There are many tubular pasta types. Macaroni and rigatoni are well-known examples. However, in the ‘Home of Pasta’, Italy, the most popular tube is penne.
Although… Italians also like to eat the aforementioned, but in the Netherlands somewhat less known, rigatoni very much. But penne is the best known. Penne soaks up the flavor of the pasta dish like no other. That will explain its popularity.
The pasta form penne
Literally translated, penne means ‘feathers’ or ‘pens’. The tubes are ‘medium long’ (or short; it depends on what your comparison is) and are cut at an angle. This typifies the shape of this type of pasta.
Variations can be found in the type of wheat it is made with: spelt penne, whole wheat penne, penne pasta with egg; they are all available. A better known distinction with penne is that between penne rigate and penne lisce. The rigate has a ribbed exterior, the lisce is smooth.
Making penne
The wildest (often incorrect) stories go around about the origin of pasta in general, but penne does have an official date of birth: March 11, 1865, according to the Italian website welovepasta.nl.
It was then that a pastaficio (pasta maker) from the vicinity of Genoa received the patent for a pasta machine with which he could cut the tubular pasta diagonally. So penne was already being made before that time, but this Giovanni Capurro is considered the inventor.
Cooking with penne
We already said: because of its shape penne fully absorbs the taste of sauce. Especially if you add the penne to the sauce immediately after cooking and let it simmer for a while, the pasta will completely fill with the sauce.
It is for this reason that penne combines so well with thick, rich meat, tomato and vegetable sauces. And just like other ‘wider tubes’, the taste of a cheese sauce from the oven comes out best when combined with penne.
Penne is, we can say, quite an all-rounder. We like to use penne in a pasta pesto, another classic recipe. And if we may give you another tip: besides a fantastic penne dish, treat yourself to ten minutes of hard laughter with pasta.
Look up Eddie Izzard’s famous sketch about penne all’arrabbiata, about how even the greatest movie villain of all time has to overcome many obstacles before he can order a plate of penne.
The cooking time of penne
The cooking time for penne is about 8 minutes. Always look carefully on the packaging what the cooking time is so you can be sure that you cook the penne long enough. The cooking time of normal penne can be different as the cooking time of wholemeal or spelt penne.
How much penne per person?
How much penne you should cook per person is hard to say. It completely depends on the situation. Are you cooking for big eaters, as an appetizer or as a main course, do you have a lot of sauce or little sauce? Each situation calls for a different amount of penne.
As a rule you can say that 100 grams of penne per person is enough. But a little more can’t hurt, can it? Want to know more about how much pasta your person should cook? Take a look at our blog about this.