As an italian i agree with Alex's choices, personally i would swich De Cecco and Rummo wich is always my first choice. To be totally honest i'll leave my personal scale, 1-Felicetti, Di Martino, 2-Rummo-Garofalo-Molisana-Agnesi, 3-Agnesi-Voiello-De Cecco, 4-Barilla,Divella,Buitoni
Garofalo should be a tier below at least (was really good, but it has become worse over the years), and I see DeCecco more or less equal to La Molisana, so it should be a tier above. (do agree with Rummo > De Cecco, tho)
In realtà, per uno stesso brand, da un tipo di pasta all'altro la qualità varia. Ad esempio Garofalo ha una selezione di pasta IGP Gragnano che sono buone quanto le Rummo. Lo spaghettone XXL di questa selezione è eccellente. Non capisco proprio il suo interesse per de Cecco. È poco ruvida in generale.
As a huge pasta fan and Swiss neighbor of holy pasta land, I have been eating DeCecco for over a decade now, they are amazing! Indeed the "bang for your buck" is unbelievable!
DeCecco is available in the States too, well at least in my fairly rural area. Which excites me! Our typical options are Barilla or American brands. My area grows a lot of semolina so there are local pasta makers, but they are hard to find and mostly produce for restaurants, etc. Garofolo & Rummo are sometimes available at fancy food stores or Costco. I'm sure the options are better in the cities.
@@lorenzozanelli3437 I will, thanks for the tips! I of course so far only chose the one I liked best that is sold in every supermarket. But I am looking forward to trying your recommendations!
Seriously, how much do I learn from Alex about making high quality food. I never even considered dried pasta could be superior to home made egg pasta, and hey presto it’s a different foodstuff with its own hierarchy of quality. This is why the internet works, an outstanding channel.
Yeah, most videos make it sound like egg pasta is better, but it's a different thing designed for different sauces. Honestly, for a French guy, I'm surprised Alex didn't figure that out on his own, or that ingredients matter -- wheat isn't all the same, nor is water. He does know that about butter, so there is hope. haha
The most prominent pasta brands in my local supermarket are De Cecco and Barilla, and the two large displays sit right next to each other on the aisle. Many years ago, when I was young and naïve and assumed they were equivalent, I grabbed a box of Barilla. My Italian friend immediately slapped the box out of my hand and handed me a box of De Cecco. I never looked back. Life lesson learned.
@@gwine9087 Hi, I'm Italian, and I can tell you that in Italy no one considers Barilla a quality pasta, many buy it just because it's cheaper. If you want to eat real good Italian pasta, the best choice are brands like Rummo and La Molisana, De Cecco is also good. Greetings from Rome.
Weighing in from the United Kingdom here: I've gone out of my way to do the research and conducted personal interviews with every Italian cook and every chef I know (ie; many) and all of them have said that De Cecco is their go-to supermarket brand for pasta. It got weird after the third person said 'De Cecco' without missing a beat. So that's one trivial area of uncertainty in my life sorted and stable! Done. Now I can concentrate on sauces and RUclips chef's giving me a free education. What fun! Thanks for you channel and this video.
@@M_Ladd Oh we're spoilt for choice when it comes to high-end 'artisanal' small production companies and authentic imports, it's just that the main supermarket chains only carry a certain number of separate brands. Ooooh, you know who is NOT spoilt for choice? Have you ever watched a video of a Norwegian person taking you for a tour around THEIR average supermarkets? Oh my! Definitely do a search for one, it's unreal. Wonder how long it would take for us to get used to only having two choices for each item in a store? I couldn't believe it, it reminded me of Cuban shops or mid-1990s Bulgarian shops.
@@ciganyweaverandherperiwink6293 That’s a specific Norwegian thing. Their food shops and supermarkets only contain half of the content available compared to the food shops here in Sweden because their shops and supermarkets are much smaller in size but a bit more of them per capita. No idea why but that’s the case. The products available in Stockholm is insane. Oslo is also super tiny. It’s their only larger city. Norway has only 5 million people living mostly in more rural settings. Their infrastructure of countrywide roads is not good, they rely heavily on domestic flights. Each country also has its favourites so some stuff won’t be that easy to find in the UK but found all over in other countries.
A few years ago I lived in London. A friend at the time that was from Napoli, told me to only buy De Cecco. Excellent quality for a great price. That has stuck with me for so long. Now that I'm back in Argentina, when I buy dry pasta I go for De Cecco. Thanks for this episode and the whole series Alex!
I've been using La Molisana for a long time now, funny enough I chose it just based on the rough texture that seemed logical not knowing anything about the making process, brand, region or any other stuff I now know from your videos... 😅 But man, the change it made for my pasta dishes. Paired with free range organic eggs I get from a local friend my carbonara game went crazy even when using cheaper cheese and regular bacon chunks. Pasta is really the king of these dishes, how could I be so blind. Thank you for this series, love it! 🤓
I'm very fortunate to have an Italian shop that imports directly very close to my place of living, i've also chose La Molisana based on the texture paired with fresh eggs and guanciale my carbonara went a couple of levels up. It really makes a difference.
Good, inteligent choice! The good pasta must be rough texture, and a bit white"ish" on top! Vioello is the other great brandm, unfortunatelly not available to me! Molisana is nice, and, by the way cheaper than Barilla, which is absolut blast
Ssme here. I found out about bronze die pasta a while ago, and for several years I was buying store brand bronze die spaghetti - yes, it is a thing, at least it was. When the store brand stopped making bronze die, I went looking for other ones, and that's when I found La Molisana. Caserecce became my favourite, they are the best for bolognese in my opinion.
I Live in Italy, I concur with the Italian contingency which would switch Rummo and De Cecco. For a marginally higher price point, Rummo really delivers a superior flavour and tenacious texture. De Cecco is of course great pasta, and is more widely available, but in a blind taste-test I'm sure I'd choose Rummo every time.
As an italian I have to say that this video is surprisingly accurate about pasta quality and the matches with sauces. The grocery store called "Eataly" is also really popular here in Italy and it's well known for its top-shelf quality but also for its unreasonably high prices. Great job Alex
La molisana is best overall. I honestly don't know how they manage to have the quality they have and still put it for so cheap on the market. At least here in Italy.
Saw them in the grocery store here but never tried them. I will definitely buy them. They're about the same price as Barilla!! It's interesting how weirdly some pasta brands are priced depending on the store and country
As an Italian who’s been eating dried and fresh pasta his whole life La Molisana is my grocery store pasta of choice - here in Orlando, Fl I can get it for 1.29 per bag, which feels like cheating the quality is so good.
La molisana is great, but if you can find it try pasta RUMMO, is insane, mid priced (in Italy, maybe overseas costs more) and from Benevento (a city near Naples, where pasta masters used to dry it by the powerful wind the landscape still has, a tradition similar to Gragnano ~ sometimes referred as "the city of pasta")
I'd put Rummo in the top tier, I think it's about the same as La Molisana. I usually buy Molisana, Rummo and De Cecco, they work well for me. I also buy some special shapes like oriecchette and southern maccheroni from Lidl and Aldi. I'm not sure who exactly makes them, but the colour, flavour and consistency are right.
Italian here, when I've started getting more involved in my pasta abilities (many Italians are quite superficial in terms of pasta believe it or not) I've tried la molisana, voiello and de Cecco for making starch based dishes (like cacio e pepe, a dish I really like over almost everything else) and i simply couldn't get it to work with la molisana, poor results with voiello, but de Cecco surprised me. And it's so cheap, here I often find it for less than Barilla (when on sale), and i usually ends up coming back home with 25 kg of pasta ahah. By the way when you started talking about the way to combine different sauces with type of pasta and different specific dishes with a specific pasta shape I got blown away by the fact that those are things baked in my brain from my youngest years and somehow I think of them as obvious, yet they can be obscure to other nationalities
When he started talking about how the shape of the pasta is curated for the different ingredients put into the pasta, I was blown away by how intricate that is. It seems so obvious after he said it, but to me who is not Italian or any nationality similar to Italian, I just used pasta (with sauce) as a carb on the side, like a replacement for rice or bread, all of which are semi-interchangeable carbs in my head.
Agreed, lol. We learn so many things while growing up, including how much water, when to put in the salt, add oil or not, save some water, sooo many details which one cannot possibly learn all at once and only through experience... Making pasta looks like a very simple, straightforward thing but it's actually pretty sophisticated.
yeah man mee too shape and souces thats obvious im from italy and i never thought about it but i unconsciously chose the type of pasta based on the souce and vice versa 😱
I bought barilla because that was what was at the grocery store. Then Pastagrammar taught me about bronze die cut. Trader Joes has a bronze die cut spaghetti that is only .30 more than barilla at the supermarket.
Placing De Cecco ahead of Rummo is absolutely nuts. Specifically with the bang for the buck comment as they are almost exactly same price where I do buy here in Cologne, Germany.
In the UK, we can get that brand in Lidl. Its slightly more expensive than other brands but far better. Sounds like you might be gettin ripped off a bit.
This is the first video of yours that I've seen you just giving the results of your research without the process and the criteria. I would love to see you test the different brands and explain the different criteria on which you judge them, instead of just showing a plain tier list of them. Absolutely love your content both on RUclips and on Spotify.
Agreed! I’ll try some of the better listed brands to test it myself, but I would love to better understand what makes the better pasta better? Is it flavour? Texture? A mix of both? Something else?
@@mralexcheek the others are usually pasta that isn't Italian. Could be European, could be made for export (made in Italy but not SOLD in Italy). I do get some of these brands in Timor where I live now and all I've tried are really bad (don't hold cooking, taste funny, discolors...)
Hey mate, as a home cook, I’m loving this series. In fact, I’ve been making my own pasta. For a while now, I’ve been trying to dry my own pasta. But I’ve been met with the difficulty of maintaining strength and texture. Whilst you’ve shown me how difficult it is, I’m developing an appreciation for quality pasta. I even found some Monograno pasta online (it’s $10 a packet in Australia, but I had to buy 2). Food and drink is a powerful tool. It makes or breaks so many occasions. Thanks for helping us understand it better :)
We all have been doing it wrong in France too. Let's be fair, that pasta game is complicated and it's not like non italian have easy access to all of those brands. Although the good thing with dry pasta is that it's probably easy to order online.
