Su filindeu
soo fee-lin-DEH-oo
Hair-fine threads stretched by hand and laid in three crossed layers on a disc.
0.8 mm across
Name. Sardinian for the threads of God.
What it is
Su filindeu is the rarest pasta in Italy, made by a handful of women in Nuoro: a semolina dough pulled and folded by hand into 256 threads, laid across a round frame in three layers at angles, and dried into a lace disc. It takes years to learn.
It is broken into a mutton broth with pecorino for the feast of San Francesco at Lula.
How to cook su filindeu
2 to 4 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
2:00
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 su filindeu. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 1 minute. 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
Mutton broth and fresh pecorino. There is no other dish.
Pairs with: In brodo
Classic plates: Su filindeu in brodo di pecora.
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 su filindeu? 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
filindeu, fili di Dio, threads of God.
Sources
- Cook time: cooked in broth.
- 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.
- Su Filindeu, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.