Pasta may be the most perfect and versatile food on the planet. You can dress it up for a formal dining event or prepare it for a casual date night. There isn’t a mood that a good plate or bowl of pasta can’t fix. Fill your bellies with the delicious taste of the best gourmet pasta that will step your pasta game up considerably.
The good people at the culinary magazine Saveur recently had an in-house pasta tasting so they could rank their favorite dried gourmet pastas. DeCecco was the overall winner.
DeCecco was founded in Italy in 1886 and it’s still going strong in Fara San Martino in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. In 2013, it was the third-largest pasta producer in the world.
This pappardelle is a durum wheat semolina pasta that is made with eggs (free-range hens). It comes in a great looking box (i.e., this would be a nice gift for someone because it looks chef-y) that says “Made in Italy” on the front.
Pappardelle is long, flat, thin noodles that work great with a cream-based sauce (although you can use it for whatever you like, Chefy).
Note — the box contains 8.8 ounces of pasta. Most pasta recipes you see are based on using a pound of pasta, so you’ll wanna double up if you’re going by the book.
Martelli pasta has got a dedicated following and it’s a brand that, reputation-wise, flutters way up high in the culinary stratosphere. It’s a family run business in Lari, Italy, and they only produce five shapes of pasta: penne, spaghettini, maccheroni, fusilli, and spaghetti.
Just like its lofty reputation, Martelli pasta resides high up there, too. This 1.1 pound package of spaghetti is almost ten bucks so, yeah, it probably won’t be your everyday go-to pasta, but it’s great for a splurge or if you’re looking for some nice Italian food gifts to dole out. (And with the very distinct yellow packaging, it just looks cool…and expensive.)
The pasta is durum wheat and the pasta is all made by hand by the Martelli family. If you want something a little smaller than spaghetti, Martelli spaghettini is the ticket, although it’s even more expensive. In fact, the spaghetti and their fusilli are both much less expensive than Martelli’s three other pasta styles.
This is a pasta from the Italian island of Sicily. And it’s another 2-pack (each package of pasta weighs 1.1 pounds).
Papa Vince makes an extremely popular extra virgin olive oil and a variety of other products. They make just two kinds of pasta: the busiate here, which is made from durum wheat, and a busiate made from tumminia wheat.
Busiate is the shape of the pasta. It’s flat 2-inch long pieces of pasta that have been spiraled and dried. This will work great for a sauce that’s got vegetables in it, but it’d also be great for any cream sauce.
This pasta is just about as popular as Papa Vince’s olive oil: the pasta has more than a 110 reviews and a fantastic 4.8 out of 5-star rating average.
This is a rare find in the world of gourmet pastas: an artisanal brand at grocery store prices. In other words, it’s a great deal. (Dal Raccolto makes other pastas and they are higher priced.)
Dal Raccolto pasta is made in the Italian village of Sant’Elia a Pianisi in the region of Molise. This is a durum wheat semolina cut in the orecchiette shape. The word means “little ears” so when you’re eating this pasta, think of that. It’s great for meat sauces because the saucer shape of the little ears holds the sauce really well.
The package is one pound and it’s got great packaging, with the brass grommets on the corners. The pastas made by Dal Raccolto are laid out by hand to dry slowly and then they’re “personally graded, weighed and sealed in the bag,” according to Dal Raccolto.
The orecchiette has more than 50 reviews and a great 4.4 out of 5-star rating average.
While there are Italian Nonis(grandmothers) and mothers around the world that will say that plant-based pasta isn’t real pasta, this pasta is so good you can hardly tell the difference. The variety pack features different styles of pasta depending on what you are planning to make. They are delicious and healthy and will have you returning for seconds and thirds. These pasta selections are packed with protein and are perfect for long hours, distance runners, and athletes.
Faella Anelli, which produces pasta in Gragnano, south of Naples, in the Campania region of Italy, got its start in 1907.
The rigati is a “ridged ring” of pasta that, um, is a ring that has ridges on it! It’s the kind of pasta that works great in soups and with lentils or beans. But you could use it with a light sauce, like an aglio e olio (garlic, olive oil and pepper flakes).
It’s made from durum wheat and the company uses spring water from the nearby Lattari mountains. The pasta, like most of the pastas on this list, is extruded using bronze dies. It’s air dried for two days before packaging.
Funny thing about the Giusto Sapore company: it’s based in south Florida. Yes, the pasta is made in Italy but the very Italian sounding company name — which is, in fact, Italian for “just taste” — is something that Justin Comparetto and his cousin Ryan Braun came up with in 2014. They’ve been importing Italian products since 2010.
