[HN Gopher] The Invention of a New Pasta Shape
___________________________________________________________________
The Invention of a New Pasta Shape
Author : throwup238
Score : 53 points
Date : 2024-01-27 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kottke.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kottke.org)
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| The most sauceable pasta was developed long ago. It's called
| couscous.
|
| It's not forkeable at all and I'd argue it's toothsinkability
| sucks though.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I prefer to eat half a portion of couscous.
| temp0826 wrote:
| (2021)
|
| I wish there were some data backing the claims and maybe a rubric
| comparing it to other pasta geometries. Optimizing my pasta
| experience keeps me up at night. Or maybe that's the indigestion.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| What used to keep me up at night was skipping dinner. I would
| watch the ceiling for hours in anxiety. Until one day, late at
| night, I went out of bed for some fast food to take away
| arketyp wrote:
| Are you guys tripping?
| jsnell wrote:
| Discussion at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26521761
| pohl wrote:
| He did a great job balancing the 3 constraints. I always keep
| some on hand these days. Trader Joe's carries it.
| astrospective wrote:
| By odd coincidence, I bought my first box of this today, looking
| forward to trying it out.
| addicted wrote:
| The pasta is delicious. It's substantial. The pasta is almost
| like eating a meatball in itself
| lxe wrote:
| Would love to see the process of this pasta being made.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I think I bought this at Trader Joe's a couple months ago. If I'm
| remembering correctly then I guess this introduction has been
| pretty successful.
| leonheld wrote:
| From my personal tests, the bronze die extruded pasta isn't much
| more "sauce-able" than the regular ones (for regular, usual
| sauces like beef ragu, al burro, alla romana...). I honestly
| believe this is one of the biggest culinary myths around pasta.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| I wonder if earlier shapes of pasta were created with a similar
| mindset. Was macaroni engineered for an optimal eating
| experience?
| pacbard wrote:
| Probably not. A pasta tube is the easiest shape to make by
| extrusion (and difficult to make by hand) and it was likely the
| first thing they tried after thinking of using extrusion to
| make pasta.
| toyg wrote:
| Ish. Yes, the basic shapes come from what was possible back
| then, but some varieties ended up being more popular because
| they do work better. Sadly I lack the English vocabulary to
| describe the difference between _penne liscie_ and _penne
| rigate_...
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I remember growing up in the eighties that pasta essentially
| meant macaroni or spaghetti in the Netherlands; occasionally
| lasagne. Most pasta dishes cooked were those bludgeoned into
| Dutch submission (i.e., sauces made from a packet, and invariably
| with meat) those days sucked; I'm glad my mother had a fairly
| decent pasta sauce recipe though.
|
| Nowadays I'm partial to linguini or orecchiette (I suspect my
| parents still think that's fancy). Of course once you actually
| visit Italy or otherwise eat in a restaurant serving actual
| Italian pasta, your views on what pasta is all about tend to
| change.
| dunham wrote:
| We've ordered this a few times and always keep a few boxes in the
| pantry.
|
| It's a good substitute for deCecco "Galletti", which we used to
| get in San Francisco. But the corner store stopped carrying it,
| and I later learned it wasn't sold in the US. (They're supposed
| to be cockscombs, but we always called them sea monsters.)
|
| If you're looking for a long pasta, fusilli bucati lunghi is fun.
| They're essentially old-school telephone cords.
|
| [1]: https://www.dececco.com/lv_en/product/galletti-n-44/
| toyg wrote:
| I've never seen those galletti anywhere in Italy. I guess
| they're just not very popular.
| ericra wrote:
| The new pasta shape is pretty cool and all, but $45 for 6 1-lb.
| boxes of dry pasta is criminal!
| Jtsummers wrote:
| $32.94, not $45, per the link in the article which is about
| $5.50/pound. The Trader Joe's version sells for $2.99/pound. I
| don't think I'd ever spend $5.50/pound on pasta though. I'd
| probably just learn to make my own if the prices got to that
| point.
|
| https://www.sfoglini.com/products/sporkful
|
| https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/organic-italian...
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| That's nothing compared to their shipping prices!
|
| $51AUD for the pasta.
|
| $350AUD for the shipping lol.
|
| Suffice to say, I didn't buy any.
| joshjob42 wrote:
| You can get it at Trader Joe's for a pretty reasonable price.
| It's my favorite!
