5 ms·

The funny thing is that in my italian eyes, De Cecco is in the "meh" quality of pasta... btw: the "fortified pasta" is something I cannot stand. You american s

by _ZeD_ 6y ago

The funny thing is that in my italian eyes, De Cecco is in the "meh" quality of pasta... btw: the "fortified pasta" is something I cannot stand. You american should lobby to make "normal pasta" the only one available.

cortesoft 6y ago
Does the pasta really taste different because of the iron fortification?
- samuli 6y ago
  It does, but depending on the sauce (or no sauce) you might not taste the difference.
bezout 6y ago
Barilla for the win
- eafkuor 6y ago
  Barilla is like Nutella. It's just the most popular, not the best
  - watt 6y ago
    You are the second person not sharing which brand they think actually is good. I read only negativity, nothing positive here. I happen to like De Cecco, and it's the one they sell at the local italian specialties store (Berlin).
    - eafkuor 6y ago
      I mentioned Rummo in my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074834 Rummo is great, their penne are almost impossible to overcook. Agnesi is also a good brand. I'm sure you can find both in Germany - I'm able to easily find both in Poland.
      - simtel20 6y ago
        Agnesi seems ok and is available here in out-of-the-way Brazil. De Cecco seems fine but is typically more expensive for reasons unknown to me. Barilla is also sometimes present here. Most brazilian brands don't or won't use hard wheat, though the local preference is for mushy pasta, so I don't know if this is cause or effect
- sneak 6y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-07/barilla-pasta-s-turnaround-from-homophobia-to-national-pride https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-07/barilla-p... > Guido Barilla: “I would never do a commercial with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect, but because we don’t agree with them. If gay customers didn’t like that, they could go buy another brand of pasta."
eafkuor 6y ago
Exactly! Rummo is where we start talking.
CaptainZapp 6y ago
What mainstream brands (besides Rummo, which is good and thankfully widely available in Switzerland) would you recommend?
- squarefoot 6y ago
  Garofalo is a pretty good one. https://www.pasta-garofalo.com/us/ https://www.pasta-garofalo.com/us/
  - CaptainZapp 6y ago
    Thank you. I'll give it a shot.
- gitanovic 6y ago
  Voiello make pretty decent linguine or spaghetti. Never tried any other shape from them. La Molisana is also OK among the commercial ones. But if you have the chance to find it, you should try some pasta from Gragnano, they normally have pretty small businesses, so it is not so easy to find abroad.
  - CaptainZapp 6y ago
    As I understand you Gragnano is the (IGP) area from where the pasta is, marked under different brands? If so, I'm in luck. It can be absolutely mail ordered and I'll definitely give it a shot. Thanks a lot. Your tips are much appreciated and will probably lead me to eating better pasta. :)
gitanovic 6y ago
I am italian living abroad... and De Cecco is the only pasta that you can consistently find that does not cook to a mish mash Can you find better? Yes of course, also from the same small village in Abruzzo Fara San Martino (see Cocco), or most of the produce from Gragnano, or Rummo (from Benevento). But among the really commercial ones, not many are better than De Cecco, and even if they are, they are very difficult to find Btw I am biased: my grandmother was from Fara San Martino
- rym_ 6y ago
  I exclusively cook with cocco, to me it's miles beyond the competition but also a lot more expensive than rummo or de cecco. Haven't don't any direct comparisons between rummo and cocco, would you say the quality is similar?
  - gitanovic 6y ago
    In my opinion Rummo is more commercial than Cocco, and despite being a very valid product, doesn't have the same quality. Basically Cocco bought the old bronze machinery from De Cecco, when it still was a relatively small family business and not the huge company that it is today, and keeps using them... with an overhead that justifies the premium (if you like good pasta). Anyhow, as I said, I mostly cook with De Cecco because it's easy to find in the supermarket, sometimes I go to an Italian shop that's close to where I live, and buy some artisanal pasta, and on rare occasions on holidays, I make home-made pasta (tagliatelle or pasta alla chitarra, and ragù as a sauce... it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy)
    - CaptainZapp 6y ago
      > it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy I agree that it's not that difficult to make, but I would argue that it's not necessarily much better in every case. As my chief witness I enter Marcella Hazan. The late doyenne of Italian Cuisine. In "The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating" she has more to say on the subject, but in short and from [1]: "Although some types of pasta, like tagliatelle, are best made fresh at home, others, like spaghetti, should be bought dried. Pasta should be matched carefully to sauce." I think that's the key. It really depends on the type of pasta and the sauce used. That said: There's no doubt that ragu with freshly made tagliatelle is something devine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Hazan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Hazan
pachico 6y ago
I grew up in Italy but I live now in Spain. If there's something I understood from living in Italy is that food in Italy is not only food, but also a container of bias and emotional investments. Regarding food, people really take sides and hardly consider alternatives. On the other side, probably this is the reason why it's quite hard to find mediocre food in Italy.
- guytv 6y ago
  > On the other side, probably this is the reason why it's quite hard to find mediocre food in Italy. If you only had a chance to fall into the tourist traps around Piazza Navona I stumbled into....
  - pachico 6y ago
    Yes, you are right about this and tourist traps are a global phenomenon. In Barcelona, for instance, in places where tourists don't go, restaurants might be really bad, which never happened to me in Italy. There's also a culture for keeping food as a family/friends value, which I don't see everywhere else.