Alex, it wasn't until I watched your video that I realized I needed to revisit my pasta choices. Forever, I have used Barilla and thought it was perfectly fine. Being a naturally skeptical person, I doubted that Felicetti & De Cecco would be so much better (top tier) than Barilla as you described. I was able to locate, purchase and taste both Felicetti & De Cecco spaghetti pasta. Frankly, the difference was precisely how you described it would be. Eating this pasta was a truly astounding culinary moment. It was clean, smooth, tight, flavorful and was independently excellent while not relying on the pasta sauce to make it that way. Until now, I didn't know pasta could be all of those things. I have donated my remaining Barilla pasta to a local food kitchen and am no using Felicetti & De Cecco as those are the two top tier varieties I can get where I live. Thank you for improving my quality of life by suggesting I try another brand of pasta. PS: Subscribed
I was standing in my local big-brand supermarket in Canberra, Australia, buying pasta, and remembered your video. I thought there's no hope of getting any of your 'great industrial brands' but I looked up this video in the aisle and amazingly one of the three brands on the shelf matched your list! I bought two packets of La Molisana fusilli! I am looking forward to trying it. And I'm still amazed at the serendipity.
I'm pretty sure Woolies got La Molisana onto their shelves around March of last year. Was eating San Remo or Macrofoods beforehand so good on them for choosing this brand 😄
@@overworlder Agreed. Even my local Woolies always runs out of La Molisana spaghetti by the end of the day. If you need passata in your dishes, then Woolies does provide Mutti Passata bottles unlike those horrible Leggos ones.
It took years but I've finally convinced my dad that De Cecco is one of the best pastas we can get easily in the Netherlands and that it really makes a difference. Now I still need to convince my mom that pasta is something that should be handled with care and love, not something you whip up in ten minutes with some pre-cut veggies and spice mixes. One of my favourite pastas is tagliatelle all uovo with a simple tomato and ansjovies sauce. It takes 15 minutes to prepare but it's amazing. It does require the proper canned tomatoes though. Maybe something to discuss in this series as well? The cheap canned tomatoes aren't the same as the more expensive ones like Mutti for example.
Hard to convince a Dutch that spending more for food than the basic thing is worth it ;-). I know I lived there over 5 years and it's a discussion I had several times with neighbors ;-)
When I moved in with my wife, I improved the grocery list with DeCecco instead of first price pasta, did the same with tomato sauce. SHe didn't know pasta could taste so good. We usualy buy DeCecco pasta with 1 packet bought, 1 packet free, so it's not that expensive.
As an Italian when I'm in Italy and have all the brands to choose from, De Cecco wouldn't be my first choice when it comes to traditional pasta trafilata al bronzo, I would chose Rummo, Garofalo and Molisana or others over it, but it really depends, because I've been very heath conscious since I was a teenager, and chosing wholegrain pasta whenever possible, and De Cecco came out with a line of wholegrain pasta, and their FUSILLI GIGANTI are tha bomb!! Not easy to find, but worth trying!
I tried Barilla Fusilli wholemeal to try it and it was awesome, so much flavour. Even though its Barilla, somehow has a rougher surface than their normal fusilli and clings to sauce so much better. Whatever it is, everyone at home loves it so I always have that in. I'll try De Cecco wholemeal when I find one.
BRILLIANT. I am fascinated by the concept of matching the pasta size to the largest food item in the sauce. I love making fresh pasta have some fun finding out what I can create. Saw a MASSIVE pasta shell which holds all the sauce inside it, which was mind blowing.
Here in Brazil, barilla is also overrated and crazy expensive (though their spaghetti n. 8 is perfect for building macaroni bridges - yeah, I had that school project)... personally, la molisana is my dry pasta of choice for fancy dinners
I will never love pasta like an Italian, and I _loathe_ long, skinny pastas, but I am happy to see how well the readily available and very affordable De Cecco brand rates even with people who truly care. I am also happy to learn that the way I gravitate towards short and shaped pastas is in fact the best choice for the chunky sauces full of textures that I tend to make.
@Alex you opened my eyes to how I've been fooled by Barilla as well for so long! I gave DeCecco a couple months ago a try and all our pasta dishes are INFINITELY better! This is the pasta I'll be buying from now on...thank you!
I’ve been buying “La Molisana” just because of the packaging, looked fancy. Good to know I chose well. The quality of the pasta itself though truly is top notch.
I live in a city in Ontario with a huge Italian population. So even the local Loblaws owned chain carries half of the top two tier brands above. The thing I like about De Cecco, La Molisana, and Garofalo is that they make a lot more shapes than the Canadian Primo, Unico, Italpasta, etc. You're not stuck subbing another shape due to availability; especial the smaller shapes that you add to soups or dishes like pasta e fagioli.
Just saw this video... GENTILE is AMAZING PASTA ! Its expensive but worth it. As it's cooking..... fills the kitchen with the aroma of baking bread ! If you can find it... try it !
Great informative video, Alex, and I love the subtle nods to your VanMoof. Fell in lust with them on a trip to Amsterdam, and took the plunge a few years ago. Great e-bike!
Once, in Shanghai, after months of being away from Italy, I managed to find a packet of Barilla pasta in a corner of a huge supermarket. goosebumps and tears of joy. I loved Barilla for being able to reach me so far. however, in Italy I would never buy it. personally, Rummo is my "mammamia"
This was insanely useful and I was really surprised to hear that you had gone through the same thing that I did: I used to use barilla for a couple years until I went to the store and decided to try out one of the rougher, less yellow pastas. In the end, I picked La Molisana (which I had never head of) and it's worked out ever since!
I used to buy cheap supermarkets own brands of pasta, sometimes Barilla, when I was feeling fancy. I thought it doesn't matter much. Then I bought De Cecco just out of curiosity.... That blown my mind, I was so wrong, I never thought supermarket pasta could taste that good.
I've lived in Italy for over 40 years and my late husband worked for a well-known pastificio for a while, so I've learnt a lot about pasta. I'm with you on this, Alex, I don't use Barilla. I prefer De Cecco and Rummo.That said, I suggest you try another brand, from Fara San Martini, 'Cav. Giuseppe Cocco'. Pasta Setaro from Torre Annunziata is pretty good as well. And by the way, my son's a chef.:)
A piece of advice from an Italian pasta lover: Rummo should be on top of this ranking. Rummo is simply perfect for every dish you want to cook, from the simplest to the hardest. The other ones on the first two rows of the ranking are amazing as well, but try a simple "spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino" (spaghetti garlic oil and chili) with several types of spaghetti, and you will understand that nothing is comparable with Rummo.
@@alexanderktn I am not sure 100%. But I remember this change because at the time it was a nice discover for me. Try if you want and let me know. (However, Molisana is my second favourite Italian pasta and it's amazing)
I stopped the video to comment that I did not get why Rummo is not above Garofalo in this ranking. I have not tried all of these pasta but Rummo has a much better texture imho, while I don't really see the upgrade between Barilla (my go-to for years) and Garofalo, especially when comparing prices.
Maybe the pricing is different in France and you factor that in, but no italian that I know would ever put de cecco above rummo (since they cost the same here in italy)
Totally agree and I'm Italian too. Io live in Sweden since a few years back and Rummo cost the the double and is much harder to find. But still prefer the Rummo and buy it everytime.
@@gerardotelese5337 If you want great pasta and you are buying rummo in sweden, which as you said is very expensive, I would just switch to orderng artisan pasta orders from italy, it's probably just a little bit more expensive but it's worth it for me. In my family we buy in bulk (30kg) from a small producer "pastificio setaro" and it's the best pasta I have had, better than Monograno felicetti in my opinion
I've been using Garofalo for a long time now, it's the best mix of readily available from shops and a decent quality bronze cut pasta. They also seem to have a good range of shapes.
Decent pasta does not necessarily mean crazy expensive. The Italiamo pasta line found at Lidl is made in Gragnano and although it's not granted to be 100% Italian wheat it's fairly good quality at Lidl prices, so it's a good everyday pasta option. In Italy you can also find a Lidl Combino "sub-line" produced with tie Italian farmers association (Coldiretti) with 100% Italian wheat (some shapes are 100% wheat from Lucania, aka the Potenza province) that is tasty and absolutely affordable, again an excellent everyday option.
I went through the same process a while back. I was also so ashamed for using barilla all that time. It is such a huge difference if you use high quality pasta or something like barilla. thanks for this amazing series!
I usually went with the cheapest option available. Since I thought barilla was premium and I couldn't tell the difference, the cheapest option made sense. Tried good pasta though and I can't go back. I have de Cecco available local and it's a huge step up.
Just wanted to say thanks for the meatball recipe Alex, my wife told me after eating them tonight for dinner that they where the juiciest balls she’s ever had. My manhood was offended but I had to agree.
I have to admit I was shocked and searched Penne alla Vodka, I thought it was a joke. Luckily thanks to my Italian friends, De Cecco has always been my go-to for my pasta dishes. I learned so much new information about other pasta brands, thank you.
Great video, lots of good information. Just a side note, actually I would have switched Rummo and De Cecco. I would say when it comes to common store bought pasta Molisana, Rummo and Garofalo are up there. To my taste Rummo is even a little better than Molisana, it retains a better consistency during cooking and the starch content is a little grater thus insuring the perfect creamy pasta when you go through the mantecatura process. Salut from Italy ❤️✌🏼
He said he ranked De Cecco so high because it is such good value for money while still being very good pasta. Rummo is more expensive. And De Cecco is a lot easier to get a hold of. I think I've seen Rummo, once?
