Anchellini
Small beads.
What it is
Anchellini are tiny beads of dried pasta. They sit one step above acini di pepe in size, about as big as a pea. Each piece is a small solid pellet with a firm, chewy bite. Factories extrude them; nobody shapes them by hand. The English Wikipedia list of pasta records them only as small beads.
No source names a region of origin for anchellini. They belong to the pastina group, so they go into broth and thin soups. They also work in soups with chopped vegetables, where the beads spread through the liquid. They are not a shape for a thick sauce.
How to cook anchellini
9 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
9:00
Start when the water returns to the boil.
Water and salt
- Pasta, dry
- 400 g
- Water
- 4 L
- Salt
- 40 g
100 g per person as a main. A litre and 10 g of salt per 100 g. Adjust with the portion calculator.
The steps
- Bring 4 L of water to a full boil in a tall pot. Add 40 g of salt when it boils.
- Add the anchellini. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Or cook it in the broth it will be served in, and do not drain it.
- Bite a piece at 8 minutes. A hairline of white at the centre is al dente.
- Scoop out a cup of the cooking water. Drain, or lift the pasta straight into the pan.
- Toss with the sauce over the heat for a minute. Add cooking water a splash at a time until it clings.
Read more: what al dente means and why the pasta water matters. Times for every shape are on the cook page.
What it is served with
Pairs with: In brodo · Minestrone
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | No. | Cook |
|---|---|---|---|
| La Molisana | Peperini | 64 | 9 min |
No anchellini? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Other names
peperini, piombi.
Sources
- Peperini, La Molisana (cook time, catalogue number, from the brand's own product page)
- Wikipedia (en): List of pasta (profile: origin, form, use)
- Italian Food Decoder: anchellini (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: La Molisana Peperini: 9 min.
- Anchellini, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.