Grano
Grain-shaped.
Name. Grano means wheat. Each piece copies a grain of durum wheat.
What it is
Grano is a soup pasta shaped like a grain of wheat. Mancini sells it as chicchi di grano, wheat grains. The Mancini piece is 9 mm long and 3.4 mm wide. It is made from durum wheat semolina and water. The dough passes through a bronze die. Mancini dries it for 21 hours at low temperature and lists a cook time of 8 to 10 minutes.
No source names a region of origin for the shape. Mancini is in Monte San Pietrangeli in the Marche. Grano goes into broths and soups in the pastina tradition. It can also stand in for rice in a salad or a risotto-style dish.
How to cook grano
8 to 10 minutes in boiling salted water. Al dente at 8 minutes, fully cooked at 10.
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 grano. 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 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.
What it is served with
Pairs with: In brodo · Minestrone · Pasta salad
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page. A blank cell is a figure the brand does not state.
| Brand | Product | Cook | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mancini | Chicchi di Grano | 10 min, al dente 8 | 3.4 mm |
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 grano? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Other names
chicchi di grano.
Sources
- Chicchi di Grano, Mancini (cook time, spec sheet dimensions, from the brand's own product page)
- Pasta Mancini, Chicchi di grano (profile: origin, form, use)
- Wikipedia, List of pasta (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: Mancini Chicchi di Grano: 10 min, al dente 8.
- Dimensions: the Mancini spec sheet, Chicchi di Grano. No box of ours has been measured yet.
- 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.
- Grano (pasta), Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.