What's the proper way to cook pasta? What does spaghetti mean? Which pasta cut goes with which sauce? What’s the difference between fresh and dried pasta? Are all dried pastas the same? If you already know the answers to these questions, congratulations (we're impressed). If you don't, you've come to the right place. Not only will you be a pasta expert after you've read this, but we think you'll appreciate Italy's most famous culinary contribution a whole lot more.

If you're looking for a particular pasta cut, click on the cut below. Otherwise, read on. But beware, we're pretty sure you'll be craving a bowl of pasta by the time you get to the end of the page.

What's the proper way to cook pasta?
Slinging a string of spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks is probably not the most effective way to check for doneness. Neither is relying on your kitchen timer. The best way to see if your pasta is ready to eat is to spear a piece of it while it's still boiling and taste it. There should be a slight crunchiness on your tooth, called al dente, when the pasta is ready.

Here's the method our chef Gianluca Guglielmi suggests for pasta perfection: Bring 5 to 6 quarts water of water to a rolling boil. Add several teaspoons of salt along with a pound of your favorite pasta. Stir to ensure that all pasta is in the water and that the pieces are separated. Cook 7 to 8 minutes for long cuts like spaghetti, 8 to 10 minutes for short cuts like penne. A minute or two before the pasta is scheduled to be ready, remove a piece from the water for tasting. Keep tasting until the pasta is al dente. When it's ready, drain the pasta in a colander and serve immediately with your favorite sauce.

What do all those pasta names mean?
There are a staggering number of pasta cuts in Italy -- hundreds of them, with names as perplexing as strozzapreti ("priest stranglers") and as diminutive as orecchiette ("little ears"). Most of them are named for the shapes they resemble. Some seem to have significance only to the regions that named them. A few of them were created specifically for a particular type of sauce. Whatever their origins, they all have one thing in common: They’re fun to eat.

Amore
Corkscrew-like twists with a hole in the middle.

Bucatini
Hollow, spaghetti-like strands.

Cavatelli
A short, folded pasta typical of Puglia.

Cavaturi
A narrow, folded cut typical of Puglia.

Chitarra
As in spaghetti alla chitarra. A chitarra is a special guitar-like tool used to make pasta. With a rolling pin, fresh dough is pushed through the chitarra's wooden frame and stretched steel wires to produce a squarish cut.

Conchiglie
Small, ridged "seashells."

Conchigliette
"Tiny seashells."

Farfalle
Literally "butterfly." Also known as bowtie pasta.

Fusilli
"Spirals" or corkscrew-shaped twists.

Fusilli Bucati
Thick corkscrew-like twists with a hole in the middle.

Gnocchi Romani
Small, ridged seashells.

Lingue di Pasero
Lingue means "tongue." This flat, wide pasta is similar to fettucine.

Maccheroni
Ridged, slightly rounded tubes.

Maccheroncini
Similar to maccheroni, but narrower and cut into short pieces.

Orecchiette
Literally "little ears."

Pappardelle
A wide egg noodle. One of the few traditional pasta shapes from Tuscany.

Penne
Tubular pasta cut at an angle to look like quill pens.

Penne Rigate
Penne with rigate, "ridges."

Pennette
A smaller version of penne.

Pipe
Small U-shaped pipes.

Rigatoni
Large, ridged tubes with square-cut ends.

Sedani
Ridged, slightly bent tubes.

Spaghetti
Literally "a length of cord."

Strozzapreti
Small squares of pasta folded like an S, literally meaning "priest stranglers."

Tagliarini
A flat, wide pasta similar to fettucine.

Tagliatelle
Classic thin egg noodle from Emilia-Romagna.

Tofe
Medium sized seashells.

Trenette
Long, flat pasta sometimes called linguine.

Tubetti Rigati
Tiny, ridged tubes.

Vermicelli
Like spaghetti, but slightly thicker.

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Which pasta cuts go best with which sauces?
There are no hard and fast rules about which cuts match which sauces. If you’re partial to a particular cut, you should toss it with whatever sauce you like. There are, however, some cuts that show off a sauce better than others.

Vegetable Sauces
If you have a chunky vegetable sauce, look for pasta cuts with lots of nooks and crannies or deep crevices to catch and hold the vegetables. Suggestions: fusilli, orecchiette, conchiglie.

