Gramigna
grah-MEE-nyah
Short thin hollow curl, like a blade of couch grass.
Name. Couch grass, the weed, for the curling strands.
What it is
Gramigna is a short, thin, hollow curl of pasta from Emilia, extruded so it bends into a loose C. It is the pasta of gramigna con la salsiccia, with a sausage and cream or tomato sauce, in Bologna and Modena.
The egg version is common locally.
How to cook gramigna
7 to 10 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
7:00
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 gramigna. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 6 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
Thin curls with a bore, so sausage crumbs and a little cream cling to them. The Bolognese sausage sauce is the dish.
Pairs with: Sausage ragu · Cream sauce · Pomodoro
Classic plates: Gramigna con la salsiccia, Gramigna alla panna.
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | Cook |
|---|---|---|
| Rummo | Gramigna | 12 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 gramigna? 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
Crestine, fagioletti, gramigna rigata, gramigne, gramignoni, margherite lisce, spaccatelle, tubettini lunghi, zitellini.
Sources
- Gramigna, Rummo (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Cook time: typical dried, brand pages.
- Photograph: Gramigne.jpg, Popo le Chien, 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.
- Gramigna (pasta), Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.