Mezzani
Italian: mezzi ziti
Short curved tube.
Name. Mezzi means half. It refers to the tube's diameter, which is smaller than ziti, not to its length.
What it is
Mezzani are long smooth tubes of dried semolina pasta. The bore is narrower than ziti and wider than bucatini. The pasta is sold in long sticks like spaghetti. Before cooking, the family breaks the sticks by hand into short pieces. Italian Wikipedia says the long form comes from old drying racks, which held more long pasta than short. Pastificio Di Martino's Gragnano IGP version cooks in 9 minutes.
The shape is Neapolitan and is also called mezzi ziti. It is a recognised traditional food product of Campania. English Wikipedia lists perciatelloni, mezze zite and regine as other names. Mezzani suit Sunday lunch dishes: ragù, baked pasta, and pasta with lentils, mushrooms or courgettes. Di Martino also lists carbonara.
How to cook mezzani
7 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 mezzani. 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.
What it is served with
Pairs with: Ragu napoletano · Meat ragu · Baked (al forno) · Carbonara · Pomodoro
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
2 brands, 2 product pages. Cook times run from 7 to 9 minutes across brands, so read the box, not a rule.
| Brand | Product | No. | Cook |
|---|---|---|---|
| La Molisana | Mezzi Ziti Pastaartisan line | 9 | 7 min |
| Pastificio Di Martino | Mezzani | 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 mezzani? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Other names
Hoernli (wide-spread in Switzerland, Mezze Zite, Napoletani, Perciatelloni, Regine, Scaloppi, in at least 3 sizes), mezze zite, mezzi ziti, perciatelloni, regine.
Sources
- Mezzi Ziti Pasta (artisan), La Molisana (cook time, catalogue number, from the brand's own product page)
- Mezzani, Pastificio Di Martino (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Wikipedia (it): Mezzi ziti (profile: origin, form, use)
- Pastificio Di Martino: Mezzani (profile: origin, form, use)
- Wikipedia: Mezzani (pasta) (profile: origin, form, use)
- Wikipedia: List of pasta (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: La Molisana Mezzi Ziti Pasta: 7 min.
- 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.
- Mezzani (pasta), Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q3855875, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.