[HN Gopher] The invention of a new pasta shape (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
The invention of a new pasta shape (2021)
Author : throwup238
Score : 191 points
Date : 2024-01-27 20:03 UTC (1 days 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.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Israeli couscous is larger and has slightly better mouthfeel
| than the standard couscous. And I agree, these are the most
| sauceable for sure. Very spoonable.
| 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?
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| No, paraphrasing Virginia Woolf
| jsnell wrote:
| Discussion at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26521761
| bagels wrote:
| Yes, if we want to make claims about sauce holding
| capabilities, they should measure the weight of the cooked
| pasta before and after saucing and draining loose sauce.
| 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.
| dxdm wrote:
| How was it?
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah, I don't generally have a problem with a puddle of extra
| sauce left over in my bowl after eating the pasta. Which means
| this is solving a non-problem.
|
| If your sauce isn't sticking, add a little water from the pasta
| to it, after cooking the pasta. The starch in the water makes a
| big difference to make the sauce stickier. Every Italian
| restaurant does this, basically. And toss the pasta in the
| sauce before serving, don't just dump the sauce on top of naked
| noodles.
| shagie wrote:
| America's Test Kitchen looks into that - bronze cut vs teflon
| cut and what happens if you take sandpaper to the dried pasta:
|
| https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/article...
| stephenr wrote:
| Americas test kitchen also says you can't make crispy pork
| belly without frying it, I don't know why people put so much
| trust in a group that can get something so easy, wrong.
| jghn wrote:
| ATK/CI, Kenji, etc - they all have said that many times
| they're talking about best results. It's often possible to
| cut corners from what they say and get perfectly reasonable
| results, just not as ideal as one could.
|
| Also FWIW, my recollection of the pork belly episode was
| the same, that they said you'll never get as good of a
| crispy crust without frying. That's not the same as it's
| not possible to make it happen at all. I remember thinking
| "well, I'm not gonna bother with that".
| stephenr wrote:
| Here is the video, right at the point where they make
| their absolutely ridiculous fucking claim:
|
| > We tried to get that skin crisp in a hot oven and under
| the broiler, and _it just didn 't work_. The only way to
| get it crisp was using hot oil.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ucXLDX_xrE&t=390s
| jmulho wrote:
| You seem to have a very negative opinion about America's
| Test Kitchen based on one claim they made in one video
| (6:30). Yet you offer no insight into why you feel they
| are wrong. If a company in the business of testing
| recipes, with 30+ year track record (Cooks Illustrated),
| tells me that they did multiple experiments on pork
| belly, found oven results were leathery, frying was
| crispy, explains why, and then demonstrates it, well yes,
| I am going to trust them over a guy on the internet who
| implies he is some master of pork bellies but
| demonstrates nothing.
| stephenr wrote:
| If someone claiming to be an "expert" says that something
| cannot be done, but you yourself have done it countless
| times at home, it tends to give the impression that the
| "expert" has no fucking idea what they're doing.
|
| When the internet is full of examples of other people
| doing said thing, it kind of cements the idea that they
| have no fucking idea.
|
| But hey, believe what you want.
| jghn wrote:
| Yes. And as I said sometimes these people are making
| claims against a bar higher than what a normal person
| would apply. You can't always take their statements
| literally
|
| There"s crispy and there's crispy.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I can believe that the current ATC doesn't know how to cook
| it, but there's definitely at least one recipe from Cook's
| Illustrated or Cook's Country going back around a decade
| that advises using a cold, dry pan for crispy pork belly,
| which I'll still do today.
|
| I also recall that all the talent left to join Chris for
| Milk Street, which is who would have published that
| technique.
| jonatron wrote:
| Sauce-able is only one attribute, and bronze-die vs not is only
| one variable. I liked Alex's tier list in this video:
| https://youtu.be/v_XMTvAgpEw?si=X2QoNVbn3cl094fm Bronze die
| would make more of a difference for carbonara where you need
| starchy water
| 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_...
| bagels wrote:
| Looks like the difference is one has longitudinal ridges,
| and the other is smooth.
