Capunti
kah-POON-tee
Long cavatelli dragged with three fingers, like an open pea pod.
Name. Puglian dialect, related to cavatelli. The three finger marks look like a pea pod.
What it is
Capunti are a longer cavatelli from Puglia, dragged with three fingers so the piece looks like a split pea pod with three hollows. They are made from semolina and water and served with the same sauces as orecchiette.
Cavatelli, capunti, and orecchiette come from the same board and the same dough.
How to cook capunti
6 to 10 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
6:00
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 capunti. 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
Three hollows in a chewy piece, so it carries greens, beans, and a sausage sauce.
Pairs with: Cime di rapa · Sausage ragu · Pasta e fagioli · Pomodoro
Classic plates: Capunti con le cime di rapa, Capunti con ceci.
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 capunti? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Cavatelli
Hand-formed · Puglia
small dumpling with a hollow, rolled under two fingers
Orecchiette
Hand-formed · Puglia
small domed disc, rough on the outside, dragged over the board with a knife
Strascinati
Hand-formed · Basilicata
disc of dough dragged across the board with the fingers, larger and flatter than orecchiette
Other names
capuntini.
Read more
Sources
- Cook time: fresh, by maker.
- Photograph: Capunti.jpg, Elcochan (talk) (Uploads), 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.
- Capunti, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q21976352, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.