Busiate
boo-zee-AH-teh
Long strip wound around a reed into a loose coil.
Name. From buso, the dried stem of a local grass that the dough was wound around.
What it is
Busiate are the Sicilian coil from Trapani: a strip of semolina dough wrapped around a thin reed or knitting needle so it dries into a loose spiral, up to ten centimetres long. They are the pasta of pesto alla trapanese, the almond and raw tomato pesto of the west coast.
Fusilli al ferretto from Calabria and Campania are made the same way.
How to cook busiate
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 busiate. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 7 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
A long loose coil with a bore, so it holds a thick pesto in every turn: trapanese, pistachio, or a Norma-style eggplant sauce. It also takes seafood.
Pairs with: Pesto alla trapanese · Norma · Pomodoro · Frutti di mare
Classic plates: Busiate al pesto trapanese, Busiate con pesto di pistacchio, Busiate alla Norma.
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 busiate? 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
Subioti, busa, busiati, ciuffolitti (Abruzzo), fusarioi, fusilli al ferretto, gnocchi del ferro, maccarruna di casa, maccheroni bobbesi.
Sources
- Cook time: typical dried; fresh 5 to 8 min.
- Photograph: Busiate2.jpg, Popo le Chien, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- 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.
- Busiate, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q48852218, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.