| mongol wrote:
| This is what ChatGPT has to say about the difference. Does
| it capture your view of the matter?
|
| Penne liscie and penne rigate are both types of penne
| pasta, but they differ in their surface texture:
|
| 1. *Penne Liscie*: This type of penne has a smooth surface.
| The word "liscie" in Italian means "smooth." Due to its
| smooth texture, it generally holds lighter sauces better,
| as the surface doesn't trap as much sauce.
|
| 2. *Penne Rigate*: In contrast, penne rigate has a ridged
| surface. "Rigate" means "ridged" or "grooved" in Italian.
| These ridges or grooves are excellent for holding onto
| thicker, heartier sauces, as they provide more surface area
| for the sauce to adhere to.
|
| The choice between the two usually depends on the type of
| sauce being used and personal preference. Penne rigate's
| ability to hold more sauce makes it a popular choice for
| many robust and creamy sauces.
| 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.
| zabzonk wrote:
| ah, the joys of dutch cuisine!
| 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.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >If you're looking for a long pasta, fusilli bucati lunghi is
| fun. They're essentially old-school telephone cords.
|
| I'll have to check that out. I have regular (short) fusilli,
| penne, and fettuccine on rotation when I make pasta. It's
| strange how the mouthfeel affects the experience when the food
| is otherwise exactly the same in terms of ingredients and
| maker.
| drifkin wrote:
| I came here to the comments to mention the shape "Cresti di
| Gallo", which I had for the first time recently and really
| enjoyed. I suspect it might just be another name for the same
| shape you posted, so maybe you can find another brand you like
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah, that's the same shape. I believe it's the proper name,
| and I've tried searching for it in the past. It seems
| somewhat rare in the western US under either name.
|
| The place that I originally got it from was a tiny market at
| 24th and Valencia in SF. I think they just happened into it
| via some distributor and ran out after I slowly bought all of
| it.
|
| While I've kept an eye out, but I haven't put a lot of effort
| into finding it. I did see it once at pike place market in a
| bin of mixed pasta, but they said they didn't have that shape
| by itself.
| tacone wrote:
| Fusilli Bucati is also a great favorite of mine. It's shaped
| like a spring, fun to play with and chew and also good at
| retaining sauce.
| 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.
| Cpoll wrote:
| > $350AUD for the shipping lol.
|
| Why is it this expensive for 6lbs (~3kg)?
| ggm wrote:
| Because Australia is a long way away and food imports incur
| consequences due to biosecurity.
| 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.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Agree. The quality of the wheat and production methods are
| going to have a bigger impact than the specific details of
| the shape. But alas, the shape can be seen with the naked
| eye.
|
| The idea of a special shape also suggests that the
| interaction between sauce and pasta is a mechanical process,
| which is appealing in the US, where pasta and sauce used to
| be (and may still be) served in separate bowls.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| I was thinking about radiatori going into this. Anybody know
| on which axes this shape is supposed to beat radiatori? Seems
| to me radiatori has max surface area per wheat, so it should
| dominate on sauceability.
|
| Also thrilled to have an opportunity to say "radiatori" 3,
| nay 4 times in context.
| djur wrote:
| EDIT: I take this back. I think it's "forkability"; their
| description specifically points out that this shape is long
| enough to be easily picked up with a fork. Radiatori are
| pretty small and often easier to spoon. I like them a lot,
| though.
| nfw2 wrote:
| I think radiatori has some additional advantages compared to
| this. Its shape is more symmetrical, so more consistent
| saucing, and it's easy to get the right size bite with a
| fork. Eating this pasta seems a bit awkward due to the
| asymmetric, oblong shape
| 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
| kbouck wrote:
| I may be in the minority here, but I appreciate pasta shapes
| which result in a gradient of aldentitude (made up that
| word).
| 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.
| basch wrote:
| If you click the article then click buy, the top of the page
| has a link to Americas Test Kitchen saying the Trader Joe's
| variant is much worse and not recommended.
| https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/6189-trader-
| joe...
| Benlights wrote:
| That's too bad. I would love to try the Sfoglini brand but
| it doesn't have kosher supervision, as opposed to the TJ's.
