Strozzapreti
strot-tsah-PREH-tee
Strip of dough rolled between the palms into a loose twist.
Name. Priest-stranglers. The story is that a greedy priest choked on them, or that a housewife wished he would.
What it is
Strozzapreti are strips of dough rolled between the palms into a loose, uneven twist, five to seven centimetres long. The Romagna version is flour and water, sometimes with an egg; Tuscany and Umbria use the same name for other shapes, including a spinach dumpling.
The dried version is a tidy machine twist. The hand-made one is ragged and better.
How to cook strozzapreti
8 to 11 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
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 strozzapreti. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Fresh pasta has no dry core. It is done when it is tender, not when it resists.
- 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
Rough, twisted, and long enough to hold, so it takes a ragu, a sausage sauce, cream with mushrooms, and a pesto. The twist catches pieces.
Pairs with: Meat ragu · Sausage ragu · Cream sauce · Pesto alla genovese · Pomodoro
Classic plates: Strozzapreti al ragu, Strozzapreti alla romagnola, Strozzapreti con salsiccia e funghi.
Nutrition
Per 100 g of fresh 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 | 288 kcal | 11.3 g | 54.7 g | g | 2.3 g | 26 mg | 3.4 mg |
| Cooked | 131 kcal | 5.2 g | 24.9 g | g | 1.1 g | 6 mg | 1.1 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 220 g cooked, 288 kcal and 11 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.2 times its weight in the pot.
Who makes strozzapreti
21 strozzapreti products are catalogued, most of them sold in United States, Germany, United Kingdom. Of those, 2 are gluten-free, 6 are organic.
Brands: Montebello (2), Dalla Costa (2), Cucina (1), Cucina Nobile (1), Byodo (1), Zeta Casa di Luca (1), Manor Food (1), Specially Selected (1), Benvenuti A Tavola (1), Girolomoni (1).
No strozzapreti? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Casarecce
Short shapes · Sicily
short strip rolled into an S, with a groove down the middle
Gemelli
Short shapes · All of Italy
one strand folded and twisted on itself, like two strands entwined
Trofie
Hand-formed · Liguria
thin twist rolled with the flat of the hand, pointed at both ends
Pici
Long strands · Tuscany
fat irregular hand-rolled strand
Other names
Strangolarpreti, affogaparini (Sicily), cecamariti (Lazio), frigulelli, gnocchi di prete (Friuli), maccheroni alla molinara (Abruzzo), piccicasanti, strangolapreti, strangulaprievete (Naples), strangulaprieviti (Calabria), strozzafrati (Marche), strozzaprete.
Read more
Sources
- Cook time: typical dried; fresh 4 to 6 min.
- Photograph: Strozzapretti2.jpg, Popo le Chien, 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 169727, Pasta, fresh-refrigerated, plain, as purchased; FDC 169728, Pasta, fresh-refrigerated, plain, cooked), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Strozzapreti, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q1136847, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.