Totally agree with Alex classification. As an Italian i would like to share my personal favourites: la pasta di "libera" which is a sicilian brand ad comes from a very special project and to me has by far the best grain flavour of them all. And "casino di caprafico" pasta, made from farro, very ancient grain, very special and peculiar pasta, over the top quality
Actually, you need to know that Barilla pasta that you find in France is actually different to the Barilla that you find in Italy, in most of the cases, which can be seen also by the packaging (in english) and the fact that the cooking time is usually a little less than the Italian version. Another little element that you said is that long pasta usually shouldn't be used with chunky sauces, yet, ragù has to go with tagliatelle. Punto. (Yes, I know that tagliatelle are meant to be done in the "fresh way", but you can also find it dried, exactly like orecchiette). Btw, I would have added an element, that is a rule of thumb other than the ones you already said in the video: the cooking time; the longer, the better quality of the ingredients (usually). That's why some kinds of pasta require 14-15 minutes, and others just 6, shapewise. Of course I am talking of normal pasta, some other kinds require longer cooking time due to the other ingredients used in the mix, like kemut or mais flour. Which actually brings me to a topic that you didn't covered: Pasta Integrale... It's another thing to be aware of! I personally really like it for some kind of sauces, usually tomato-based ones. (if you're wondering, I am Italian ahah) Anyway, keep up the good work! Peace!
Many De Cecco pasta you can buy in German supermarkets nowadays don't require a long cooking time and I think that the taste is not the same as in the pasta with the longer cooking time, what I'm used to since the 1990s. I'm used to the Italian De Cecco pasta and I prefer the longer cooking time even as a German. If I can't get the right pasta I order them directly from the factory or drive to Frankfurt (50 km from my hometown) to the large Italian supermarket, where mostly just Italians go shopping.
We can add a little detail for the quality check. The opaque it is, the better it is. The reason why is the amount of water in the mixture, this is the reason why it takes longer to cook. Also Rummo is the best I found so far.
@@Llowdar I'm not 100% sure about this... A way to verify it is to check the calories of pasta, if one has fewer that means that it has water, but I don't think that it is actually the reason why rougher pasta has a higher quality. As far as I know, this is actually due to the way pasta is made, the higher opacity is due to the roughness of the surface which is due to the material of the die the pasta goes through to get its shape. Bronze die produce higher friction that's why the roughness. To be able to go through bronze die the pasta has to be high quality, more resistance and elastic, otherwise it would break...
Thanks for the informative video. We used to have a small, artisanal vendor at our Saturday Farmers Market who used bronze dies to make a variety of pastas, including -rarely- a spelt pasta that I adored. He's gone now, but my taste for good pasta goes on. Waving at you from my Vanmoof S3 in Portland, Oregon.
in Japan, only pasta i knew was ”ママー”. their quality was good as japanese. but after moving to U.S. i did not know what brand was good. i tried some and barilla was closest to japaese one, so i'd used only barilla for long time. but when corona started, i could not find barilla at stores at all, so i bought De Cecco instead for the first time. it was kind of pricy, but i was socked with their excellent quality! since then, my pasta brand is De Cecco.
You can (I don't know if you can find it in USA) try Rummo, la Molisana, Voiello (Voiello is my favourite). In general, roughness and light tendency are high quality symptoms but a little longer cooking time 👍
For me, i cant taste a difference between Barilla and the 0.69€ store Brand pasta. My favorite on is also store brand (Rewe) but the bit higher priced at 0.99 per pack.
I'm french and in my supermarket I can found different kind of Barilla. The basic brand that Alex is showing are meh, but they have the Academia brand made with 100% Italian weat and extract in bronze moulds. They are not bad at all.
@@julien.2573 As an Italian (in Paris) I usually avoid Barilla on principle, but you're right, the Academia line is actually not bad. In particular, their spaghetti is really quite good. It doesn't come close to the spaghetti from Martelli which I personally think is the best (or at least one of the best) available. But it's surprisingly good for a supermarket-level spaghetti. Also, the Academia orecchiette are really very good - I find them even better than the De Cecco version.
I’m glad to see my favourite brand of pasta, Di Gragnano, getting an honourable mention here. I may live in the middle of nowhere (almost) but we do have an excellent Italian grocery store.
actually "di Gragnano" means "from Gragnano" which is a place near Naples in southern Italy well known for its superb quality, therefore different brands might have that same wording on the package. It's a joy to see that abroad people can appreciate these traditional products!
A few things about pasta that is available in Italian supermarkets and I presume elsewhere: Rummo is the toughest and withstands cooking for a longer time and is usually crunchier, while also releasing more starch than other brands, It's ideal for pasta risotatta recipes like carbonara, cacio e pepe and the like. Watch alex's videos to know what I mean. Garofalo has a very rough texture and they make excellent spaghetti and bucatini that instantly soaks up tomato sauces. Garofalo bucatini are by a wide margin my favorite for Amatriciana. La molisana is relatively easy to overcook but it doesn't mean it's bad, usually I just go for other brands though De Cecco and Voiello I haven't used enough to judge, Voiello turns kinda sticky when risottata so It's a lot harder to manage. Pay attention to cooking time and liquid content in the pan. Barilla has started to sell better pasta recently, at least on the italian market. I would imagine it's still not as good but better. The above all refers to white pasta. Whole grain is a very different beast in both cooking technique and quality across brands. The best whole grain pastas are, in my opinion Garofalo (which is stille the best for tomato sauces), De Cecco (their fettuccine are hard to find but excellent) and Voilello (good spaghetti, notable for the highest fiber content). La molisana is ok. Avoid Rummo as it's not true whole grain durum wheat (watch the fiber percentage) One criteria I like to evaluate durum wheat quality is protein content. It's not the be all end all and not the only thing you should be paying attention to but I find it to be a good rule of thumb.
What do you think of Delverde ? I was blown away, they absorb liquids and flavours and release them incredibly. I'm a huge fan but they 're expensive here (Paris).
In about thirty years I've gone from cheap supermarket label sauce and pasta to Rao's sauce and DeCecco pasta. What a long strange trip it's been! Great video.
Love these videos by, Alex. As an Italian, I have tried many artisan pasta brands mentioned here. For the layperson shopping for pasta off the shelf in American grocery stores, simply switching from Barilla to the slightly more expensive de Cecco makes a great difference. You can go up from there for special meals, but de Cecco is my everyday go-to.
Barilla is good enough (for Spagetti), mostly for it being reasonable priced and every store have it. For all the ones 1 and 2 is hard to come by for many people, but at least my 2nd closest grocery stor carry Rummo and "Pacifico" pasta. Pacifico get a lot of use here at home :)
As an Italian living in Germany I can fully endorse De Cecco! They have been the best affordable pasta I have been able to find when not in Italy. Well done ALex, I have too done the switch from Barilla and there's no going back :)
I had never considered pasta shapes like this before! I'm most definitely going to start reading pasta packages at the store now as well! Thank you Alex, you definitely have helped me out.
A couple of things that have worked for me are: 1. Looking at whether you can see the fine grains (you can see an example of this at 12:46 in the video), the more of that the better. 2. The other simple thing is cooking time, generally the longer the recommended cooking time the better the quality. (Only comparing the same types of pasta though, for example one spaghetti vs another or one penne vs another as there will be correct differences in cooking times between different types due to thickness and shape). Obviously these are just general and won't be true every time but I've found both very useful and can usually notice a major taste difference.
I've been exclusively eating and cooking with La Molisana and De Cecco for so long that I didn't realise that it was considered so high quality. I just buy it for its light colour, rough texture and their nice taste and texture and ability to hold sauces.
Nice to know you've enjoyed De Cecco! In Abruzzo, where I live and where that pasta comes from, De Cecco is the most used pasta and I've to say the quality is pretty good. For argument's sake : penne doesn't stand for "feathers" but for "pens" :) hope to catch you up in Abruzzo soon! 😊
Barilla just came out with a "trafilatura al bronzo" aka "bronze extrusion" line, but i havent tried it yet. The package instead of the classic blue is bronze colored. Btw another good brand is Liguori (Gragnano).
I life in France and my parents that lived in Italy for 20 year always told me that barilla is overrated in france. De Cecco is king in value they told me, just like you did!
7:12 I've been using Gentile for my pasta dishes and man the experience is on a whole another level. I eat alone, so one package for 2.5 euro yields 3 spaghetti meals and it's so worth it. A highlight of a week, every time.
Luckily, I am able to buy Gentile in Korea! I am luvin' it so much that I buy those in a box load (pack of 12) and hand out to my close friends whenever they visit my home. MANTECARE!!!!
I was au pairing in Italy few years ago and I fell in love with pasta. During those six months my whole life changed. I had a chance to eat the most delicious food I have ever tasted every single day 🥺🥺 De Cecco was the brand that my host family mostly used. It's quite hard to find in Finland, sometimes I've seen it but not in my local store. Rummo and Pastificio di Martino are brands that I usually use. Sometimes I still use Barilla, if there is no other option, but for special occasions it's must to have great pasta. Even though I'm in the beginning of my journey to learn how to cook great pasta, I'm lucky to have had that experience in Italy. I know exactly how it should taste like, many times I just don't know how to achieve the right taste, but maybe some day. My Finnish friends are little annoyed and bored though. In Finland complaining about food is extremely rude and saying things like "this is wrong pasta type, it's overcooked, there's no salt" can be seen as complaining, so it's really hard to keep my mouth shut 🙊
@@stingraytingvideo not in France 😊 Us French appreciate constructive criticism as it helps improve - of course, there has to be a close relationship and a polite way to say things.
hm interesting, we have very limited access to pasta here in Greece, most of the local pasta makers fill the market and leave little space that is mostly filled from barilla, but thanks to your video I did noticed one of the SM here have that De Cecco pasta. I will give it a try, so far I can't notice any difference between the industrial pasta brands, only when I buy from small local firms I do notice the better quality.
Very interesting. I’ve been to the Eataly shop in Milan omg literally a kid in a sweet shop. I love the pasta shapes poster too. I’m a new subscriber and hooked
Discovered Eataly thanks to you, and oh lord, it's paradise. Bought an obscene amount of pasta, and now I'm chasing for recipes. Merci Alex. Excellent vidéo.
