The Most Underrated Pasta Shapes for Mac and Cheese
Photo: Valerie Nik (Shutterstock)
Whenever I make a pot of creamy stovetop mac and cheese in my dutch oven at home, I seize the opportunity to use up some pasta from my cupboard—and folks, my cupboard has a lot of pasta to be blown out. That’s because whenever I leave an Italian deli or grocery, I end up walking out the door with something fun and obscure. Vesuvio, racchette, farfalline, malloreddus, lumache, creste de gallo—often hyper-regional, these specific and peculiar shapes excite my curiosity. And many of them turn a pot of mac and cheese into something truly great.
There are loud macaroni traditionalists out there, those who strictly champion the use of elbow macaroni, and maybe cavatappi if they’re feeling adventurous. We’re told to use cylindrical, tube-like pastas for mac and cheese due to the noodles’ surface area and “forkability.” But because this dish consists of cheese and carbs, it’s almost impossible to make a bad batch, as long as you know how to conjure a good sauce. And after lots of experimentation, I’ve found that some pasta shapes improve the overall experience tremendously.
Though the noodles are aesthetically pleasing, I’m not keen on the farcical nature of wacky cavatappi. I like cups. Orecchiette. Cavatelli. Pasta shapes that hold sauce and become a neat little vessel for creamy, molten cheese. Ridges are a bonus. And yes—you can use long pasta to make a mac and cheese, though you probably have to change the cooking method to make it work (more on that later). Point is, anything can work in a mac.
The newly invented and allegedly optimized cascatelli claims to have revolutionized pasta by introducing a more functional shape, but plenty of Italians will tell you mafaldine has been around for much longer. Also, have you seen the aforementioned creste de gallo? Plenty of underrated, preexisting pasta shapes are great for mac and cheese, and you should try making a batch that swaps these in for elbow macaroni. And…
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