Vermicelli
ver-mee-CHEL-lee
Round solid strand, thickness varies by country.
1.8 mm across
Name. From verme, worm, with the diminutive -icelli. Little worms. The name is older than spaghetti.
What it is
Vermicelli is the older Neapolitan name for a round strand, and in Italy it is slightly thicker than spaghetti, around 2.1 millimetres. In the United States and Britain the same word sells a thinner strand, which is the source of most of the confusion.
Naples still calls its spaghetti dishes vermicelli: vermicelli alle vongole, vermicelli aglio e olio. Outside Italy the word also names rice and wheat noodles from Asia that have nothing to do with the Italian shape.
How to cook vermicelli
7 to 11 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
7:00
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 vermicelli. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Bite a piece at 6 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
Treat Italian vermicelli as a slightly heavy spaghetti: clams, garlic and oil, tomato. Treat the thin export version as spaghettini and keep the sauce light.
Pairs with: Vongole · Aglio e olio · Marinara · Pomodoro · Puttanesca
Classic plates: Vermicelli alle vongole, Vermicelli alla puttanesca.
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 vermicelli
59 vermicelli products are catalogued, most of them sold in United States, Australia, France. Of those, 10 are gluten-free, 1 are Gragnano PGI, 1 are made in Italy.
Brands: New World Pasta (3), Vermicelli (2), Wai Wai (2), Haiku (2), Creamette (2), Nwpc (2), Xianglong (1), Yangtse River (1), Longkou (1), Bean Thread (1).
No vermicelli? 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
vermicelloni, vermicellini.
Sources
- Cook time: typical dried, brand pages.
- Photograph: Fideo (coiled vermicelli).JPG, Glane23, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- 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.
- Vermicelli, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q20027, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.