Testaroli
tes-tah-ROH-lee
Spongy pancake cooked on a griddle, cut into diamonds, then boiled.
50 mm wide, 4 mm thick
Name. From testo, the cast-iron griddle they are cooked on.
What it is
Testaroli are the oldest pasta in Italy by some accounts: a batter of flour, water, and salt poured onto a hot terracotta or iron testo, cooked like a thick crepe, cut into diamonds, and dipped in boiling water before serving. They come from the Lunigiana, where Tuscany meets Liguria.
They are spongy and absorbent and are always served with pesto.
How to cook testaroli
1 to 2 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
1:00
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 testaroli. 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
A porous griddled sheet soaks up sauce. Pesto is the tradition; olive oil and pecorino is the older, plainer dressing.
Pairs with: Pesto alla genovese · Aglio e olio
Classic plates: Testaroli al pesto, Testaroli con olio e pecorino.
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 testaroli? 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
testaroli della Lunigiana, panigacci.
Read more
Sources
- Cook time: griddled, then blanched.
- Photograph: Testaroli-Pesto-Pontremoli-2800.jpg, J.P.Lon, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- 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.
- Testaroli, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q3985208, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.