Felicetti makes the top notch Monograno which is relatively expensive (but compared to other ingredients that goes into cooking pasta dishes, not really), but they also produce less expensive and still very good organic pasta called Biologica Felicetti (100% organic italian durum wheat). You should check if the pasta is made with italian grains, not with the cheaper grains from Canada (sorry for canadians, we love you but not in our pasta). As a general rule, high quality pasta has a very pale color, while cheap pasta has a strong yellow color (because of fast high temperature drying).
@@AndreaNatale anni e anni di acquisto di pasta 😂, poi capita che due volte all’anno anche io compri Barilla perché ha dei formati che nessuno altro fa
That is one thing I noticed with the Primo (I think the largest pasta company in Canada). Even when cooked, the long pastas have a yellowish tinge. It seems to be less so in the shorter and cut pasta shapes. I haven't bought Primo in years and have only cooked it when babysitting my nieces. The only good thing about Primo is that it has a wide margin of error between too al dente and turning mushy. I buy La Molisana, Garofalo, or De Cecco as one of them seems to be on sale whenever I go shopping.
@@tiacho2893 Al dente is an idea that isn’t so uniform for us Italians too. I like very al dente pasta, so when I cook for me alone I cook it super hard😂, but my family doesn’t share the same vision.
@@maselval I've found that that there is a wider margin for error in better pastas with regard to cook time. The cheaper stuff seems to go from crunchy to mush in a matter of seconds (at least in North America where the overall standards for pasta quality is very likely lower than in Italy as a lot of Americans seem regard price as the only factor because they assume everything else is equivalent). When cooking a baked pasta, the differences are stark. The lower quality pastas turn to inedible mush.
Servus, ich bin Italiener in Raum Würzburg. Muss sagen das der junge Franzose macht seine Recherche richtig gut. So wie fast alle italienische Restaurants bieten das billigste Nudel überhaupt. Klar mit Profit im Kopf, das wegen ich geh so gut wie nie fort italienische (lieber deutsche Küche oder ein Steakhaus) Essen. Ich werde meistens enttäuscht.
I recently discovered La Molisana. I Just saw it at my local grocery store, remembered something about lighter colour indicating lower drying temperature, thinking it looked good. I might try your other top tier brands if I can find them, but I am not going back to Barilla or any of the even worse Norwegian brands. Funny thing. In Norway you'll almost invariably find the best Italian pasta in stores run by kurds from Irak or Turkey....
@@FrenchGuyCooking Done, maybe the point you were making there was the price to quality ratio. But I'm still genuinely missing it: Rummo is just a little bit more expensive than DeCecco (at least in Italy where I am) but in my opinion it's way way better, and perfect for a everyday pasta. In fact, I used to consume Barilla, than switched to DeCecco and later to Rummo.
bro, every italian would tell you that you made a wrong mistake here. Rummo makes the best rigatoni of all, it's god tier, it's blasfemy that you out it below de cecco, which is really average
You know what Alex my friend your more than likely the greatest chef of our time based on you passion for food and your growing skill in the kitchen....I love your videos and truly look forward to see just how far your passion takes you pall ...... open a restaurant I'll be sure to sit at you table and shake your hand much love from the UK my friend stay true to yourself
I am writing this being 4 minutes into the video, but it made me feel so good seeing la molisana in top tier since I decided to switch to it from barilla because how it looked. I heard that that as it looks less glosy it's better since it has more starch and therefor creamier sauce. I hope I am right about it. Also it is at a very good price.
Your list looks good. I'm familiar with De Cecco and De Martino, they are widely available in UK in say Tesco supermarket for example and are both great. Particularly the roughness quality and cost of the De Martino Fussili.
Even here in Italy Barilla is the one that sells more and the most popular even if the general consensus is that it's not one of the best ones. I'd swap De Cecco with Rummo, but I agree with everything else.
@Heldensocke because it's absolutely average and there's better ones at the same price, but it somehow seems to be the most popular one. Especially abroad from what I hear. (we're talking about the "blue box" pasta from barilla here)
@Heldensocke yep, for "normal" pasta I think De Cecco is better. Among the ones I always saw in groceries abroad it's probably the one I'd pick. Here in Italy I usually go for Molisana, Rummo or Voiello tho.
In southeastern USA, just bought De Cecco yesterday for $2.78 (~€2.46) for a 453g (1 lb.) box. Interesting it's basically the same price here and in Belgium!
I was today years' old when I discovered your channel and Mama Mia, I have subscribed immediately!!! Love this video about how to buy pasta - no more Barilla for me!
In my experience there's a lot of difference in "tier" when it comes to different pasta types: for example I prefer penne and fusilli from Barilla to those from De Cecco, but for most other pasta shapes DeCecco is better.
On the other hand I prefer De Cecco, aspecially fusilli becouse it's slightly thicker, bigger, more whirly so the sauce sticks everywhere and it has a chewier (more al dente) consistency. Becides even if you have leftovers that you need to warm up, De Cecco never gets soggy or over cooked, it looses al dente, but it never tastes overcooked. Higher end brands, even more so!
As an italian i agree with Alex's choices, personally i would swich De Cecco and Rummo wich is always my first choice.
To be totally honest i'll leave my personal scale, 1-Felicetti, Di Martino, 2-Rummo-Garofalo-Molisana-Agnesi, 3-Agnesi-Voiello-De Cecco, 4-Barilla,Divella,Buitoni
Stavo cercando proprio questo commento 🙏🏻👍🏻
Garofalo should be a tier below at least (was really good, but it has become worse over the years), and I see DeCecco more or less equal to La Molisana, so it should be a tier above. (do agree with Rummo > De Cecco, tho)
In realtà, per uno stesso brand, da un tipo di pasta all'altro la qualità varia. Ad esempio Garofalo ha una selezione di pasta IGP Gragnano che sono buone quanto le Rummo. Lo spaghettone XXL di questa selezione è eccellente. Non capisco proprio il suo interesse per de Cecco. È poco ruvida in generale.
@@lorenzoscialanga348 anch'io
Io preferisco la Voiello o rummo per la pasta corta in realtà, e la De Cecco per quella lunga
As a huge pasta fan and Swiss neighbor of holy pasta land, I have been eating DeCecco for over a decade now, they are amazing! Indeed the "bang for your buck" is unbelievable!
meh, de cecco is ok, but molisana is way better.
Felicetti makes pasta for Alce Nero, wich you can find in Switzerland too.
Try those, believe me.
Wenn dus seisch
DeCecco is available in the States too, well at least in my fairly rural area. Which excites me! Our typical options are Barilla or American brands. My area grows a lot of semolina so there are local pasta makers, but they are hard to find and mostly produce for restaurants, etc. Garofolo & Rummo are sometimes available at fancy food stores or Costco. I'm sure the options are better in the cities.
@@lorenzozanelli3437 I will, thanks for the tips! I of course so far only chose the one I liked best that is sold in every supermarket. But I am looking forward to trying your recommendations!
@@bryanhumphreys940 - Exactly. DeCecco is not the crème de la crème, but at least it's in grocery stores in the US.
Seriously, how much do I learn from Alex about making high quality food. I never even considered dried pasta could be superior to home made egg pasta, and hey presto it’s a different foodstuff with its own hierarchy of quality. This is why the internet works, an outstanding channel.
Yeah, most videos make it sound like egg pasta is better, but it's a different thing designed for different sauces. Honestly, for a French guy, I'm surprised Alex didn't figure that out on his own, or that ingredients matter -- wheat isn't all the same, nor is water. He does know that about butter, so there is hope. haha
The most prominent pasta brands in my local supermarket are De Cecco and Barilla, and the two large displays sit right next to each other on the aisle. Many years ago, when I was young and naïve and assumed they were equivalent, I grabbed a box of Barilla. My Italian friend immediately slapped the box out of my hand and handed me a box of De Cecco. I never looked back. Life lesson learned.
Barilla Is shit...worst grain and It aslo was found containing heavu metals,...
Odd, because, apparently, Barillo is the nimber 1 brand in Italy.
@@gwine9087 and McDonald's is the #1 restaurant in the US. That doesn't make it the best.
@@dasc0yne He talked about an Italian slapping a box out of his hand. My point was that most Italians would not have.
@@gwine9087 Hi, I'm Italian, and I can tell you that in Italy no one considers Barilla a quality pasta, many buy it just because it's cheaper. If you want to eat real good Italian pasta, the best choice are brands like Rummo and La Molisana, De Cecco is also good. Greetings from Rome.
Weighing in from the United Kingdom here: I've gone out of my way to do the research and conducted personal interviews with every Italian cook and every chef I know (ie; many) and all of them have said that De Cecco is their go-to supermarket brand for pasta. It got weird after the third person said 'De Cecco' without missing a beat. So that's one trivial area of uncertainty in my life sorted and stable! Done. Now I can concentrate on sauces and RUclips chef's giving me a free education. What fun! Thanks for you channel and this video.
Looks like that’s the last time I use Aldi own pasta then !
So..... no Sainsbury's pasta ?
Believe the UK needs to add more than one brand of Pasta to it's portfolio, need to broaden it's horizons some!
@@M_Ladd Oh we're spoilt for choice when it comes to high-end 'artisanal' small production companies and authentic imports, it's just that the main supermarket chains only carry a certain number of separate brands. Ooooh, you know who is NOT spoilt for choice? Have you ever watched a video of a Norwegian person taking you for a tour around THEIR average supermarkets? Oh my! Definitely do a search for one, it's unreal. Wonder how long it would take for us to get used to only having two choices for each item in a store? I couldn't believe it, it reminded me of Cuban shops or mid-1990s Bulgarian shops.
@@ciganyweaverandherperiwink6293
That’s a specific Norwegian thing. Their food shops and supermarkets only contain half of the content available compared to the food shops here in Sweden because their shops and supermarkets are much smaller in size but a bit more of them per capita. No idea why but that’s the case. The products available in Stockholm is insane. Oslo is also super tiny. It’s their only larger city. Norway has only 5 million people living mostly in more rural settings. Their infrastructure of countrywide roads is not good, they rely heavily on domestic flights.