| stephenr wrote:
| I have no idea about this pasta but keep in mind Americas
| test kitchen also claimed it's _impossible_ to get crispy
| skin on a piece of pork belly in an oven and insisted it
| must be fried.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| The Trader Joe's version isn't very good. The main version is
| much better.
| 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.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I can tell you the Trader Joe's version was so bad with the
| frilly parts coming off that I hoped it was just their
| version being cheap, but apparently that's not the case based
| on parent's comments.
| kamranjon wrote:
| I've cooked the TJ version a number of times - the only
| time the ribs have fallen off was when I overcooked them. I
| don't think it's a bad pasta but I do think its virtues are
| being oversold- there are many pastas that achieve exactly
| the same thing.
| addicted wrote:
| Never had the frills come off. Must be the TJ version or a
| bad batch.
| greggsy wrote:
| He used the term 'toothfeel' in the podcast, which is
| analogous to al-dente.
|
| I've found that the amount of salt in the water, and how
| crowded the pot is will play a big part in how well it cooks.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I dunno, I tried it and greatly enjoyed it. I didn't notice any
| uniformity problem but I'm also not that all that discerning
| when it comes to pasta.
| noqc wrote:
| If you aren't particularly discerning, why would you greatly
| enjoy spending so much more money for what you basically
| consider equal to cheaper pasta?
| munchbunny wrote:
| Sometimes you're just curious if you'd notice the
| difference or if you like it. Just because you're not
| discerning doesn't mean you won't notice differences or
| have preferences _this time_.
|
| I'm not a discerning drinker, but sometimes I'll still
| order a fancier beer or glass of wine, because... why not?
| I don't do it often, so I don't mind dropping some extra
| bucks, and sometimes I experience something new and
| interesting.
| nfw2 wrote:
| In this case, I would take discerning to mean noticing
| smaller details that other people might notice. That
| doesn't preclude having preferences.
|
| Also, $5 for a pound doesn't really seem like a lot of
| money. Pasta is cheap in general.
| jerbearito wrote:
| They greatly enjoyed the pasta. They didn't say they
| "greatly enjoyed spending so much more money".
| ajdude wrote:
| > When I tried to leave a 4-star review on their website, along
| with my commentary, it was rejected
|
| Whenever I see a website displaying their own reviews, I always
| assume they're at best cherry picking or at worst outright
| forging.
| jader201 wrote:
| I mean, sure if you're comparing a 5-star first party review
| to a 4-star third party review.
|
| But nobody should be doing that sort of comparison anyway --
| that is, cross-site review comparison.
|
| If I'm looking at first party reviews, I'm comparing them to,
| at most, reviews on other products of the same site.
|
| They for me, they still carry some relative (intra-site)
| weight, but definitely no absolute (cross-site) weight.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| When you said your 4 star review was denied, I figured it must
| be out of 10. But no, it's out of 5, and the store does indeed
| show 138 reviews with an average of 5 stars.
|
| That's wild. I know deleting 1 star reviews is common and I
| hate that as well but these people aren't even trying to make
| it look legit. Pathetic.
| paulgb wrote:
| It's also dangerous territory with the FTC, who have fined
| companies millions for doing exactly that.
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2022/01/...
| emeril wrote:
| yeah, even target.com won't publish any 1 star reviews of
| their products - I bought a play kitchen years ago that was
| pretty terrible but sure enough they would never publish the
| review
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A lot of novice cooks I know will fully cook their pasta,
| strain it, and get it pretty dry before putting sauce on. The
| starchy pasta water is actually a "glue" that helps adhere the
| sauce to the pasta. If you leave your pasta a bit wet before
| saucing, you get better adhesion by a lot, and it's even better
| if you cook the pasta (and pasta water) into the sauce to
| release more starches into the sauce.
| finaard wrote:
| Even worse - it's not uncommon to give the pasta a short
| rinse with cold water to make them "les sticky", and then
| complain the sauce isn't sticking.
