What to use instead of bigoli
Rough, thick, and heavy, bigoli takes sauces that a smooth spaghetti cannot: onion and anchovy, duck or rabbit ragu, sardines. The rough face holds the sauce and the mass stands up to it.
The closest swap: spaghettoni
Thick strand, bronze die if you can.
Bigoli is long strands, 250 to 300 mm long, 8 to 12 minutes in the pot. Spaghettoni sits in the long strands family and cooks in 12 to 15 minutes. Match the cook time first. A swap that is right in shape and wrong in time still ends up wrong on the plate.
Every swap for bigoli, ranked
A substitute must behave the same way with the sauce you are making. The ones marked as chosen are hand-picked. The rest score on family, cavity, surface, size, and shared sauces.
- 1
Spaghettoni
Long strands · Campania
Thick strand, bronze die if you can (chosen)
- 2
Pici
Long strands · Tuscany
The Tuscan hand-rolled thick strand (chosen)
- 3
Bucatini
Long strands · Lazio
Similar weight, with a bore (chosen)
- 4
Tonnarelli
Long strands · Lazio
Same family, also solid, also rough, shares 1 sauce, close in size
- 5
Troccoli
Long strands · Puglia
Same family, also solid, also rough, shares 1 sauce, close in size
- 6
Capellini
Long strands · Campania
Same family, also solid, shares 1 sauce, close in size
- 7
Fedelini
Long strands · Liguria
Same family, also solid, shares 1 sauce, close in size
- 8
Linguine
Long strands · Liguria
Same family, also solid, shares 1 sauce, close in size
Match the sauce, not the look
Bigoli is listed against 3 sauces. Pick the swap that holds the one you are cooking.
- Best pasta for meat ragu: Any slow meat sauce with solids in it. It wants a shape with a cavity: a wide tube, a cup, or a broad ribbon.
- Best pasta for aglio e olio: Garlic, olive oil, chili, parsley. The thinnest sauce there is. It needs a strand that it can coat, with nothing to hide in.
- Best pasta for sausage ragu: Crumbled sausage, often with fennel, cooked in tomato or white wine. Orecchiette in Puglia, rigatoni everywhere else.
Side by side
The measured difference between bigoli and each swap.