Boccoli
Short, thick twisted shape.
Name. Italian for ringlets, the curls of hair the helical twist resembles.
What it is
Boccoli are short, thick twists of dried semolina pasta. Each piece is a stubby helix, like a corkscrew or a curl of hair. The surface is smooth and golden. Brundu, a pasta maker in Torralba, Sardinia, extrudes them through bronze dies and dries them slowly. Brundu makes them from durum wheat semolina and water, and lists a cook time of 4 to 6 minutes.
The English Wikipedia list of pasta gives Sardinia as the origin. Brundu, itself Sardinian, says the shape is common across central and southern Italy, so the region is uncertain. The twist traps sauce in its grooves. Brundu says they take any kind of sauce, so a tomato sauce, a ragù, or a pesto all work.
How to cook boccoli
5 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
5:00
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 boccoli. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 4 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: Pomodoro · Meat ragu · Pesto alla genovese · Sausage ragu · Arrabbiata
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | Cook |
|---|---|---|
| Brundu | Boccoli n.53 (page states 4 to 6 min) | 5 min |
Nutrition
Per 100 g of dry semolina 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 | 371 kcal | 13.0 g | 74.7 g | 3.2 g | 1.5 g | 6 mg | 3.3 mg |
| Cooked | 158 kcal | 5.8 g | 30.9 g | 1.8 g | 0.9 g | 1 mg | 1.3 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 235 g cooked, 371 kcal and 13 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.3 times its weight in the pot.
No boccoli? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Other names
corkscrews.
Sources
- Boccoli n.53 (page states 4 to 6 min), Brundu (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Brundu: Boccoli n.53 (profile: origin, form, use)
- Brundu: Boccoli (profile: origin, form, use)
- Wikipedia (en): List of pasta (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: Brundu Boccoli n.53 (page states 4 to 6 min): 5 min.
- Photograph: Boccoli.jpg, Popo le Chien, CC0.
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition per 100 g, by dough: FDC 169736, Pasta, dry, enriched; FDC 169737, Pasta, cooked, enriched, without added salt), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Boccoli (pasta), Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.