Each country also has its favourites so some stuff won’t be that easy to find in the UK but found all over in other countries.
A few years ago I lived in London. A friend at the time that was from Napoli, told me to only buy De Cecco. Excellent quality for a great price. That has stuck with me for so long. Now that I'm back in Argentina, when I buy dry pasta I go for De Cecco.
Thanks for this episode and the whole series Alex!
I've been using La Molisana for a long time now, funny enough I chose it just based on the rough texture that seemed logical not knowing anything about the making process, brand, region or any other stuff I now know from your videos... 😅 But man, the change it made for my pasta dishes. Paired with free range organic eggs I get from a local friend my carbonara game went crazy even when using cheaper cheese and regular bacon chunks. Pasta is really the king of these dishes, how could I be so blind. Thank you for this series, love it! 🤓
I'm very fortunate to have an Italian shop that imports directly very close to my place of living, i've also chose La Molisana based on the texture paired with fresh eggs and guanciale my carbonara went a couple of levels up. It really makes a difference.
Omg yes the guanciale makes all the difference! So insanely good
Good, inteligent choice!
The good pasta must be rough texture, and a bit white"ish" on top!
Vioello is the other great brandm, unfortunatelly not available to me!
Molisana is nice, and, by the way cheaper than Barilla, which is absolut blast
Ssme here. I found out about bronze die pasta a while ago, and for several years I was buying store brand bronze die spaghetti - yes, it is a thing, at least it was. When the store brand stopped making bronze die, I went looking for other ones, and that's when I found La Molisana. Caserecce became my favourite, they are the best for bolognese in my opinion.
For not siting the idea of grade copied from the RUclips channel @TierZoo I disliked the video.
I’m Italian and I’d switch De Cecco and Rummo on the list. The rest is spot on, bravissimo Alex!!
I’m not Italian and I’d do the same just based on tasting them.
Both De cecco and rummo use a blend of international grains and this already classifies them as inferior to Voiello or Molisana
yes! rummo's texture is perfect
Concordo
Same for me.
I simply love the passion this guy feels for pasta! For me as an italian and italian cuisine lover, this is just music! Merci!
I Live in Italy, I concur with the Italian contingency which would switch Rummo and De Cecco. For a marginally higher price point, Rummo really delivers a superior flavour and tenacious texture. De Cecco is of course great pasta, and is more widely available, but in a blind taste-test I'm sure I'd choose Rummo every time.
Absolutely. De Cecco is good, Rummo is better, I will only eat Rummo
yeah Rummo is the best **
@@elisa48092 I can find De Cecco here in germany, but i don´t know if i would find Rummo probably not :(
Rummo is more much preferred in the south. In Catanzaro or Palermo you eat them mostly with Pesto di pistacchio
de cecco meglio per il pesce peró
I’m a serial Italian pasta eater and this video is pure gold. Thanks Alex for bringing Italian cousine culture around the world ♥️
i love pasta and de cecco
👍 however I am Italian and I usually buy other brands of pasta
As an italian I have to say that this video is surprisingly accurate about pasta quality and the matches with sauces. The grocery store called "Eataly" is also really popular here in Italy and it's well known for its top-shelf quality but also for its unreasonably high prices. Great job Alex
La molisana is best overall. I honestly don't know how they manage to have the quality they have and still put it for so cheap on the market. At least here in Italy.
Saw them in the grocery store here but never tried them. I will definitely buy them. They're about the same price as Barilla!! It's interesting how weirdly some pasta brands are priced depending on the store and country
As an Italian who’s been eating dried and fresh pasta his whole life La Molisana is my grocery store pasta of choice - here in Orlando, Fl I can get it for 1.29 per bag, which feels like cheating the quality is so good.
Yes, Molisana is the best. Period.
average la molisana enjoyer
La molisana is great, but if you can find it try pasta RUMMO, is insane, mid priced (in Italy, maybe overseas costs more) and from Benevento (a city near Naples, where pasta masters used to dry it by the powerful wind the landscape still has, a tradition similar to Gragnano ~ sometimes referred as "the city of pasta")
I'd put Rummo in the top tier, I think it's about the same as La Molisana. I usually buy Molisana, Rummo and De Cecco, they work well for me.
I also buy some special shapes like oriecchette and southern maccheroni from Lidl and Aldi. I'm not sure who exactly makes them, but the colour, flavour and consistency are right.
Italian here, when I've started getting more involved in my pasta abilities (many Italians are quite superficial in terms of pasta believe it or not) I've tried la molisana, voiello and de Cecco for making starch based dishes (like cacio e pepe, a dish I really like over almost everything else) and i simply couldn't get it to work with la molisana, poor results with voiello, but de Cecco surprised me. And it's so cheap, here I often find it for less than Barilla (when on sale), and i usually ends up coming back home with 25 kg of pasta ahah.
By the way when you started talking about the way to combine different sauces with type of pasta and different specific dishes with a specific pasta shape I got blown away by the fact that those are things baked in my brain from my youngest years and somehow I think of them as obvious, yet they can be obscure to other nationalities
@burteriksson WHAT! There's only 37 kinds? Nah, you're pulling my leg!! It always seems to me that there's a squillion different kinds!!
When he started talking about how the shape of the pasta is curated for the different ingredients put into the pasta, I was blown away by how intricate that is. It seems so obvious after he said it, but to me who is not Italian or any nationality similar to Italian, I just used pasta (with sauce) as a carb on the side, like a replacement for rice or bread, all of which are semi-interchangeable carbs in my head.
@burteriksson 37 just in my region, maybe 😂 I discovere new pasta from time to time eventho I'm a 34 years old italian
Agreed, lol. We learn so many things while growing up, including how much water, when to put in the salt, add oil or not, save some water, sooo many details which one cannot possibly learn all at once and only through experience... Making pasta looks like a very simple, straightforward thing but it's actually pretty sophisticated.
yeah man mee too shape and souces thats obvious im from italy and i never thought about it but i unconsciously chose the type of pasta based on the souce and vice versa 😱
I bought barilla because that was what was at the grocery store. Then Pastagrammar taught me about bronze die cut. Trader Joes has a bronze die cut spaghetti that is only .30 more than barilla at the supermarket.
Placing De Cecco ahead of Rummo is absolutely nuts. Specifically with the bang for the buck comment as they are almost exactly same price where I do buy here in Cologne, Germany.
Guess it also personal preference - I love De Cecco and also buy my pasta in CCAA ;)
In the UK, we can get that brand in Lidl. Its slightly more expensive than other brands but far better. Sounds like you might be gettin ripped off a bit.
It depends on the pasta type as well. Some types De Cecco is better, others Rummo. But they’re pretty close overall.
I really don't know how you can choose one over the other: Garofalo, De Cecco, Rummo, Molisana, Agnese, Voiello, they are all fine
@@EllisBoydRedding true. There are even barilla high tier types.
It's crazy how in Eastern Europe even Barilla is at least three times as expensive compared to the prices seen in the video.
I guess it depends on a few factors. I had to ship a 7kg package of pasta to Serbia and the courier said it was 150€+ shipping and duties.
oof really?
In Vienna it's the same as in Paris I think.
In Hungary it’s around €2 if I remember.
Are you in an EU country? I find Slovenia, Croatia have good prices.
500g of Barilla spaghetti is about 1 Euro in Romania, no big deal
Malaysian here. Thanks to you I've switched from Barilla to De Cecco and Rummo. Just ordered both online and can't wait to try them! Thank you!
This is the first video of yours that I've seen you just giving the results of your research without the process and the criteria. I would love to see you test the different brands and explain the different criteria on which you judge them, instead of just showing a plain tier list of them. Absolutely love your content both on RUclips and on Spotify.
Agreed! I’ll try some of the better listed brands to test it myself, but I would love to better understand what makes the better pasta better? Is it flavour? Texture? A mix of both? Something else?
Agreed! Here in Australia, we don’t have all of these brands, but there are others that don’t appear in the ranking.
@@mralexcheek the others are usually pasta that isn't Italian. Could be European, could be made for export (made in Italy but not SOLD in Italy). I do get some of these brands in Timor where I live now and all I've tried are really bad (don't hold cooking, taste funny, discolors...)
He gives that at the very end
@@mralexcheek U can by Molisana in Wollies and Rummo in Hill Street mate.
Hey mate, as a home cook, I’m loving this series. In fact, I’ve been making my own pasta.
For a while now, I’ve been trying to dry my own pasta. But I’ve been met with the difficulty of maintaining strength and texture.
Whilst you’ve shown me how difficult it is, I’m developing an appreciation for quality pasta. I even found some Monograno pasta online (it’s $10 a packet in Australia, but I had to buy 2).
Food and drink is a powerful tool. It makes or breaks so many occasions. Thanks for helping us understand it better :)
As a typical American, I have been doing it all wrong! Thank you for opening up my pasta opportunities. I will be making a change for sure :)
We all have been doing it wrong in France too. Let's be fair, that pasta game is complicated and it's not like non italian have easy access to all of those brands. Although the good thing with dry pasta is that it's probably easy to order online.
I am so glad that as an Italian I can find Molisana easily and rather cheap in Paris. Best product on the board. Barilla is the Italian Panzani tbh
Alex, it wasn't until I watched your video that I realized I needed to revisit my pasta choices. Forever, I have used Barilla and thought it was perfectly fine. Being a naturally skeptical person, I doubted that Felicetti & De Cecco would be so much better (top tier) than Barilla as you described. I was able to locate, purchase and taste both Felicetti & De Cecco spaghetti pasta. Frankly, the difference was precisely how you described it would be. Eating this pasta was a truly astounding culinary moment. It was clean, smooth, tight, flavorful and was independently excellent while not relying on the pasta sauce to make it that way. Until now, I didn't know pasta could be all of those things.
