Bucatini
boo-kah-TEE-nee
Thick round strand with a fine bore through the centre.
Name. From buco, hole. Pierced strands. Perciatelli, from perciare, to pierce, is the Neapolitan name for the same thing.
What it is
Bucatini is a thick spaghetti with a hole through it, about three millimetres across with a bore under a millimetre wide. The bore lets the strand cook through despite its thickness, and it draws sauce inside, which is why the shape is so much more slippery to eat than spaghetti.
Rome owns it. Bucatini all'amatriciana is the dish, and the shape's chew and the way it flicks sauce off the fork are part of the experience. Naples calls the same shape perciatelli.
How to cook bucatini
9 to 12 minutes in boiling salted water. Al dente at 9 minutes, fully cooked at 12.
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 bucatini. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- 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.
How it holds sauce
The bore takes in sauce, so bucatini wants a sauce with more body than a strand normally takes: amatriciana, a gricia, a tomato with guanciale, a loose ragu. Thin oil sauces run straight through it.
Pairs with: Amatriciana · Gricia · Cacio e pepe · Pomodoro · Carbonara
Classic plates: Bucatini all'amatriciana, Bucatini alla gricia, Bucatini con le sarde.
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
6 brands, 6 product pages. Cook times run from 6 to 11 minutes across brands, so read the box, not a rule. A blank cell is a figure the brand does not state.
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.
Who makes bucatini
84 bucatini products are catalogued, most of them sold in Italy, France, United States. Of those, 5 are organic, 8 are Gragnano PGI, 12 are made in Italy.
Brands: De Cecco (5), Barilla (4), Divella (3), Garofalo (3), Penny (3), Deco (2), Liguori (2), Riscossa (2), Rustichella d'Abruzzo (2), Unes (2).
No bucatini? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Perciatelli
Long strands · Campania
thick hollow strand, the Neapolitan bucatini
Spaghettoni
Long strands · Campania
round solid strand, over 2 mm across
Ziti
Tubes · Campania
smooth medium tube, cut straight; sold long or cut
Fusilli lunghi
Long strands · Campania
long hollow strand twisted into a loose spiral
Other names
Boccolotti, agoni bucati, boccolotti, fide bucate, fidelini bucati, foratini, perciatelli, perciatellini, spilloni bucati.
Read more
Sources
- Bucatini no. 15, De Cecco (cook time, catalogue number, from the brand's own product page)
- Bucatini, Rummo (cook time, catalogue number, spec sheet dimensions, from the brand's own product page)
- Bucatini, Garofalo (cook time, catalogue number, from the brand's own product page)
- Bucatini, Mancini (cook time, spec sheet dimensions, from the brand's own product page)
- Bucatini (al bronzo), Barilla (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Bucatini, La Molisana (cook time, catalogue number, from the brand's own product page)
- Cook time: De Cecco no. 15: 11 min, al dente 9.
- Photograph: Bucatini.jpg, Popo le Chien, CC0.
- Open Food Facts (products, brands, labels), Open Database License, read on 2026-08-25.
- 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.
- Bucatini, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q20007, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.