There are a few key things about this pasta that qualify it for a list of gourmet pastas: it’s 100 percent durum wheat; it’s extruded through bronze dies; it gets great reviews. Out of more than than 45 customer reviews, it has a 4.6 out of 5-star rating average.
This is a 17.6 ounce package of pasta.
This pasta is called fusilli col buco, which means it’s got the classic spiral shape but, in this case, the pasta tube itself is hollow (like the bucatini). It’s also sold as fusilli bucati and several other names (Italian pastas have many name variations for the same pasta, depending on region, custom, etc.).
Penne rigate is a short tube of pasta with ridges (rigate) on the outside. The ridges are great for catching your sauce, as opposed to the regular penne, which is totally smooth.
This is another pasta from Italy and another from a long-time family owned operation. Benedetto Cavalieri started the company in 1918 and it’s been handed down to subsequent Cavalieris since then.
This is a durum wheat semolina and the dough is, according to the company, kneaded by hand before it’s extruded through bronze dies. (As we mentioned in the intro, the bronze dies give pasta a texture that is better for mouth feel and better for holding sauce.)
This is a 17.6 ounce package of penne rigate.
You cook with this pasta and your guests will think you’re an Italian gourmet from the old country. Maybe try a vodka pasta sauce, and don’t skimp on the vodka or the red pepper flakes.
If you’re looking for Italian food gifts, this would be a great one for the gourmet pasta lover in your life. It’s also a really good deal because the Papa Vince extra virgin olive oil alone is almost 40 bucks.
1 jar (8.82 ounces) Mediterranean coast harvested sea salt
Papa Vince is a family run business (started by Papa Vince) in Santa Ninfa, Sicily, Italy. It’s only been available in the U.S. since 2013.
All of Papa Vince’s products get amazing reviews on Amazon. The olive oil has more than 715 reviews and a fantastic 4.8 out of 5-star rating average.
Who Ate The Pasta?
According to Nielsen, the United States is the world’s largest consumer of pasta: 2.7 million tons in 2017. Per capita, Americans eat nearly 20 pounds of pasta a year. Sounds like a lot, right? Italians are the champions: per capita, Italians consume an average of 52 pounds of pasta each year. As a country, Italy consumed 1.4 million tons of pasta in 2017.
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Rummo has been making pasta in Italy since 1846. The brand’s got a great sense of humor, which is all over the place on their website, but importantly for us, they make a very popular line of pastas.
This linguine from Rummo is the company’s “No. 13,” which refers to the bronze die they use to make the pasta. (Most of the brands on the list use bronze dies for their pastas.) They use durum wheat and “the purest water from the Sannio valley,” according to the website.
The pasta is one package that weighs one pound. Reviews for Rummo products are all very good. The reviews for this one, while having very few, leave it with a perfect 5 out of 5-star rating average.
While this is an expensive package of pasta, there’s a great deal for Rummo “thick spaghetti” on Amazon. You can get a 5-pack of one-pound packages of the thick spaghetti for around $23, which is just a little more than $4.50 each, which is a great price for an elite Italian brand.
Linguine is a sort of “in between” pasta shape. If you need something a little bigger than spaghetti to catch the sauce, but you don’t want something as large as fettuccini. It’ll work for everything from light sauces to meat sauce.
If you want to seem like an Italian gourmet, make sure you leave the pasta in the packaging — on the counter — until whoever you’re cooking for can see it. Rustichella d’Abruzzo, from Italy, is a heavy hitter in the culinary ring among chefs and home cooks.
This is two 500 gram packages of bucatini. If you look at a bucatini noodle in profile, it looks like spaghetti. However, if you eye it square in the face (the end) you’ll see that it’s a pasta straw. It’s like a portion of thick spaghetti with a hole drilled through the middle.
Because it’s thicker than spaghetti, bucatini is a pasta that’s nice and chewy and has a lot of stage presence. You wanna serve bucatini with a robust sauce that can stand up to all the pasta-ness of the bucatini. Pasta all’ Amatriciana is a classic bucatini recipe (and it really is better with guanciale instead of pancetta).
One more word about the packaging: Rustichella d’Abruzzo just looks good sitting there. It’s in thick paper with a cellophane window so you can see the product. And — this is my favorite part — it’s not in one pound (16 ounces) amounts, it’s 17.6 ounces. I’m always looking for just a little more.
When you use good gourmet pastas, you've got something a notch better than the average supermarket brand. Here are 11 that will make your recipe even better.