I have donated my remaining Barilla pasta to a local food kitchen and am no using Felicetti & De Cecco as those are the two top tier varieties I can get where I live.
Thank you for improving my quality of life by suggesting I try another brand of pasta.
PS: Subscribed
I was standing in my local big-brand supermarket in Canberra, Australia, buying pasta, and remembered your video.
I thought there's no hope of getting any of your 'great industrial brands' but I looked up this video in the aisle and amazingly one of the three brands on the shelf matched your list!
I bought two packets of La Molisana fusilli! I am looking forward to trying it. And I'm still amazed at the serendipity.
I'm pretty sure Woolies got La Molisana onto their shelves around March of last year. Was eating San Remo or Macrofoods beforehand so good on them for choosing this brand 😄
@@gerardtran84 - having used it for a month now, I will never go back to San Remo.
@@overworlder Agreed. Even my local Woolies always runs out of La Molisana spaghetti by the end of the day. If you need passata in your dishes, then Woolies does provide Mutti Passata bottles unlike those horrible Leggos ones.
It took years but I've finally convinced my dad that De Cecco is one of the best pastas we can get easily in the Netherlands and that it really makes a difference. Now I still need to convince my mom that pasta is something that should be handled with care and love, not something you whip up in ten minutes with some pre-cut veggies and spice mixes. One of my favourite pastas is tagliatelle all uovo with a simple tomato and ansjovies sauce. It takes 15 minutes to prepare but it's amazing. It does require the proper canned tomatoes though. Maybe something to discuss in this series as well? The cheap canned tomatoes aren't the same as the more expensive ones like Mutti for example.
They have recently started selling Molisana at Albert Heijn at a cheaper price than De Cecco, definitely worth a try
Hard to convince a Dutch that spending more for food than the basic thing is worth it ;-). I know I lived there over 5 years and it's a discussion I had several times with neighbors ;-)
yeaaa, gonna need a recipe for that one
Mutti tomatoes have changed my cooking so much. Crazy how a slightly higher price comes with such quality
Yeah, I tried the molisana from albert heijn, the bronze one. Its really good.
When I moved in with my wife, I improved the grocery list with DeCecco instead of first price pasta, did the same with tomato sauce.
SHe didn't know pasta could taste so good. We usualy buy DeCecco pasta with 1 packet bought, 1 packet free, so it's not that expensive.
As an Italian when I'm in Italy and have all the brands to choose from, De Cecco wouldn't be my first choice when it comes to traditional pasta trafilata al bronzo, I would chose Rummo, Garofalo and Molisana or others over it, but it really depends, because I've been very heath conscious since I was a teenager, and chosing wholegrain pasta whenever possible, and De Cecco came out with a line of wholegrain pasta, and their FUSILLI GIGANTI are tha bomb!! Not easy to find, but worth trying!
I tried Barilla Fusilli wholemeal to try it and it was awesome, so much flavour. Even though its Barilla, somehow has a rougher surface than their normal fusilli and clings to sauce so much better. Whatever it is, everyone at home loves it so I always have that in. I'll try De Cecco wholemeal when I find one.
Agreed. I have tried La Molisana and Rummo and they are amazing. I have a package of Garofalo to try, next.
BRILLIANT.
I am fascinated by the concept of matching the pasta size to the largest food item in the sauce. I love making fresh pasta have some fun finding out what I can create.
Saw a MASSIVE pasta shell which holds all the sauce inside it, which was mind blowing.
I simply love the vibes on the videos in this channel. I even feel like eating pasta for dinner tonight:)
Here in Brazil, barilla is also overrated and crazy expensive (though their spaghetti n. 8 is perfect for building macaroni bridges - yeah, I had that school project)... personally, la molisana is my dry pasta of choice for fancy dinners
:D
preftect for macaroni bridges i died :D
It is overpriced here in Hungary too. But i know in France Barilla is pretty cheap
Have you try Zara ? It's sell at Makro it's good and way cheaper than Barilla
La molisana is the best
Barilla probably the cheapest here price wise and I love the taste.
I will never love pasta like an Italian, and I _loathe_ long, skinny pastas, but I am happy to see how well the readily available and very affordable De Cecco brand rates even with people who truly care. I am also happy to learn that the way I gravitate towards short and shaped pastas is in fact the best choice for the chunky sauces full of textures that I tend to make.
@Alex you opened my eyes to how I've been fooled by Barilla as well for so long! I gave DeCecco a couple months ago a try and all our pasta dishes are INFINITELY better! This is the pasta I'll be buying from now on...thank you!
Alex, great video, I'll never look at the pasta shelves in the market the same way. You bring "la cucina italiana" to a whole new level. Grazie mile!
I’ve been buying “La Molisana” just because of the packaging, looked fancy. Good to know I chose well. The quality of the pasta itself though truly is top notch.
I bought them pretty much by accident because I was looking for a specific shape and that was the only brand I could find. Win!
Well, I've got to say I'm relieved by that tier list as DeCecco is the only one I have access to in my city in Canada. I will have to try it!
Please do! For an industrial made pasta it's really good!
I live in a city in Ontario with a huge Italian population. So even the local Loblaws owned chain carries half of the top two tier brands above. The thing I like about De Cecco, La Molisana, and Garofalo is that they make a lot more shapes than the Canadian Primo, Unico, Italpasta, etc. You're not stuck subbing another shape due to availability; especial the smaller shapes that you add to soups or dishes like pasta e fagioli.
Amazon Canada has la molisana pasta. My local supermarkets don't really any good pasta brands, so I weirdly buys my pasta online now :/
Honestly President's choice has really really decent bronze die pasta in the white box. It's usually under $2/lb, or Delverde
@@tiacho2893 I like Primo in Canada, it's practically free for how cheap it is.
Thank you for confirming this. I have never thought Barilla was any good, and have avoided buying it for years.
Just saw this video... GENTILE is AMAZING PASTA ! Its expensive but worth it. As it's cooking..... fills the kitchen with the aroma of baking bread ! If you can find it... try it !
Great informative video, Alex, and I love the subtle nods to your VanMoof. Fell in lust with them on a trip to Amsterdam, and took the plunge a few years ago. Great e-bike!
Once, in Shanghai, after months of being away from Italy, I managed to find a packet of Barilla pasta in a corner of a huge supermarket. goosebumps and tears of joy. I loved Barilla for being able to reach me so far. however, in Italy I would never buy it. personally, Rummo is my "mammamia"
This was insanely useful and I was really surprised to hear that you had gone through the same thing that I did: I used to use barilla for a couple years until I went to the store and decided to try out one of the rougher, less yellow pastas. In the end, I picked La Molisana (which I had never head of) and it's worked out ever since!
I used to buy cheap supermarkets own brands of pasta, sometimes Barilla, when I was feeling fancy. I thought it doesn't matter much. Then I bought De Cecco just out of curiosity.... That blown my mind, I was so wrong, I never thought supermarket pasta could taste that good.
I've lived in Italy for over 40 years and my late husband worked for a well-known pastificio for a while, so I've learnt a lot about pasta. I'm with you on this, Alex, I don't use Barilla. I prefer De Cecco and Rummo.That said, I suggest you try another brand, from Fara San Martini, 'Cav. Giuseppe Cocco'. Pasta Setaro from Torre Annunziata is pretty good as well. And by the way, my son's a chef.:)
De Cecco is the best option for local markets in the USA. But La Molisana is great, the best is Giuseppe Coco. Delverde is a good option as well
A piece of advice from an Italian pasta lover: Rummo should be on top of this ranking. Rummo is simply perfect for every dish you want to cook, from the simplest to the hardest. The other ones on the first two rows of the ranking are amazing as well, but try a simple "spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino" (spaghetti garlic oil and chili) with several types of spaghetti, and you will understand that nothing is comparable with Rummo.
I don't like Rummo for the fact that they don't exclusively use Italian grain. I switched to Molisana personally.
@@alexanderktn I heard that from 2019 they have started to use only Italian grein. If you want, you can come back💪♥️
@@linohudson8313 Ah ok, last time I read the label it still said that it used grains from other countries, but that might have been before 2019...
@@alexanderktn I am not sure 100%. But I remember this change because at the time it was a nice discover for me. Try if you want and let me know. (However, Molisana is my second favourite Italian pasta and it's amazing)
I stopped the video to comment that I did not get why Rummo is not above Garofalo in this ranking. I have not tried all of these pasta but Rummo has a much better texture imho, while I don't really see the upgrade between Barilla (my go-to for years) and Garofalo, especially when comparing prices.
Maybe the pricing is different in France and you factor that in, but no italian that I know would ever put de cecco above rummo (since they cost the same here in italy)
Totally agree (and I'm Italian too)
Totally agree and I'm Italian too. Io live in Sweden since a few years back and Rummo cost the the double and is much harder to find. But still prefer the Rummo and buy it everytime.
@@gerardotelese5337 If you want great pasta and you are buying rummo in sweden, which as you said is very expensive, I would just switch to orderng artisan pasta orders from italy, it's probably just a little bit more expensive but it's worth it for me.
In my family we buy in bulk (30kg) from a small producer "pastificio setaro" and it's the best pasta I have had, better than Monograno felicetti in my opinion
@@peter-bz3fo Can I order this in the Netherlands as well?
In reality I like both (I'm from Italy too)
I've been using Garofalo for a long time now, it's the best mix of readily available from shops and a decent quality bronze cut pasta. They also seem to have a good range of shapes.
love them too, especially radiatori!
I think Rummo is a top tier pasta particularly for a less experienced cook. They use a grain variety that makes the al dente window much wider.
@7:46 "cost an eye"....thank you for keeping a literal translation! One of my favorite Italian colloquialisms.
Decent pasta does not necessarily mean crazy expensive. The Italiamo pasta line found at Lidl is made in Gragnano and although it's not granted to be 100% Italian wheat it's fairly good quality at Lidl prices, so it's a good everyday pasta option. In Italy you can also find a Lidl Combino "sub-line" produced with tie Italian farmers association (Coldiretti) with 100% Italian wheat (some shapes are 100% wheat from Lucania, aka the Potenza province) that is tasty and absolutely affordable, again an excellent everyday option.
how much did lidl pay you to write this, huh?
