Sagnarelli
Italian: sagne
Rectangular ribbons with fluted edges.
Name. A diminutive of sagne, the central Italian word for a strip cut from a sheet of dough. It shares a root with lasagne.
What it is
Sagnarelli are short, flat rectangles cut from a sheet of pasta. Each piece has a fluted, wavy edge on every side. A glossary entry gives a length of about 1.75 to 2 inches. The dried shape is made from durum wheat semolina and water. Giuseppe Cocco in Fara San Martino cuts it from a sheet and lists it as number 58. Traditional home sagne use only flour, water, and salt. Eggs appear in some modern versions.
The shape belongs to Abruzzo. The wider sagne family also covers Molise, Lazio, and the Salento part of Puglia. It comes from peasant cooking, and it was paired with legumes for centuries. Sagne e ceci and sagne e fagioli are the classic dishes. Cocco pairs its sagnarelli with a plain tomato and basil sauce. English language recipes serve them with cream sauces, mushrooms, and spring vegetables.
How to cook sagnarelli
11 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
11:00
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 sagnarelli. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 10 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: Pasta e ceci · Pasta e fagioli · Pomodoro · Cream sauce · Meat ragu
Classic plates: sagne e ceci, sagne e fagioli, sagnarelli pomodoro e basilico.
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
2 brands, 2 product pages. Cook times run from 11 to 12 minutes across brands, so read the box, not a rule.
| Brand | Product | No. | Cook |
|---|---|---|---|
| La Molisana | Sagnette | 74 | 11 min |
| Giuseppe Cocco | N.58 Sagnarelli | 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 sagnarelli? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Other names
sagnarello, sagne, sagnette, tagliolini.
Sources
- Sagnette, La Molisana (cook time, catalogue number, from the brand's own product page)
- N.58 Sagnarelli, Giuseppe Cocco (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- Wikipedia: Sagnarelli (profile: origin, form, use)
- The Pasta Project: Sagne pasta from Abruzzo, Molise and Lazio (profile: origin, form, use)
- Pastificio Cocco: N.58 Sagnarelli (profile: origin, form, use)
- RecipeTips: Sagnarelli pasta (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: La Molisana Sagnette: 11 min.
- Photograph: Sagnarelli 1.jpg, Mx. Granger, 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.
- Sagnarelli, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q7399325, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.