you travel on the Italian peninsula, you'll be hard pressed to find a mountain of gluey, starchy goop.

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.

Italy. Commonly known around the world as spaghetti bolognese, in its authentic form 'Ragu alla Bolognese' is recognised as the national dish of Italy.

Pasta produced in Sicily is a food made from semolina or flour of different extractions, which is then divided into small shapes (Sicilian busiate) to be cooked in hot water and salt.

The iconic quartet of carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and gricia make up the four most famous and beloved Roman pasta dishes.

Italians believe we are to cook and eat pasta while retaining the shape in which it was created. This means not breaking the uncooked pasta before putting it in the pot and not cutting up a plate of cooked pasta with a knife. While this is not illegal, it is certainly in bad taste.

Rule #1: Do not order Cappuccino with a meal

A salad is a side dish to a secondo, not to a primo. If you don't want a secondo, it's fine, but finish your primo before eating your salad. But what about cappuccino? Traditionally cappuccino is a breakfast drink, and should not be ordered after 11am.

Do Italians use a spoon when eating pasta? ›

How to eat spaghetti etiquette. The rules of bon ton are clear, spaghetti should be eaten with a fork so away knife and spoon! The dish symbol of Italian life in the world has a very precise code at the table that says that eating spaghetti with a spoon is not correct.

Ziti is a short, tubular pasta originated in the Southern Italy. Traditionally, people break the pasta before cooking and it is usually served at weddings or holidays. ZIti goes well with tomato sauces, mozzarella cheese or au gratin.

Acini di pepe – an extremely small, round pasta shape – translates to peppercorn, or seeds of pepper. It comes from the Latin word acinus, meaning grape stones.

Number one on our list of the best traditional foods in Italy has to be pizza. Everyone knows what pizza is, it needs no introduction, but what you probably know as pizza isn't quite the same as in Italy.

The iconic quartet of carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and gricia make up the four most famous and beloved Roman pasta dishes.

Known as the 'Città della Pasta' (City of Pasta), the sleepy coastal town of Gragnano in Italy's Campania region became famous in the late 1700s for its 'white gold', or macaroni.

The word 'pasta' is an Italian word meaning 'paste', referring to the paste that pasta dough is made from with egg or water and flour. However, before Italian pasta as we know of, was all over the world, pasta was called 'maccaronaro'. This means 'kneading dough with energy'.