It’s Going to Be a Week of Italian Recipes

How do you find the best boxed pastas compare to something home-made? I mostly make my own but I have yet to try any of the better brands. Not that it's too hard to make simple shapes - even without a pasta machine you can make pasta and sauce in less time than it would take to drive to a restaurant and wait for your order.

On another note, I saw you linked to an older post with sausage and cream sauce. I've tried ground beef and cream a few times and always found that it turned out really badly. The flavors just don't seem to match for me, although I could see others liking it. Good sausage has a very different flavor though so I'll have to give that a try.

For most dishes, I prefer the wetter, fresh flavor and texture of pasta that is homemade. My family has an noodle recipe passed down from my late great-grandmother who used the juices from the turkey to infuse this extraordinary flavor in the noodles and broth; the same recipe using store made noodles is nowhere near as good - it loses 70% of its appeal

A lot of people like the dry flavor and texture of boxed pasta; it's certainly better for certain types of sauces. I find that with physically hardier dishes - ones where the noodles are covered in a lot of tomato based sauce and that need to hold their shape with a lot of stirring and abuse, the dry boxed pasta often works better. For a penne or baked ziti, I'd opt for boxed because the better brands are physically stronger due to being made with 100% durum wheat semolina (the cheap brands fall apart and break; they're too fragile). You can make your own semolina-based pasta, but I've not yet tried so I have no basis of comparison.

Dry boxed pastas are also great for two situations:

1. You want to test your sauces, and focus your attention on them.

2. You are exhausted or don't have a lot of time to cook, and want something easy.

Right now, between what is in the pantry and the shipments I have coming in, I have at least 6-12 different recommended pasta brands I'm testing. I really was impressed with De Cecco. It was the best al dente penne I've ever had from a boxed pasta (we were exacting in our preparation - exactly 5 quarts of water, exact cooking time and the recommendations were perfect). What I'll need to do is take all of them, in the same pasta shape, and make them all at once, then hold a blind taste testing.

On the topic, I haven't had bottled pasta sauce in a long time - once you've had Hazan's sauces, you can't imagine going back - but America's Test Kitchen's #1 recommended bottled sauce is the Bertolli Tomato & Basil. I'm tempted to pick up a jar and try it. I can see how, if you had two working parents with little control over their schedule and a few kids, it would be an absolute God-send. (Still, I'd probably just make my own sauce and bottle it for later.) Though, I suppose it wouldn't be bad to have a bit of it on hand in the event of an emergency when fresh produce wasn't available due to being snowed in or the power lines going down something, which happens from time to time during the Midwestern snowstorms.

TL;DR: I agree with everything this author wrote; it mimics my own experience.

Great information - thanks! The question was prompted by a bolognese sauce I made last week. It wasn't that good, but aside from that the pasta was barely noticeable so that's somewhere that a boxed pasta would be an easy substitute. I'm sure Hazan has a better bolognese recipe too.

I usually try to make fairly soft pasta so they're easier to work with. A pasta machine would help of course, but a semolina dough could be tough to work with which makes the process much longer.

Did you see that Marcella Hazan passed away yesterday?

I did not! Thank you for letting me know. This is incredibly sad to me because she has already had a profound influence on the meals my family has shared, and as I pick up more and more of her life's work, I find it working its way into my other dishes. I just searched for the news and am reading the stories now. The one in the L.A. Times is nice.

What I love is that she was a woman with a doctorate in biology. She wasn't a cook. Yet, her passion ended up resulting in her going down in the pantheon of greatest cookbook authors and culinary influences in history.

Woohoo, Winter White Honey should be back in season soon! Please don't buy the entire batch this time, Joshua. Save a few jars for the rest of us! 🙂

Thanks for the reminder! I am hoping to get a few of the largest sized jars this year as we are still running on the last dozen or so of the smaller ones.

You're like Winnie the Pooh with a hoarding streak ಠ_ಠ

Do you know if these honeys have a shelf life (and whether there are "ideal" storage conditions)? I got the idea of a single-blind taste test from Ian's blog on control groups, but I won't be around family until early next year. I'd like to get my hands on a jar before they all vanish.

It's back in stock now! I just bought $250 worth of honey and honey-based products at SBC.

I have an arrabiata sauce that I have to make at least once a week. Anyways, I'll share the ingredients and a real quick guide to the recipe. The spice is balanced out by the sweetness of the sugar, onion and garlic. Very nice sauce!

1) Start with 1 sweet vidalia onion and a lot of garlic, saute in pan
2) Add two cans of peeled plum tomatoes and two cans of tomato paste into pot ( I break up the tomatos a little bit)
3) Mix onion and garlic saute in large pot with tomato sauce
4) Add a peeled carrot to pull acid out
5) Add two jalapenos
6) Add S&P, Add red pepper flakes, Add a cup of sugar (or whatever you feel comfortable with) I add a lot though
7) Let this simmer until the jalapenos skin can be easily pulled out (Also pull out the carrot) and blend with hand blender. Note: I take the seeds out of the jalapenos before they go in the pot.
8) Write me a thank you email lol, jk

I always use De Cecco pasta myself. With this recipe ziti is the best. I of course finish the pasta in a separate pan with the sauce and then finish with olive oil and fresh basil. I have found that shredded extra sharp cheddar adds a remarkable flavor to this sweet and spicy sauce. Add the cheese cold to the top of the pasta after its plated. Its terrible if you mix it in the sauce pan of course.

I'll have to try this! Can you define "a lot" of garlic in step one?

3/4 of a bulb. I usually slice the cloves thin and add when the onions have turned soft. Let the garlic soften and add the result into the tomato sauce.

*i saw the times article on hazan this week and was delighted to see your timely posts. Anyways, this is my contribution to Italian American recipes. Enjoy!