@@shrimpyy420 I also praise Lidl from time to time because they have cool product lines, but they don't pay me anything :(
But I agree with Alice
I went through the same process a while back. I was also so ashamed for using barilla all that time. It is such a huge difference if you use high quality pasta or something like barilla. thanks for this amazing series!
I usually went with the cheapest option available. Since I thought barilla was premium and I couldn't tell the difference, the cheapest option made sense. Tried good pasta though and I can't go back. I have de Cecco available local and it's a huge step up.
Just wanted to say thanks for the meatball recipe Alex, my wife told me after eating them tonight for dinner that they where the juiciest balls she’s ever had. My manhood was offended but I had to agree.
🤣🤣🤣
F**k sake. We can lower the tone of anything, can’t we?☹️😄
I have to admit I was shocked and searched Penne alla Vodka, I thought it was a joke. Luckily thanks to my Italian friends, De Cecco has always been my go-to for my pasta dishes. I learned so much new information about other pasta brands, thank you.
You have to try Delverde pasta, Alex. I was blown away, they absorb the flavour amazingly. You will find them in Super U stores.
Great video, lots of good information. Just a side note, actually I would have switched Rummo and De Cecco.
I would say when it comes to common store bought pasta Molisana, Rummo and Garofalo are up there.
To my taste Rummo is even a little better than Molisana, it retains a better consistency during cooking and the starch content is a little grater thus insuring the perfect creamy pasta when you go through the mantecatura process.
Salut from Italy ❤️✌🏼
He said he ranked De Cecco so high because it is such good value for money while still being very good pasta. Rummo is more expensive.
And De Cecco is a lot easier to get a hold of. I think I've seen Rummo, once?
Totally agree with Alex classification. As an Italian i would like to share my personal favourites: la pasta di "libera" which is a sicilian brand ad comes from a very special project and to me has by far the best grain flavour of them all. And "casino di caprafico" pasta, made from farro, very ancient grain, very special and peculiar pasta, over the top quality
I live in Sicily. I haven’t seen that brand. Do you know where it is sold here?
Actually, you need to know that Barilla pasta that you find in France is actually different to the Barilla that you find in Italy, in most of the cases, which can be seen also by the packaging (in english) and the fact that the cooking time is usually a little less than the Italian version.
Another little element that you said is that long pasta usually shouldn't be used with chunky sauces, yet, ragù has to go with tagliatelle. Punto. (Yes, I know that tagliatelle are meant to be done in the "fresh way", but you can also find it dried, exactly like orecchiette).
Btw, I would have added an element, that is a rule of thumb other than the ones you already said in the video: the cooking time; the longer, the better quality of the ingredients (usually). That's why some kinds of pasta require 14-15 minutes, and others just 6, shapewise. Of course I am talking of normal pasta, some other kinds require longer cooking time due to the other ingredients used in the mix, like kemut or mais flour.
Which actually brings me to a topic that you didn't covered: Pasta Integrale... It's another thing to be aware of! I personally really like it for some kind of sauces, usually tomato-based ones.
(if you're wondering, I am Italian ahah)
Anyway, keep up the good work! Peace!
Many De Cecco pasta you can buy in German supermarkets nowadays don't require a long cooking time and I think that the taste is not the same as in the pasta with the longer cooking time, what I'm used to since the 1990s.
I'm used to the Italian De Cecco pasta and I prefer the longer cooking time even as a German. If I can't get the right pasta I order them directly from the factory or drive to Frankfurt (50 km from my hometown) to the large Italian supermarket, where mostly just Italians go shopping.
We can add a little detail for the quality check. The opaque it is, the better it is.
The reason why is the amount of water in the mixture, this is the reason why it takes longer to cook.
Also Rummo is the best I found so far.
@@Llowdar I'm not 100% sure about this... A way to verify it is to check the calories of pasta, if one has fewer that means that it has water, but I don't think that it is actually the reason why rougher pasta has a higher quality. As far as I know, this is actually due to the way pasta is made, the higher opacity is due to the roughness of the surface which is due to the material of the die the pasta goes through to get its shape. Bronze die produce higher friction that's why the roughness. To be able to go through bronze die the pasta has to be high quality, more resistance and elastic, otherwise it would break...
Thanks for the informative video. We used to have a small, artisanal vendor at our Saturday Farmers Market who used bronze dies to make a variety of pastas, including -rarely- a spelt pasta that I adored. He's gone now, but my taste for good pasta goes on.
Waving at you from my Vanmoof S3 in Portland, Oregon.
in Japan, only pasta i knew was ”ママー”. their quality was good as japanese. but after moving to U.S. i did not know what brand was good. i tried some and barilla was closest to japaese one, so i'd used only barilla for long time. but when corona started, i could not find barilla at stores at all, so i bought De Cecco instead for the first time. it was kind of pricy, but i was socked with their excellent quality! since then, my pasta brand is De Cecco.
You can (I don't know if you can find it in USA) try Rummo, la Molisana, Voiello (Voiello is my favourite). In general, roughness and light tendency are high quality symptoms but a little longer cooking time 👍
@@davidesperanza7701 thanks 😊👍
Barilla used to make quality pasta, but they went for volume rather than quality. It's not horrible, but it's not really good either.
▲ABSOLUTELY THIS.
For me, i cant taste a difference between Barilla and the 0.69€ store Brand pasta.
My favorite on is also store brand (Rewe) but the bit higher priced at 0.99 per pack.
The brand I have used for years & years. I'm switching brands !
I'm french and in my supermarket I can found different kind of Barilla. The basic brand that Alex is showing are meh, but they have the Academia brand made with 100% Italian weat and extract in bronze moulds. They are not bad at all.
@@julien.2573 As an Italian (in Paris) I usually avoid Barilla on principle, but you're right, the Academia line is actually not bad. In particular, their spaghetti is really quite good. It doesn't come close to the spaghetti from Martelli which I personally think is the best (or at least one of the best) available. But it's surprisingly good for a supermarket-level spaghetti. Also, the Academia orecchiette are really very good - I find them even better than the De Cecco version.
I’m glad to see my favourite brand of pasta, Di Gragnano, getting an honourable mention here. I may live in the middle of nowhere (almost) but we do have an excellent Italian grocery store.
actually "di Gragnano" means "from Gragnano" which is a place near Naples in southern Italy well known for its superb quality, therefore different brands might have that same wording on the package. It's a joy to see that abroad people can appreciate these traditional products!
A few things about pasta that is available in Italian supermarkets and I presume elsewhere:
Rummo is the toughest and withstands cooking for a longer time and is usually crunchier, while also releasing more starch than other brands, It's ideal for pasta risotatta recipes like carbonara, cacio e pepe and the like. Watch alex's videos to know what I mean.
Garofalo has a very rough texture and they make excellent spaghetti and bucatini that instantly soaks up tomato sauces. Garofalo bucatini are by a wide margin my favorite for Amatriciana.
La molisana is relatively easy to overcook but it doesn't mean it's bad, usually I just go for other brands though
De Cecco and Voiello I haven't used enough to judge, Voiello turns kinda sticky when risottata so It's a lot harder to manage. Pay attention to cooking time and liquid content in the pan.
Barilla has started to sell better pasta recently, at least on the italian market. I would imagine it's still not as good but better.
The above all refers to white pasta. Whole grain is a very different beast in both cooking technique and quality across brands.
The best whole grain pastas are, in my opinion Garofalo (which is stille the best for tomato sauces), De Cecco (their fettuccine are hard to find but excellent) and Voilello (good spaghetti, notable for the highest fiber content). La molisana is ok.
Avoid Rummo as it's not true whole grain durum wheat (watch the fiber percentage)
One criteria I like to evaluate durum wheat quality is protein content. It's not the be all end all and not the only thing you should be paying attention to but I find it to be a good rule of thumb.
What do you think of Delverde ? I was blown away, they absorb liquids and flavours and release them incredibly. I'm a huge fan but they 're expensive here (Paris).
In about thirty years I've gone from cheap supermarket label sauce and pasta to Rao's sauce and DeCecco pasta. What a long strange trip it's been! Great video.
That’s my combo too now 🔥🔥🔥
Love these videos by, Alex. As an Italian, I have tried many artisan pasta brands mentioned here. For the layperson shopping for pasta off the shelf in American grocery stores, simply switching from Barilla to the slightly more expensive de Cecco makes a great difference. You can go up from there for special meals, but de Cecco is my everyday go-to.
Barilla is good enough (for Spagetti), mostly for it being reasonable priced and every store have it. For all the ones 1 and 2 is hard to come by for many people, but at least my 2nd closest grocery stor carry Rummo and "Pacifico" pasta. Pacifico get a lot of use here at home :)
As an Italian living in Germany I can fully endorse De Cecco! They have been the best affordable pasta I have been able to find when not in Italy. Well done ALex, I have too done the switch from Barilla and there's no going back :)
Dececco costs about double compared to buitoni and barilla here in south Germany.
I had never considered pasta shapes like this before! I'm most definitely going to start reading pasta packages at the store now as well! Thank you Alex, you definitely have helped me out.
A couple of things that have worked for me are:
1. Looking at whether you can see the fine grains (you can see an example of this at 12:46 in the video), the more of that the better.
2. The other simple thing is cooking time, generally the longer the recommended cooking time the better the quality.
(Only comparing the same types of pasta though, for example one spaghetti vs another or one penne vs another as there will be correct differences in cooking times between different types due to thickness and shape).
Obviously these are just general and won't be true every time but I've found both very useful and can usually notice a major taste difference.
Actually seeing Gragnano (the city i live in) in one of your videos, makes me so proud of my roots and the products that we make here. Thanks a lot
Alex try the Benedetto Cavalieri’s spaghettone, you won’t regret it, it’s 🔥
I've been exclusively eating and cooking with La Molisana and De Cecco for so long that I didn't realise that it was considered so high quality. I just buy it for its light colour, rough texture and their nice taste and texture and ability to hold sauces.
