Matching Pastas with Sauces

I love all kinds of pastas and am always experimenting with different sauces to serve with my different pastas. There are a wide variety of pasta shapes and sizes from which to choose, and each has its own subtle taste and texture. Certain kinds of pastas also tend to work better with certain kinds of sauces. Of course, you can always play around and experiment to suit your own tastes. These basic guidelines, however, will help you get started if you are only familiar with traditional spaghetti noodles and spaghetti sauce.

Chunky sauces
Chunky sauces are those made with meat, seafood, and chunky vegetables. Most people tend to make these kinds of sauces when making spaghetti for supper. Medium-sized pasta shaped as shells and tubes and those with grooves actually work best with these kinds of sauces. Such pasta shapes as penne and rigatoni have groves that capture the sauce plus the tube-shape traps even more sauce.

Light creamy or oil-based sauces
If you like thin pasta, such as vermicelli or linguine, a light creamy sauce or an oil-based sauce is the perfect choice. The lighter sauce slides right over the thinner pasta and prevents it from sticking. For example, I like to use vermicelli with an olive oil and lemon sauce that I make to serve with shrimp.

Thick, smooth sauces
Ever wonder why you always see Alfredo sauce served with fettuccine on so many Italian menus? The reason is that thicker sauces, such as Alfredo, stick better to larger noodles, such as fettuccine. I have also found that farfalle (bowtie) pastas work well with these thicker sauces.

Other choices:
Baked casseroles
We all know that elbow macaroni is ideal for casseroles. Also look at using large shells, regular egg noodles, ziti, and rigatoni. For specific recipes, of course, choose manicotti and lasagna noodles. All of these types of pastas have thicker shells, which are perfect for holding up during the baking process and will not, therefore, just fall apart.

Salads
I just love pasta salad and tend to use a lot of different kinds of pasta. My favorite is farfalle. Other good choices include spirals, many of which can be found in three different types of pasta, such as spinach and sundried tomato, that can add some color to your salad. Also look at ziti, ditalini, and radiatore. Each of these pastas have lots of little nooks that can trap the type of dressing you decide to use along with any additional seasonings.

Soups
For clear soups, such as chicken, choose smaller pastas such as orzo, pastina, and tubetti. For the kids, you can find alphabet pasta. For more robust soups, such as minestrone, choose pasta that has more substance to it, such as small shells, elbow macaroni, and even broken vermicelli and capellini. These pastas can hold their own when paired with potatoes, beans, vegetables, and even meats that are often found in heartier soups.

Trying different types of pastas with different sauces can give your meal planning an entirely new dimension. You might even find that regular spaghetti noodles are now your least favorite. Another hint: Many specialty food stores, fresh markets, and health food stores offer pastas in various flavors, such as sundried tomato -- my personal favorite -- basil, and rosemary -- to name just a few. You will definitely want to give some of these a try.

References:

Rogers, Jean, ed. The Healing Foods Cookbook. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1991.