Pastina
pas-TEE-nah
Any tiny pasta for broth; the smallest grade of all.
Name. Little pasta.
What it is
Pastina is the family name for every tiny soup pasta, and also the name on the smallest boxes: minute stars, dots, and specks that cook in minutes. In Italian homes it is what a sick child or a baby eats, in broth with butter and parmesan.
Ronzoni's decision to discontinue its pastina in 2023 made American news.
How to cook pastina
4 to 7 minutes in boiling salted water. Al dente at 6 minutes, fully cooked at 7.
6:00
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 pastina. 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 5 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
Broth, butter, and parmesan. Or an egg beaten in at the end. It is comfort, not a sauce vehicle.
Pairs with: In brodo · Minestrone
Classic plates: Pastina in brodo, Pastina con burro e parmigiano, Pastina with egg.
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | Cook |
|---|---|---|
| Barilla | Pastina | 7 min, al dente 6 |
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.
Who makes pastina
8 pastina products are catalogued, most of them sold in United States, Australia.
Brands: New World Pasta (3), Prince (1), Barilla (1), Pasta Lori (1), Shoprite (1), Semolina Artisanal Pasta (1), Weis (1), San Giorgio (1), Ronzoni (1).
No pastina? 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
pastine, puntine, tempestine, grattini, sabbia.
Sources
- Pastina, Barilla (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Cook time: typical dried, brand pages.
- Photograph: Pastina.jpg, Elcochan (talk) (Uploads), CC0.
- Open Food Facts (products, brands, labels), Open Database License, read on 2026-08-25.
- 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.
- Pastina, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q105015387, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.