…and what’s your favorite way/recipe when preparing that pasta shape?
Probably casarecce. It’s just a quirky shape and takes most sauces, so fine for the very inauthentic, untraditional meat sauce that gets made in this house.
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Personal fetish - Bucatini, even Spaghetti #7 is not enough. Like thick pasta !
I don’t like farfalle, most of the time the middle is not cooked.
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Cavatelli is my current favorite; dry, fresh or frozen. Cold salads, pesto-avocado sauce, any red sauce, sauté with veg.
Angel hair pasta I find too thin to enjoy.
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Generally, thin spaghetti for the mouth feel & the way it holds the sauce. Exceptions: mussels marinara & other seafood - linguine; cajun chicken - penne.
Just an anecdote- we sell 1# bags of pasta to go with our sauce. We carry two pastas - thin spaghetti & penne. Penne outsells spaghetti every time. I never would have thought that.
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Really depends on the sauce/application, but I generally adore cavatappi, campanelle, pappardelle and any shell shape. Like @naf, I don’t care for farfalle, but I am also not a huge fan of bucatini. The hole is too small for sauce to get in so it always seems bland to me.
ETA: I also love this type of garganelli (aka gramigne):
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I rarely eat spaghetti and never in restaurants. It is a guarantee that the sauce will go down my shirt. Doesnt happen with shorter pasta.
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I don’t think the aim of the hole is for the sauce, but to help to cook faster. Actually bucatini cooks faster than spaghetti #7 for example. 
I like campanelle too.
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Pipette for any dish involving peas, because the pea will nestle itself into the cupped end of the pipette. Cavatappe because a couple of ounces looks like a huge portion once it’s cooked. The straight macaroni that are as long as spaghetti, for mac&cheese.
I HATE orecchiete because whenever I cook them, they clump together.
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farfalle is a bad design
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Agreed. Shells serve the same purpose but hold sauce better and don’t clump!
I’d say rigatoni is probably my favorite overall. I eat a lot of tomato sauced pasta. I usually over-sauce it, and rigatoni holds sauce pretty well. Penne rigate is another favorite.
Of the strand-type pastas, probably linguini but i’m not too picky about those. Also like capellini.
I agree with the others who don’t like farfalle. I hadn’t bought it in years but picked some up a few weeks ago because just about everything else in the store was cleaned out because of COVID-19. I still don’t care for it.
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Definitely depends on sauce but I really like orechiette (sp?). It’s like a little spoon for sauce! I especially adore this for pesto and other aromatic, but not too chunky sauces. I like the ‘forkability’ of this pasta too. I can ready grab with a fork without it sliding all over the place. I also dread the drips and fussiness of long pastas, as delicious as they may be. Good orechiette has just enough of the chew and toothsomeness of a good al dente paste, but not too thick and chewy.
For long pastas, I also like bucatini. I never knew this existed until about 3 years ago, and I’ve never gone back to regular spaghetti since.
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Bowtie pasta now comes in a mini form for soup. I use it. My Aunt makes a cold pasta salad using the standard size and its delicious. But of all the pasta shapes , they do appear to be the loner.
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We are grand fans of home made tortelli or tortellini or ravioli …
However, since we eat so little meat or poultry or wild feathered game, we eat alot of pasta as you are aware.
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I guess you prefer candele, it has a much bigger hole. Reading a pasta book now, I didn’t know this one.
Orechietti translates to "ear lobes " …
Thin spaghetti for Pasta Bolognese (which I make with TVP). Rotini for Marinara Sauce. Bow ties for Alfredo Sauce. Elbow macaroni for Pasta e Fagioli. Couscous for … couscous. (Sorry, I can’t remember all the Italian names.)
Penne in a restaurant, because otherwise I make a mess.
And what’s the story with the numbers? Does every company have a different numbering scheme or what?
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I had never heard of candele either. Looking at them, I am sure I would enjoy them - they look like a nice size for thinner sauces to get into that hole.