by _ZeD_ 6y ago

cortesoft 6y ago

Does the pasta really taste different because of the iron fortification?

samuli 6y ago
It does, but depending on the sauce (or no sauce) you might not taste the difference.

bezout 6y ago

Barilla for the win

eafkuor 6y ago
Barilla is like Nutella. It's just the most popular, not the best
- watt 6y ago
  You are the second person not sharing which brand they think actually is good. I read only negativity, nothing positive here. I happen to like De Cecco, and it's the one they sell at the local italian specialties store (Berlin).
  - eafkuor 6y ago
    I mentioned Rummo in my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26074834 Rummo is great, their penne are almost impossible to overcook. Agnesi is also a good brand. I'm sure you can find both in Germany - I'm able to easily find both in Poland.
    - simtel20 6y ago
      Agnesi seems ok and is available here in out-of-the-way Brazil. De Cecco seems fine but is typically more expensive for reasons unknown to me. Barilla is also sometimes present here. Most brazilian brands don't or won't use hard wheat, though the local preference is for mushy pasta, so I don't know if this is cause or effect
sneak 6y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-07/barilla-pasta-s-turnaround-from-homophobia-to-national-pride https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-07/barilla-p... > Guido Barilla: “I would never do a commercial with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect, but because we don’t agree with them. If gay customers didn’t like that, they could go buy another brand of pasta."

eafkuor 6y ago

Exactly! Rummo is where we start talking.

CaptainZapp 6y ago

What mainstream brands (besides Rummo, which is good and thankfully widely available in Switzerland) would you recommend?

squarefoot 6y ago
Garofalo is a pretty good one. https://www.pasta-garofalo.com/us/ https://www.pasta-garofalo.com/us/
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  Thank you. I'll give it a shot.
gitanovic 6y ago
Voiello make pretty decent linguine or spaghetti. Never tried any other shape from them. La Molisana is also OK among the commercial ones. But if you have the chance to find it, you should try some pasta from Gragnano, they normally have pretty small businesses, so it is not so easy to find abroad.
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  As I understand you Gragnano is the (IGP) area from where the pasta is, marked under different brands? If so, I'm in luck. It can be absolutely mail ordered and I'll definitely give it a shot. Thanks a lot. Your tips are much appreciated and will probably lead me to eating better pasta. :)

gitanovic 6y ago

I am italian living abroad... and De Cecco is the only pasta that you can consistently find that does not cook to a mish mash Can you find better? Yes of course, also from the same small village in Abruzzo Fara San Martino (see Cocco), or most of the produce from Gragnano, or Rummo (from Benevento). But among the really commercial ones, not many are better than De Cecco, and even if they are, they are very difficult to find Btw I am biased: my grandmother was from Fara San Martino

rym_ 6y ago
I exclusively cook with cocco, to me it's miles beyond the competition but also a lot more expensive than rummo or de cecco. Haven't don't any direct comparisons between rummo and cocco, would you say the quality is similar?
- gitanovic 6y ago
  In my opinion Rummo is more commercial than Cocco, and despite being a very valid product, doesn't have the same quality. Basically Cocco bought the old bronze machinery from De Cecco, when it still was a relatively small family business and not the huge company that it is today, and keeps using them... with an overhead that justifies the premium (if you like good pasta). Anyhow, as I said, I mostly cook with De Cecco because it's easy to find in the supermarket, sometimes I go to an Italian shop that's close to where I live, and buy some artisanal pasta, and on rare occasions on holidays, I make home-made pasta (tagliatelle or pasta alla chitarra, and ragù as a sauce... it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy)
  - CaptainZapp 6y ago
    > it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy I agree that it's not that difficult to make, but I would argue that it's not necessarily much better in every case. As my chief witness I enter Marcella Hazan. The late doyenne of Italian Cuisine. In "The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating" she has more to say on the subject, but in short and from [1]: "Although some types of pasta, like tagliatelle, are best made fresh at home, others, like spaghetti, should be bought dried. Pasta should be matched carefully to sauce." I think that's the key. It really depends on the type of pasta and the sauce used. That said: There's no doubt that ragu with freshly made tagliatelle is something devine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Hazan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Hazan

pachico 6y ago

I grew up in Italy but I live now in Spain. If there's something I understood from living in Italy is that food in Italy is not only food, but also a container of bias and emotional investments. Regarding food, people really take sides and hardly consider alternatives. On the other side, probably this is the reason why it's quite hard to find mediocre food in Italy.

guytv 6y ago
> On the other side, probably this is the reason why it's quite hard to find mediocre food in Italy. If you only had a chance to fall into the tourist traps around Piazza Navona I stumbled into....
- pachico 6y ago
  Yes, you are right about this and tourist traps are a global phenomenon. In Barcelona, for instance, in places where tourists don't go, restaurants might be really bad, which never happened to me in Italy. There's also a culture for keeping food as a family/friends value, which I don't see everywhere else.