I love bucatini. It’s so much fun to pronounce. Try it: “bucatini.” (An exaggerated Italian accent helps.) See, it’s fun! But it’s even more fun to eat.
Bucatini, also known as perciatelli, is a long, thick pasta similar to spaghetti, but with a hole in the middle. Italian dried pasta makers began making this shape around the 16th century, and it became especially popular in Rome, where it is typically served with amatriciana sauce, featuring tomatoes and guanciale.
I first came across bucatini 10 years ago, when I stumbled across it in a grocery store and posted a recipe for it on my blog. I loved it from the moment I took a bite. “I tried it in this recipe and it’s hearty and chewy, and it definitely made me a fan,” my younger self wrote.
And I’m not the only member of this noodle’s fervent fan club. To find out why, I took to social media to ask people how they felt about this noodle.
Get the recipe: Bucatini with Zucchini and Sausage
Events pro and magazine founder Amber Mayfield Hewett said the pasta “feels a little more upscale than it really is,” calling it “spaghetti’s sophisticated cousin.” Others say it has a certain luxury feel to it, which chef Matt Adler said may be why it’s the best-selling pasta at both Caruso’s Grocery locations. Fashion designer Bach Mai compared the pasta to its more common cousins, saying it’s “like spaghetti, but with a little secret inside, it’s mysterious and sexy,” which makes it even more appealing.
In fact, you may remember the great bucatini shortage of 2020.”[It] “A confluence of factors included the pandemic’s demand for pasta, how difficult it is to make bucatini with holes in it, and De Cecco’s bizarre and premature ban from the US border,” Rachel Handler wrote for Grub Street. (The last factor was a FDA injunction, which found that the company’s pasta was low in iron and did not meet the agency’s standards for fortified macaroni products to be labeled in the US.) Thankfully, those hardships are long gone.
Aside from the bucatini mysticism, food blogger Marta Rivera Diaz loves the noodles’ volume: “They’re also hearty, so you can use them to bulk up recipes, like leftovers!” she writes.
But bucatini is not without its flaws.
“I love bucatini in theory,” says wine writer and entrepreneur Tyler Balliett, “but when you actually eat it, you end up with pasta sauce splattered all over your face and clothes. Only make it for people you love, because they’re going to see you at your worst.”
Television host Alejandra Ramos described it quite colorfully: “It’s like a bowl of out-of-control mini garden hose splattering garlic-scented oil and pecorino cheese everywhere.”
Sure, bucatini can be tricky to eat; the noodles resist every bite, making it hard to grip with a fork, but bucatini’s unmatched texture makes it worth the effort.
Enjoying a bowl of bucatini is an exercise in giving up control, which may be difficult for those with Type A personalities, but take it as a lesson that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control and that’s okay, even fun.
Give it a try and make this Zucchini and Sausage Bucatini for dinner tonight. (We call it Zucchini Bucatini at the office because who doesn’t love rhymes?) This dish features zucchini, one of summer’s most popular vegetables, hot Italian sausage for a spicy kick, and creamy ricotta cheese. In about 25 minutes you’ll have a delicious, messy pasta dish ready.
Get the recipe: Bucatini with Zucchini and Sausage