Cheese Sauces
Cheese sauces adhere best to small pastas cuts with lots of surface area. Suggestions: fusilli, farfalle, maccheroni, penne, shells.

Butter Sauces
Noodles just beg for butter. A little bit of sauce goes a long way to coat them evenly. Suggestions: linguine, fettucine.

Oil-Based Sauces
Pesto, and other oil-based sauces, are just right for keeping long, thin cuts from clumping together. They also coat noodles more evenly than they would smaller pasta with lots of crevices. Suggestions: bucatini, spaghetti, trenette.

Meat sauce
Two completely different pasta cuts are commonly used with meat ragu. In Northern Italy, wide, fresh egg noodles are traditionally paired with meat sauce, while in Southern Italy small cuts of dried pasta are used. Neither will steer you wrong. Suggestions: maccheroni, fusilli, pappardelle, tagliatelle.

Soups
Nearly any small cut will pair deliciously with soup. The size you choose all depends on how many pieces of pasta you prefer in each spoonful. Suggestions: tubetti, maccheroncini.

What’s the difference between fresh pasta and dried pasta?
Many people assume dried pasta is just fresh pasta that’s been set out to dry. Although it certainly seems reasonable to think so, it’s not the case. Fresh pasta, which is traditionally made in Northern and Central Italy, is almost always made with eggs. Eggs are highly perishable, so fresh pasta must be eaten within a few days of its preparation.

Dried pasta, a Southern Italian trademark, almost never contains eggs. Because it’s usually just semolina flour, water and salt, dried pasta can last almost indefinitely without refrigeration. (To read more about the regions of Italy, click here.)

Fresh pasta can be made with a wide variety of flours, including semolina flour (a derivative of durum wheat), chestnut flour and wheat flour. But it’s most often made with the more delicate bread flour, which is easier to roll and shape by hand. Dried pasta, on the other hand, depends on semolina flour almost exclusively. When mixed with water, coarse semolina flour forms a tough dough that’s more often forced through perforated dies than shaped by hand. (For more about dried pasta, see below.)

Another key difference between fresh and dried pasta? Fresh pasta takes only a few minutes to cook whereas dried pastas can take up to half an hour.

Are all dried pastas the same?
Of course not. (We wouldn’t have posed the question if they were.)

Think of pasta as if it were wine. All wineries use the same general process to produce wine, right? But each wine tastes different. Why? The quality of the grape differs from winery to winery; the aging process is different; the production process varies, depending on the volume of wine being produced.

Pasta is the same way. The quality of any pasta is hugely dependent on the quality of the grain used to make it, the time it takes to dry the pasta, and the method used to produce it. There are two basic types of pasta production:

Artisanal Pasta
Pasta artigiani is made with great care, skill and patience. There’s usually a highly experienced pasta maker (or family of pasta makers) who oversees all aspects of the production process. That pasta maker either grows his own wheat or selects the best wheat available from an outside source. After the hard durum wheat flour has been milled and the dough kneaded, it’s pushed through a bronze dye to produce a wide variety of pasta shapes. And here’s where the difference among pasta makers really becomes apparent: Bronze dyes (as opposed to teflon dyes) are rough, so they create a rough-surfaced pasta. This imperfect texture is what makes artisan pasta so adept at absorbing the flavors of your favorite sauce. After the pasta has been cut, it’s set out to dry for as few as several hours or as long as several days. The longer and more naturally a pasta has been dried, the more nutrients it retains, resulting in a richer, more flavorful dish of pasta. Pasta that has been dried naturally also holds its shape better. All of A.G. Ferrari’s pastas are artisanally produced.

Industrial Pasta
As pasta gained popularity in Italy, and internationally, producers began to develop faster, cheaper and more efficient ways to produce it. Out went the slow, heavy bronze dyes and in came slick teflon dyes, which sped up the process considerably. The tradeoff is a pasta surface so smooth that it almost repels sauce. The other key difference between artisanal and industrial pasta is the drying method. Whereas artisanal producers usually let their pasta dry in its own good time, industrial producers use heating methods that dry pasta in as few as 20 minutes. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated drying techniques, some industrial producers mimic the effects of air drying surprisingly well. Others actually "precook" the pasta, turning it to mush before it even wends its way into your pot of boiling water. That same pasta also tends to fall apart on your plate. This is not to say that industrially produced pastas are bad. They’re just a different taste experience. We invite you to try both types and decide for yourself.

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