Corallini
Small short tubes of pasta.
Name. Italian for little corals. The tiny tubes look like bits of coral.
What it is
Corallini are tiny, short tubes of dried semolina pasta. De Cecco places them in its family of minute pasta for broth and says the shape was invented to catch a child's imagination. De Cecco's Corallini n. 84 is durum wheat semolina, dried slowly, with a cook time of 9 minutes. Divella and Poiatti also make the shape.
No region claims corallini. They are a factory pastina, common in baby food and vegetable soups. De Cecco suggests clear soups such as broth or consommé, with croutons or julienned vegetables. They also suit thicker soups, creams and purées. Cook them in the soup itself, so the tubes take on its flavour.
How to cook corallini
9 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
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 corallini. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Or cook it in the broth it will be served in, and do not drain it.
- 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.
What it is served with
Pairs with: In brodo · Minestrone · Pasta e fagioli
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | Cook |
|---|---|---|
| De Cecco | Corallini n° 84 | 9 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 corallini? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Sources
- Corallini n° 84, De Cecco (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- De Cecco: Corallini n° 84 (profile: origin, form, use)
- De Cecco shop (it): Corallini n° 84 (profile: origin, form, use)
- Wikipedia (en): List of pasta (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: De Cecco Corallini n° 84: 9 min.
- Photograph: Corallini.jpg, Elcochan at en.wikipedia, 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.
- Corallini, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.