There’s always an exception to the rule. You know, that one thing that makes you question the truths and ideals that you hold dear. For me, that exception is bucatini, the greatest long pasta there ever was or will be.
I am a short pasta person. I believe that short noodles are significantly better than long noodles. Orecchiette. Campanelle. Rigatoni. Gemelli. I like my pasta stab-able and welcoming to chunks of meat and vegetables, and those shapes feel like family. Which is why bucatini presents a serious problem: because even though it’s a long pasta, I hold it in the same regard as I do these short shapes. It makes me question the very ground I walk on.
How did this happen? How did bucatini get here, in such fine company? Well, let’s start with bucatini’s shape. To the untrained eye, it might get mistaken for spaghetti, but upon further inspection, you’ll notice it’s a bit thicker. And upon even further inspection, you’ll notice that, what!? There’s a little baby hole that runs all the way through the noodle?! Wow. That’s adorable.
And that hollow center is what makes bucatini so fantastic. Where spaghetti or linguine get coated with sauce, bucatini gets coated and filled with sauce. It’s the ultimate delivery vehicle for velvety pasta sauces like cacio e pepe or carbonara. That hollow center gives you more sauce with each bite, and around here, we subscribe to the “More Sauce, More Life” lifestyle.
But here’s the real secret to this pasta’s success: Bucatini is fun to eat. That’s what it comes down to. You can talk about the architectural benefits of different pasta shapes all you want, but if pasta doesn’t make you think, “LOL PASTA JEEZ, I LOVE YOU, AND I LOVE MY LIFE WHEN I’M EATING YOU, REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE KIDS, AND I ALSO LOVED YOU THEN?” what’s the point? Bucatini provides that joy tenfold. Spaghetti is one-dimensional, but its hollow counterpoint is a delight, providing a mix of sauce, dense carbohydrates, and air pockets that make funny noises when you slurp them.
Bucatini is a lesson in the foolishness of dogma, a case against absolute commitment to an ideal. I am a short pasta person. But I’m willing to make exceptions. Bucatini has taught me about flexibility and acceptance. Thanks, bucatini. Love you.
