Cascatelli
kas-kah-TEL-lee
Half-tube with a ruffled flange, curved into a half-loop.
14 mm across
Name. Little waterfalls. Invented by Dan Pashman of the Sporkful podcast with Sfoglini, released March 2021.
What it is
Cascatelli is a new shape, designed in 2021 by podcaster Dan Pashman and made by the Brooklyn pasta company Sfoglini. It is a half-tube curved into a half-loop with a ruffled edge, built to score high on what Pashman calls forkability, sauceability, and toothsinkability.
It sold out on release and has stayed in production. It is the first new shape in decades to get a Wikipedia page.
How to cook cascatelli
10 to 13 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
10:00
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 cascatelli. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 9 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
Designed for sauce: the trough holds it, the ruffle grips it, and the curve keeps it on the fork. Ragu, cream, cheese sauces, and chunky vegetable sauces all work.
Pairs with: Meat ragu · Cream sauce · Mac and cheese · Vegetable ragu · Sausage ragu
Classic plates: Cascatelli with ragu, Cascatelli mac and cheese.
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 cascatelli? 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
cascatelli by Sporkful.
Sources
- Cook time: Sfoglini: 11 to 13 min.
- Photograph: Cascatelli Duo 3.jpg, Filibustre, 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.
- Cascatelli, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q106326673, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.