| djur wrote:
| When you say it was "rejected", are you saying you received a
| message saying it was rejected, or it didn't appear on the
| site, or it was removed? I see a number of less-than-5-star
| reviews citing both of the flaws you mention.
| kqr wrote:
| You are right, but it goes beyond 30 seconds of cooking. To any
| reader who does not know how to properly sauce pasta, this
| might change your life: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-right-
| way-to-sauce-pasta
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I tried it, thought it was good, but not revolutionary.
|
| Do you think every other shape of pasta beyond the first was a
| "marketing gimmick rather than a genuine iteration"? Can't it
| just be another option among many?
| elzbardico wrote:
| Why do you cook pasta with the sauce?
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| That doesn't sound very extrudable. I'm not sure how amenable
| pasta is to 3d printing, but that'd probably be the only
| option. I assume that means the cost would be at least an order
| of magnitude or two higher than more manufacturable shapes.
| kmoser wrote:
| The simpler solution is to just eat your pasta with a spoon,
| which will allow you to scoop up more sauce per mouthful.
|
| But if you want to over-engineer it, you could write software
| to create the optimal pasta shape which would maximize surface
| area and ensure even thickness for consistent _al dente_
| mouthfeel. I 'm guessing the optimal shape will look fractal-
| like.
| 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).
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Agree, cavatappi is great. Works well for baked mac and cheese
| - at least the kind I like, which is not swimming in cheese
| goo.
| 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.
| basch wrote:
| Which brand did you try?
| 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.
| bagels wrote:
| Looks like the box shows 16oz., so probably 6 x 16oz.
| mycologos wrote:
| I've bought half a dozen boxes from this company -- mostly for
| the weird grains in weird shapes -- and will probably buy more.
| Yeah, it's expensive for a box of pasta, 2-3x the price of
| "normal" pasta. But that difference is 3 or 4 bucks a box, and
| each box is at least 4 meals. I am happy to pay $1 more per
| meal for a better experience (and that is a generous
| overestimate of the true additional cost). Grotesque feels like
| an overstatement.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you're complaining about the price, then you're not the
| target audience. This seems like the same type of thinking that
| brought us the Juicero, K-cups, or any other trendy food things
| that people that want to feel special can spend their dollars
| on to keep up with the Jones/Kardash/FOMO whatever
| mycologos wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the specific new pasta shape, but I like the
| brand itself, because they offer something that is hard for
| me to find elsewhere, especially in a ~normal grocery store:
| unusual grains in unusual shapes. The comparison with Juicero
| seems wrong to me because, as far as I can tell, that product
| was a very old existing product (fresh juice) in a new
| wrapper. I don't know anything about coffee so I can't
| comment on the K-cup comparison.
|
| I have tried other brands and failed to find anybody else
| that is as reliable at unusual grains in unusual shapes. The
| difference is real!
| spike021 wrote:
| You can buy a similar (not sure how similar) pasta at Trader
| Joe's. I believe it's a 12oz box like standard pasta boxes.
| gs17 wrote:
| I've only ever seen that size "standard" at Trader Joe's.
| Usually it's 16 oz or 500 g.
| havaloc wrote:
| I heard about these and thought it a wonderful story a year or so
| ago and bought a 5 pack, but no matter how long you boil them, it
| doesn't seem to be enough and they seem tough yet chewy.
|
| If you're reading, try again, but reinvent the wagon wheel (my
| personal favorite).
| mongol wrote:
| Reminds me about this hilarious article about a past Bucatini
| shortage. It was posted on HN when I read it the first time
|
| https://www.grubstreet.com/2020/12/2020-bucatini-shortage-in...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Penne is the best, it's very similar, you scoop the sauce inside
| it
| anticorporate wrote:
| We tried this when it first made the rounds just for the
| entertainment value. It was... okay?
|
| I think the funny thing about it is, the "problem" it solves
| feels completely imaginary. Like, I don't think I was ever
| striving to max out the amount of sauce per piece of pasta before
| this thing came along, and after trying it, my conclusion was,
| well, I guess it holds more sauce, but so what?