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I like it. Good texture and a fun origin story.
| caesil wrote:
| It's a good shape. The "sauce trough" thing is a little
| questionable though; having eaten a couple boxes, I think it
| would make more sense to have it on the inside surface, more
| sauce retained that way.
| pohl wrote:
| The series of podcast episodes is worth a listen. The task is
| not just imagining an ideal shape balancing the 3 constraints,
| but to do one that will actually come out a pasta extruder die.
| Getting the trough inside the curl might not work within that
| implicit 4th constraint.
| dharmab wrote:
| IIRC, Dan's original design had an an internal channel, but the
| pasta die manufacturer said it wasn't feasible to manufacture,
| so the design was adapted into the trough.
| 127361 wrote:
| Does anyone know if this has been patented? When digestive
| biscuits first came out in 1890, they were patented.
| pacbard wrote:
| It looks like pasta shapes are patentable [1], but I wasn't
| able to find a patent for this specific pasta shape on Google
| Patents.
|
| On the podcast, they talk more about the process of creating
| the cutting die and how much that costs, etc. Also, they had
| some trouble finding a pasta mill to make the exact shape they
| wanted. So, even if it's not patented, it might not be
| profitable to just copy it. After all, most other shapes are
| cheaper and no "real" pasta company is going to get into a PR
| fiasco just to sell a different shape out of the 100s they
| already have.
|
| [1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/patents-behind-
| past...
| izietto wrote:
| That's actually so cool. As Italian, I've just realized I take
| pasta shapes for granted. They're actually something that can be
| invented and that involves plenty of creativity and passion.
| toyg wrote:
| Us Italians, we are very conservative about food, sometimes
| irrationally so. Maybe because my favourite has always been the
| rotella/ruota, I tend to try exotic shapes pretty often -
| recently I had some _radiatori_ and they can be pretty good
| with amatriciana or other "strong" sauces.
|
| This said, I think the actual pasta quality will always be more
| important than any fancy shape. Cascatelli that overcook in an
| instant will always be worse than some old-fashioned penne that
| don't.
| noqc wrote:
| The main problem with it is that it takes too long to cook, and
| the T-intersections of the pasta are still undercooked when the
| rest of the pasta is done. Further, the non-uniformaty of the
| joints of the pasta means that the ruffley bits had a tendency to
| shear off during the cooking process, or in the final step when
| you cook it with sauce.
|
| When I tried to leave a 4-star review on their website, along
| with my commentary, it was rejected. In all honesty, my 4 stars
| was too generous though. The main "problem" that this pasta
| claims to solve is much more easily solved by cooking the pasta
| in your sauce for 30 seconds, after which your sauce will happily
| adhere to any shape of pasta you can imagine.
|
| Ultimately this is a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine
| iteration, which should not be surprising.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Agreed. It's not a very good shape. Uniformity of thickness is
| important for pasta shapes. It's why wheels or farfalle also
| suck. They have thicker and thinner points that cook unevenly
| bigxutah wrote:
| Unfortunately agree. Idk if the one they sell at Trader Joe's
| is the same from the article, seems like it is, and what you
| describe is exactly what happened to mine.
| pohl wrote:
| The texture differential at the T-intersections was a
| deliberate choice for the mouth feel component and is one that
| I appreciate. It gives an inner region of tooth resistance. The
| frills stay on if you time it right. If I want to cook it in
| the sauce I pull it out of the water earlier. NBD. I haven't
| yet used what Trader Joe's offers. I suppose it's possible the
| two products are not identical.
| p1mrx wrote:
| If the goal is to raise the sauce/carbs ratio, then I wonder if
| it's possible to make pasta with air bubbles to reduce its
| density. Gyroid infill would probably be delicious.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| I am not situated anywhere near the US, so for a regular peasant
| like me Cavatappi is a pretty good pasta shape. It is a hollow
| tube that has been bent into a corkscrew shape, with ridges on
| the outside running lengthwise along the tube.
|
| - Chunks get tangled in it
|
| - Surface area to volume ratio is quite good (sauce)
|
| - Tube means sauce goes inside
|
| It is a better macaroni (which is my second favourite shape).
| billiam wrote:
| I've tried them a couple of times--sorry to say they're trash.
| The middle tube can be under cooked while the frilly part is
| falling off and over cooked. Design schools and product
| management should teach this as a textbook example of design
| thinking taken way too far. Ask and ask carefully: what problem
| does this product solve? Maybe there is no single pasta shape
| that is perfect for all sauces because there doesn't need to be.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| I could like to make bifurcati pasta
| wackget wrote:
| Their online store is pretty bad. The page just says "6 pack"
| without specifying any weights or bag sizes. The image carousel
| also didn't stop when I clicked on a thumbnail to read more.
|
| Oh and the pasta is grotesquely overpriced.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-27 23:00 UTC)