Bigoli
BEE-goh-lee
Thick rough round strand, pressed through a bigolaro.
3 mm across
Name. From the Venetian bigolo, a worm or a fat strand.
What it is
Bigoli is the thick strand of the Veneto, traditionally pressed through a hand-cranked bronze press called a bigolaro, which leaves the surface rough. The dough can be plain or whole wheat and often takes eggs, sometimes duck eggs.
The classic dish is bigoli in salsa, an onion and anchovy sauce eaten on fasting days in Venice. Bigoli with duck ragu is the feast version.
How to cook bigoli
8 to 12 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
8:00
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 bigoli. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Fresh pasta has no dry core. It is done when it is tender, not when it resists.
- 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.
How it holds sauce
Rough, thick, and heavy, bigoli takes sauces that a smooth spaghetti cannot: onion and anchovy, duck or rabbit ragu, sardines. The rough face holds the sauce and the mass stands up to it.
Pairs with: Meat ragu · Aglio e olio · Sausage ragu
Classic plates: Bigoli in salsa, Bigoli con l'anatra, Bigoli con le sarde.
Nutrition
Per 100 g of fresh pasta. The shape does not change these numbers. The dough does, so a whole wheat or egg version of this shape reads differently. See every dough.
| Per 100 g | Energy | Protein | Carbohydrate | Fibre | Fat | Sodium | Iron |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dry | 288 kcal | 11.3 g | 54.7 g | g | 2.3 g | 26 mg | 3.4 mg |
| Cooked | 131 kcal | 5.2 g | 24.9 g | g | 1.1 g | 6 mg | 1.1 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 220 g cooked, 288 kcal and 11 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.2 times its weight in the pot.
No bigoli? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Other names
Fusarioi, bigoi, bigoli mori.
Read more
Sources
- Cook time: fresh or dried, by maker.
- Photograph: Bigoli2.jpg, Popo le Chien, CC0.
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition per 100 g, by dough: FDC 169727, Pasta, fresh-refrigerated, plain, as purchased; FDC 169728, Pasta, fresh-refrigerated, plain, cooked), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Bigoli, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q609505, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.