13 Common Pasta Shapes, Ranked

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Aug 1

Written By Louise

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Pasta, one of the world’s finest foods, comes in many shapes and sizes. While the shapes serve a variety of purposes, mostly related to the type of sauce they best convey, some are better than others.

Because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about pasta, I decided to make a ranking of my preferences for common shapes, from least to most favoritest. I have not included any filled pastas (like ravioli) or shapes meant to be filled (like cannelloni) because that would be like bringing craft beer to a frat party. Craft beer is clearly better than whatever basic crap they got, but also, that’s not what we’re doing right now!!

Here’s what you can expect from my ranking, should you choose to proceed:

Opinions!! Lots and lots of belligerent opinions, which I hear are all the rage these days!
Penne compared to not one, but TWO musical acts!
More analogies than you can shake a stick at, many of which are explained in run-on sentences!

What is the best pasta shape?

While we will count down to one of my personal favorite pasta shapes, I hardly think we’ll be able to decide the best pasta shape definitively. But I think we CAN decide on the worst paste shape:

13. Orzo

It straight-up looks like an infestation.

When I was a kid, I was convinced that orzo looked, felt, and tasted like maggots. Since then, orzo has done nothing to change my mind. Has anyone ever exclaimed in delight, “Oooh! Orzo! That sounds yummy!” or, “Goodie, they have orzo on the menu! I’m ordering it!” I doubt it, and yet it continues to exist.

Who is eating it? Have they ever heard of other pasta shapes, or is orzo the only one they’ve had and have convinced themselves that’s as good as it gets, like that super sheltered girl you went to school with for one year before her parents decided public school was a mistake and to keep homeschooling, and then she got married at 20 and now constantly puts aggressively positive posts about her miserable marriage on Facebook in order to convince herself she’s happy with her human orzo husband instead of just getting a damn divorce? I feel like despite how oddly specific this example is, everyone knows someone like this. If you don’t, you may actually be that super sheltered girl. YOU ARE IN DEEP DENIAL, BRENDA!!!! YOUR UPBRINGING LET YOU DOWN BUT YOU CAN STILL ESCAPE AND LIVE YOUR LIFE!!! ORZO IS NOT THE ONLY PASTA!!!

12. Penne

Penne is a lot like Ed Sheeran: it’s everywhere, but who even asked for it? You can hardly walk down the street without seeing a fast-casual restaurant advertising some boring menu item called “Penne Primavera” while “Shape of You” blasts out from their doorway. (That song is five years old now but it feels like it’s been 84 years. Regardless, please stop.)

Penne and Ed Sheeran don’t disgust me like orzo and John Mayer do, they just have me wondering: why? Does Big Penne have a stranglehold on the pasta market? Is it the cheapest variety for restaurants to buy in bulk because nobody else wants it? Do most people just genuinely enjoy penne and Ed Sheeran, or are they just good enough that no one sees any point in trying anything better?

I’m not trying to be that ass who thinks their tastes are so much better than other bozos–I mean, I’m pretty sure the best pasta shape is Pokemon Mac and Cheese and that hardly screams sophistication–but penne is just so damn mediocre. We can do better, people!

11. Farfalle

Farfalle, aka bowties, can often be found at your local picnic table-studded park during summertime potluck family reunions, floating in a bowl of hot mayonnaise, peas, and ham that was, at one time, pasta salad, but is now a wasp graveyard.

Does farfalle have potential? Probably. But did his parents and teachers tell him he was “gifted” when he was a kid and therefore he assumed he was super smart and never worked to better himself (he’s a fun shape, after all! Kids love ‘em!), then got smacked upside the head with reality when he went to university and was, at best, average, but instead of trying to be better (like find a sauce appropriate for his shape, for instance) doubled down on how much of a smart and special boy he is, and now he lives at his parents’ house and spends all day posting in the dregs of Reddit (pasta salad) to similar-minded lamewads (mayonnaise and ham cubes)? Seems like it!

10. Linguine

Linguine is my least favorite of the long pastas. Either be spaghetti or be fettuccine, you dumb oval-shaped weirdo! Linguine always looks shiny, which tells me it’s probably super slippery and will slap you in the face as you try to eat it. Also, linguine tends to be a vehicle for seafood, so that probably colors my feelings towards it, since I don’t eat seafood. So, I won’t judge you for liking linguine like I would if you like penne or…shudder…orzo, but it’s just not really my thing.

9. Macaroni

Macaroni is a fine shape, but anything it can do, shells can do better.

