Campania · meat · chunky
Best pasta for ragu napoletano
Whole cuts of meat braised for hours in tomato. The sauce dresses the pasta; the meat is the second course. Ziti and paccheri.
- Region
- Campania
- Base
- Meat
- Texture
- Chunky
- Shapes that hold it
- 10
- Classic plates
- 2
What it asks of a shape
Ragu napoletano is a chunky meat-based sauce. It wants a tube, so the sauce rides inside as well as outside, and a wide shape with mass, to stand up to a heavy sauce. The ranking below scores every profiled shape on those traits, then the shape's own sauce notes break the ties.
What it is
- Place of origin
- Naples, Campania
- Also called
- Ragù alla napoletana or
- Type
- Ragù
Neapolitan ragù is a ragù associated with the city of Naples, Italy, made by braising meat over several hours in tomato purée and sauce. When the meat is ready, it is set aside and the sauce is left to continue cooking and thickening. In the Italian meal structure, Neapolitan ragù is served in two stages: first as sauce served over pasta, and then as meat eaten alone or with vegetables, lightly dressed with the remaining sauce.
10 shapes that hold it
Candele
Tubes · Campania
Broken into uneven lengths, the wide smooth tube fills with a slow sauce and holds it: the Neapolitan Genovese, a ragu napoletano, a baked dish.
Fusilli lunghi
Long strands · Campania
The spiral traps sauce in its coils and the bore takes some inside, so it carries more than a plain strand.
Paccheri
Tubes · Campania
The huge bore traps whole pieces of squid, sausage, or braised meat and the flattened tube carries sauce on both faces.
Perciatelli
Long strands · Campania
As bucatini: a sauce with body that can fill the bore.
Vesuvio
Short shapes · Campania
A dense spiral with pockets between the turns, so it carries a Neapolitan ragu, a sausage sauce, or a thick tomato with ricotta.
Ziti
Tubes · Campania
A smooth tube holds sauce inside the bore rather than on the surface, so it wants a sauce with enough body to fill it: a slow ragu, the Neapolitan onion Genovese, a baked tomato and cheese.
Calamarata
Tubes · Campania
A wide ring with a big bore, so it takes a seafood sauce with pieces: squid, prawns, clams in a light tomato.
Mafaldine
Ribbons · Campania
The frilled edges trap a sauce that a flat ribbon would shed, so it handles ragu, sausage, and cream with pieces in them.
Lasagne
Sheets · Emilia-Romagna
A sheet is a layer.
Maccheroni al ferretto
Hand-formed · Calabria
Rough, chewy, and hollow, so they carry the heaviest southern sauces: pork ragu, goat ragu, 'nduja, a slow tomato with pecorino.
Classic plates with ragu napoletano
Every dish in the shape profiles that names this sauce, with the shape it is made on.
Sources
- The ranking and the sauce notes are our editorial judgement, from the traits in each shape record. See the method.
- Neapolitan ragù, Wikipedia (summary, ingredients, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata Q2306472.