How to choose the right pasta for your dish

Italian food is so delicious that many cooks want to learn to prepare it well. Of course, pasta is the mainstay of many an Italian dish, much as rice is to Asian cuisine. Deciding which pasta to use in which dish is an important step.

One of the primary things to consider in choosing a pasta is the kind of sauce the dish requires. A light pasta such as angel hair, which is a very thin spaghetti, probably does best with a lighter sauce. Many people serve it with some butter or with a bit of pesto. If you're going to serve a traditional marinara, a red tomato sauce, you'll want to consider a thicker spaghetti. When it's a seafood sauce you've got available, the pasta should traditionally be a long, thin, flat one such as linguine.

As the sauce gets heavier, the pasta can get thicker and/or more interesting in its shape. Rigatoni is a very thick short tube that is lined. The shape and the lines help it hold up to meatier red sauces. Indeed, it soaks in the flavors very well and enhances the taste of the whole dish. Squiggly kinds of pasta, such as rotelle, also do their part in catching bits of flavor in their swirls. Penne is very popular these days because it's a middle ground, a short tube of pasta that's not too wide and can be lined or unlined so it's good with heavy or light sauces.

Of course, there are other considerations. Lasagne is a layered casserole that uses the long, flat noodle of that name. If you want the sauce to be caught nicely in the layers, use the curly-edged kind. Filled pastas such as ravioli and canneloni are good when you want the pasta itself to be the focal point. And nowadays when everyone is concerned with healthy food, you can choose whole wheat pasta for nutrients and fiber. That's not traditional in Italy, where semolina reigns, but it blends remarkably well in many Italian dishes.

There are many kinds of pastas available, and following these guidelines can help you to choose the right one for your Italian dish.