8. Fusilli

Fusilli is such a lunch pasta. Much like that old friend you meet up with occasionally, you have a semi-healthy fusilli pasta dish at a lunch spot and it’s not as terrible as you thought it would be, so you think, “Hey, I actually do like fusilli quite a bit.” And yet, you never have fusilli for dinner and two bottles of wine and drunken conversation. Some friends pastas are just lunch friends pastas.

7. Fettuccine

The most forlorn fettuccine you’ve ever seen.

Fettuccine, as a pasta, is potentially better than alfredo, but it struggles to shake off the confines of its creamy, cheesy, and ultimately food coma-inducing typecast. Creamy and cheesy–what in the world could possibly be wrong with that? In theory, nothing. But American fettuccine alfredo is just too much. Americans love to make things bigger, better, and cheesier, but sometimes they take it too far. Fettuccine alfredo is too far. Every time I eat it, I end up laying on the couch in overwhelmed discomfort, waiting for the alfredo to either leave my body (in whichever direction it so chooses, as long as it’s gone) or for my body to expire after its brief, but heroic battle against the forces of Too Damn Much Cream.

Sure, fettuccine may not ever be as sophisticated as its cousin tagliatelle, but it can do better than part-time used car salesman Alfredo.

6. Spaghetti

We have solid, reliable spaghetti here starting us out on the upper half of the list. I use spaghetti all the time, with any sauce, and it is my go-to pasta for a quick weeknight dinner. It’s super versatile, but it’s also not really a pasta you particularly notice. It’s a responsible pasta that has an office job, never pays rent on the final “grace day” after it’s due, and hobbies that include bouldering and board games you play sober.

5. Tagliatelle

If spaghetti is a weeknight dinner pasta, tagliatelle is a date night dinner pasta. Long, slender, but also kinda broad, tagliatelle is the sexiest of the shapes. Get out the wine and Cards Against Humanity, because the only bouldering this pasta is gonna be doing is of the shoulder-to-shoulder kind. Ugh, that was gross.

But seriously, on the weekends I do like to crack open a bottle of wine and make homemade tagliatelle with my pasta maker. It’s obviously a lot more time-consuming than dumping a package in some water, but if you have the time, it’s fun! And if it doesn’t end up a weird gooey mess because you ran out of flour (true story), then your lil cutie will be so impressed!

4. Conchiglie (Shells)

They’re basically little scoops, and therefore the most efficient vehicle for sauce and/or cheese. It’s like using five spoons at once!

3. Capellini (Angel Hair)

Capellini, aka slender spaghetti, might be a controversial choice for an adult to have in third place, but there is no better pasta shape for twirling into a huge nest of sauce of carbs and shoving into your mouth.

2. Pappardelle

Pappardelle, the widest of the long pastas, is also the most exciting. Who knows what morsels are hiding in its many folds? Each bite is an adventure! Okay, maybe I didn’t do a good job of making it sound good, but it is, I promise.

1. Rigatoni

Rigatoni, the tubular queen of pasta shapes, takes first place in my ranking of common pasta shapes, since I could not, in good faith, put Pokemon Mac and Cheese on this list as it has been long discontinued and, therefore, is not common. But wait–how can rigatoni be crowned The Best Pasta Shape when penne received such a spanking in second-to-last place? Aren’t they pretty much the same?

NO, THEY ARE NOT, AND I SUGGEST YOU WATCH YOUR MOUTH!! Sure, they are both tube shapes. But would you say the works of Thomas Kinkade and Monet are “pretty much the same”? Are Creed and Pearl Jam basically the same band? Are raisins and Craisins pretty much the same little dried fruits? NO!! One is a work of art and the other can be found at one of the last remaining Old Country Buffets.

Phew, I’ve worked up a sweat here. Anyway, rigatoni is far superior to that stodgy little hack penne. For one, it’s wider: wide enough that its sauce actually gets into the middle instead of just sitting around at the pointlessly diagonal and too-narrow opening like penne. It also has a much better texture than penne, which always feels a little too al dente regardless of cooking time. The fact that rigatoni and penne have similarities actually makes penne look even worse, because tube pasta can be The Best, but penne somehow managed to screw it up so badly that it’s Almost the Worst.

To sum up my highly opinionated thoughts/personal preferences regarding rigatoni vs. penne, rigatoni is the pasta equivalent of “Even Flow” and penne is “With Arms Wide Open”.

But wait, if rigatoni is so great, shouldn’t its superiority be evident without disparaging another shape? Yes, absolutely…but have you tried disparaging penne? It’s pretty dang fun.

Now, switch your penne to rigatoni and watch your fortunes improve!