|
| It's a bit akin to those "scoop" style tortilla chips. Yeah, they
| hold more crap on them, but they're also worse tasting than the
| normal tortilla chips we buy or make at home.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Isn't this just _creste di gallo_ pasta?
| jghn wrote:
| Not quite. When I first saw this, I had the same thought. It
| was at a spot that normally carries a local brand who makes
| creste di gallo. They weren't quite the same. This new shop has
| a concave spine with two frills instead of just the one. The
| claim is that groove can hold sauce.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| My startup Nudl is using AI to iterate trillions of pasta shapes
| for optimum twirlability, semolina coefficient, and hospitaliano.
| While it is still early days, we project that with our current
| runway and model capabilities, our pasta may become sentient in
| time for the 2026 Feast of St. Anthony.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Username checks out.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| We leveraged crowdsourcing of a private kindergarten school to
| organically design pasta shapes and used the throw it against
| the wall method, which was met with smashing approval. We're
| still optimizing cook time, uniformity, and packaging. And we
| hope to remain out of the Whole Foods bargain shelves by the
| seafood counter for at least 3 years to maximize ROI. We will
| also codesign a sauce that maximizes adhesion with a
| proprietary formulation that only adheres to our pasta.
| weinzierl wrote:
| The world of pasta shapes is utterly fascinating. Besides the
| links at the bottom of the article the book _Geometry of Pasta_
| [1] is a good reference.
|
| [1] https://www.geometryofpasta.com/
| causality0 wrote:
| Frankly, cost is the only reason that cheese-filled tortellini
| isn't the right answer to literally every pasta question.
| pezezin wrote:
| Oh God, your comment made me realize that I haven't eaten
| tortellini in way too many years. When I was living in Spain,
| tortellini where by far my favorite kind of pasta. I am
| currently living in Japan, where they are either extremely
| difficult to find, or really expensive. I guess I should bring
| back a kilo or two the next time I visit my family...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Invention of a New Pasta Shape_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26521761 - March 2021 (181
| comments)
| RankingMember wrote:
| I was disappointed in this shape at least in the Trader Joe's
| incarnation, as it basically just broke apart as it cooked.
|
| If anyone's interested in a new pasta shape that holds together
| and is imho a stellar shape for holding sauce and keeping the
| texture interesting, check out shellbows if you can find them:
| https://www.delallo.com/delallo-shellbows-1-lb/
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| AI can solve this
| pama wrote:
| IMHO spaghetti and linguine optimized the shape for cooking to al
| dente perfection and if one handles them correctly they can hold
| as much sauce as the cook desires.
| solatic wrote:
| Mostly agreed. There's sometimes usage as well for cylindrical
| shapes like rigatoni when making chunkier sauces, and smaller
| shapes like penne can be made in smaller pots with smaller
| amounts of water, thus concentrating the amount of starch in
| the pasta water and improving the sauce when the pasta water is
| added to the sauce at the end, while the smaller pot is also
| easier to clean for people without dishwashers. But most of the
| issues people mark up to spaghetti and linguini have more to do
| with people's cooking skills than they do with the pasta's
| shape.
| this_steve_j wrote:
| This pasta is not for everyone. I liked the nerdy marketing and
| funky shape, and found it to compare favorably to other novelty
| pasta of which I am a fan. Slightly undercooked, it's fun to
| pretend I'm eating a sea slug or some other exotic thing.
|
| Just bought a box at Whole Foods for $5-6.
|
| After Halloween also I buy the Cheetos brand mac and cheese in
| the shape of bones (for the pasta only) on clearance at Publix
| for $1/box. Haute cuisine? Nope!
| SeanLuke wrote:
| My big problem with ruffled pasta and the like is that the
| ruffles often break off so you get strings of ruffles floating
| around in the sauce. It makes for pretty crummy pasta every time
| I've tried something in this vein. I suspect this is no
| different.
| Pamar wrote:
| Here is a similar project from the past:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26529212 (it did not work
| well)
| Will182 wrote:
| One of my favourite conversation starters is: "if you were a
| pasta, what would you be and why?"
|
| I wonder who will be the first person to say this shape!
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