Spaghettini vs Spaghettoni

Get your damn pasta knowledge right! Spaghetti is not just Spaghetti.

I know what you are thinking, “Why is it necessary to make this post? This is common knowledge”. I feel the same way. However, earlier this fall I had a conversation with some friends of mine when we were preparing to make a delicious pasta Carbonara dish. I said we need to buy some spaghettini, and they said “What is spaghettini? Don’t you mean spaghettoni?”. And just at that moment I realized… I have never heard of spaghettoni.

We are not Italians guys, only 0.78% of the world’s population is born with pasta in their blood. So to help all the non-Italians in this society I will clarify some things.

Pasta

Pasta is an umbrella term for types of food typically made from unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs which is then cooked. There are insanely many different variants of pasta, but the one we are interested in today is the type we call Spaghetti.

Spaghetti

Spaghetti is a longer cylindric formed pasta. There are three main types of spaghetti depending on the thickness; Capellini, spaghettini and spaghettoni.

Cappellini means little hairs in Italian and is a thin type of spaghetti. Also Capelli d’angelo means angel hair and is an even thinner version. This type has been popular in Italy since the 14th century.

Spaghettini is a slightly ticker type compared to Cappellini and is also the most used type of spaghetti.

Lastly, spaghettoni is the thickest version of spaghetti.

When we talk about spaghetti we rarely specify what type, this is also partly due to the companies selling spaghetti. They define it as spaghetti with no specifications.

Conclusion

Spaghettini is not the same as spaghettoni. Spaghettoni is thicker!

I now hope you can finally get some inner peace and enjoy life again.

Thanks for reading. Love you all.