Buy one pack of cheap pasta and you will instantly appreciate them that much more.
Would love to see a similar video made on olive oils! This was very informative.
Nice to know you've enjoyed De Cecco! In Abruzzo, where I live and where that pasta comes from, De Cecco is the most used pasta and I've to say the quality is pretty good. For argument's sake : penne doesn't stand for "feathers" but for "pens" :) hope to catch you up in Abruzzo soon! 😊
I am an Indian living in Milan, exploring Italian dishes. Your basics are indeed helpful. 'Subscribed'
Barilla just came out with a "trafilatura al bronzo" aka "bronze extrusion" line, but i havent tried it yet.
The package instead of the classic blue is bronze colored.
Btw another good brand is Liguori (Gragnano).
Don't try it, it's terrible
I life in France and my parents that lived in Italy for 20 year always told me that barilla is overrated in france. De Cecco is king in value they told me, just like you did!
Your strive for perfection is inspiring.
As a Barilla-heathen of 25 years I bought Di Martino for the first time after watching this vido and I'm simply blown away.
Something with the color of the boxing of Barilla is just more calming and eye-catching.
7:12 I've been using Gentile for my pasta dishes and man the experience is on a whole another level. I eat alone, so one package for 2.5 euro yields 3 spaghetti meals and it's so worth it. A highlight of a week, every time.
Gentile it's one of the top tier pasta ever! It's hard to find it even here in Italy.. Good choice! :)
Fantastic pasta. Its other products too are exceptional.
Luckily, I am able to buy Gentile in Korea! I am luvin' it so much that I buy those in a box load (pack of 12) and hand out to my close friends whenever they visit my home. MANTECARE!!!!
same 🙏🏽
@@YeseongChoi 😂😂 what kind of recipes? Korean too?
I was au pairing in Italy few years ago and I fell in love with pasta. During those six months my whole life changed. I had a chance to eat the most delicious food I have ever tasted every single day 🥺🥺 De Cecco was the brand that my host family mostly used. It's quite hard to find in Finland, sometimes I've seen it but not in my local store. Rummo and Pastificio di Martino are brands that I usually use. Sometimes I still use Barilla, if there is no other option, but for special occasions it's must to have great pasta. Even though I'm in the beginning of my journey to learn how to cook great pasta, I'm lucky to have had that experience in Italy. I know exactly how it should taste like, many times I just don't know how to achieve the right taste, but maybe some day. My Finnish friends are little annoyed and bored though. In Finland complaining about food is extremely rude and saying things like "this is wrong pasta type, it's overcooked, there's no salt" can be seen as complaining, so it's really hard to keep my mouth shut 🙊
Well, no matter what country you're from, it's rude to complain about the food when someone else has made it for you 😅
@@stingraytingvideo not in France 😊 Us French appreciate constructive criticism as it helps improve - of course, there has to be a close relationship and a polite way to say things.
@@anne-mariev.3295 Absolument madame. 🙂 There is nothing wrong with constructive dialogue.
hm interesting, we have very limited access to pasta here in Greece, most of the local pasta makers fill the market and leave little space that is mostly filled from barilla, but thanks to your video I did noticed one of the SM here have that De Cecco pasta. I will give it a try, so far I can't notice any difference between the industrial pasta brands, only when I buy from small local firms I do notice the better quality.
Very interesting. I’ve been to the Eataly shop in Milan omg literally a kid in a sweet shop. I love the pasta shapes poster too. I’m a new subscriber and hooked
Discovered Eataly thanks to you, and oh lord, it's paradise. Bought an obscene amount of pasta, and now I'm chasing for recipes. Merci Alex. Excellent vidéo.
Felicetti makes the top notch Monograno which is relatively expensive (but compared to other ingredients that goes into cooking pasta dishes, not really), but they also produce less expensive and still very good organic pasta called Biologica Felicetti (100% organic italian durum wheat). You should check if the pasta is made with italian grains, not with the cheaper grains from Canada (sorry for canadians, we love you but not in our pasta). As a general rule, high quality pasta has a very pale color, while cheap pasta has a strong yellow color (because of fast high temperature drying).
Grazie per aver condiviso il trucco del colore 🤗🤓
@@AndreaNatale anni e anni di acquisto di pasta 😂, poi capita che due volte all’anno anche io compri Barilla perché ha dei formati che nessuno altro fa
That is one thing I noticed with the Primo (I think the largest pasta company in Canada). Even when cooked, the long pastas have a yellowish tinge. It seems to be less so in the shorter and cut pasta shapes. I haven't bought Primo in years and have only cooked it when babysitting my nieces. The only good thing about Primo is that it has a wide margin of error between too al dente and turning mushy.
I buy La Molisana, Garofalo, or De Cecco as one of them seems to be on sale whenever I go shopping.
@@tiacho2893 Al dente is an idea that isn’t so uniform for us Italians too. I like very al dente pasta, so when I cook for me alone I cook it super hard😂, but my family doesn’t share the same vision.
@@maselval I've found that that there is a wider margin for error in better pastas with regard to cook time. The cheaper stuff seems to go from crunchy to mush in a matter of seconds (at least in North America where the overall standards for pasta quality is very likely lower than in Italy as a lot of Americans seem regard price as the only factor because they assume everything else is equivalent). When cooking a baked pasta, the differences are stark. The lower quality pastas turn to inedible mush.
Barilla kept me alive during college. No matter what you say, they will always have a special place in my heart.
Me right now: a german watching a frenchmen talking about Italian Pasta while preparing japanese Sushi.
It's a great world we live in
We are a global village now, it's remarkable.
Servus, ich bin Italiener in Raum Würzburg. Muss sagen das der junge Franzose macht seine Recherche richtig gut. So wie fast alle italienische Restaurants bieten das billigste Nudel überhaupt. Klar mit Profit im Kopf, das wegen ich geh so gut wie nie fort italienische (lieber deutsche Küche oder ein Steakhaus) Essen. Ich werde meistens enttäuscht.
@@alexatanasie3302 der gleiche Grund warum ich nie Maultaschen, Kässpätzle und Wurstsalat im Restaurant esse. Selber gemacht ist besser
La molisana has always been my go to for pasta carbonara. The perfect color and texture
Grazie mille. Compravo tipicamente il marchio Di Cecco. Il tuo video è molto informativo sulla varietà di pasta! Bravissimo!
I recently discovered La Molisana. I Just saw it at my local grocery store, remembered something about lighter colour indicating lower drying temperature, thinking it looked good. I might try your other top tier brands if I can find them, but I am not going back to Barilla or any of the even worse Norwegian brands.
Funny thing. In Norway you'll almost invariably find the best Italian pasta in stores run by kurds from Irak or Turkey....
I have to say I disagree with your pasta ranking. Come on Alex, you can't put DeCecco above Rummo, that's a colossal mistake!
yeah true
I perfectly agree. DeCecco is a decent pasta, but my go to pastas are Rummo and LaMolisana. They are both equally good. DeCecco is one step below.
There is a little check in there
Watch the video again
@@FrenchGuyCooking Done, maybe the point you were making there was the price to quality ratio. But I'm still genuinely missing it: Rummo is just a little bit more expensive than DeCecco (at least in Italy where I am) but in my opinion it's way way better, and perfect for a everyday pasta. In fact, I used to consume Barilla, than switched to DeCecco and later to Rummo.
bro, every italian would tell you that you made a wrong mistake here. Rummo makes the best rigatoni of all, it's god tier, it's blasfemy that you out it below de cecco, which is really average
You know what Alex my friend your more than likely the greatest chef of our time based on you passion for food and your growing skill in the kitchen....I love your videos and truly look forward to see just how far your passion takes you pall ...... open a restaurant I'll be sure to sit at you table and shake your hand much love from the UK my friend stay true to yourself
Excellent video Alex , thanks for the ratings and thanks for cycling instead of driving . You look like you enjoy a good bike ride .
I am writing this being 4 minutes into the video, but it made me feel so good seeing la molisana in top tier since I decided to switch to it from barilla because how it looked. I heard that that as it looks less glosy it's better since it has more starch and therefor creamier sauce. I hope I am right about it. Also it is at a very good price.
Your list looks good. I'm familiar with De Cecco and De Martino, they are widely available in UK in say Tesco supermarket for example and are both great. Particularly the roughness quality and cost of the De Martino Fussili.
Even here in Italy Barilla is the one that sells more and the most popular even if the general consensus is that it's not one of the best ones.
I'd swap De Cecco with Rummo, but I agree with everything else.
@Heldensocke because it's absolutely average and there's better ones at the same price, but it somehow seems to be the most popular one. Especially abroad from what I hear. (we're talking about the "blue box" pasta from barilla here)
@Heldensocke yep, for "normal" pasta I think De Cecco is better. Among the ones I always saw in groceries abroad it's probably the one I'd pick. Here in Italy I usually go for Molisana, Rummo or Voiello tho.
At our local Carrefour in Belgium, for 500g, Barilla ~2.15€, Rummo ~2.35€, DeCecco ~2.65€. There were little variations for different shapes.
In southeastern USA, just bought De Cecco yesterday for $2.78 (~€2.46) for a 453g (1 lb.) box. Interesting it's basically the same price here and in Belgium!
I was today years' old when I discovered your channel and Mama Mia, I have subscribed immediately!!! Love this video about how to buy pasta - no more Barilla for me!
In my experience there's a lot of difference in "tier" when it comes to different pasta types: for example I prefer penne and fusilli from Barilla to those from De Cecco, but for most other pasta shapes DeCecco is better.
On the other hand I prefer De Cecco, aspecially fusilli becouse it's slightly thicker, bigger, more whirly so the sauce sticks everywhere and it has a chewier (more al dente) consistency. Becides even if you have leftovers that you need to warm up, De Cecco never gets soggy or over cooked, it looses al dente, but it never tastes overcooked. Higher end brands, even more so!