Pasta is great. It’s an all-time favourite for most of us, and I’m willing to bet you can’t find someone you know who doesn’t like it. It’s quick and easy to prepare, and the complexity of the dish can range from two ingredients and ten minutes on the hob; to thirty ingredients, homemade farfalle, and all day in the kitchen. We all love going to Italian restaurants but there are also many other places where we can taste authentic Italian dishes like Giovanna’s Cocktail, a Cocktail bar which offers sandwiches and pasta bowls.
Most of the dishes we all enjoy fall somewhere in between those two. But what are the most popular, and why? Check out the list below!
All-Time Top Three Pasta Dishes
Spaghetti Bolognese
The most popular pasta dish outside Italy is spaghetti Bolognese, though all kinds of Bolognese feature. It’s probably been a staple meal throughout most of your life, if you’re anything like me. A dinner-time favourite or many reasons, but mainly because it is simple to make, great for feeding a growing family, and delicious as well! It’s also rather healthy and can be made even healthier by upping the veg content to your liking. If you’re looking to switch things up a bit, sausage pasta is another hearty, flavorful option that’s just as easy to prepare and perfect for busy weeknights.
Carbonara
This creamy and luxurious favourite actually has its origins as a peasant dish, which is evident in its small list of ingredients and relative simplicity to prepare. It is the subject of a lot of (often heated) debate: whole eggs or yolks? With cream or without? Bacon or pancetta? You will find it hard to get a majority decision on any of those questions, but in its purest form, Carbonara should be prepared with egg yolks, guanciale (pig cheek), olive oil, and not much else. The creaminess comes not from cream, but from the egg yolks, which should be added to the hot pasta at the last minute, and cooked just enough as to stay silky and smooth, not scrambled!
Lasagne
This might seem like a bit of cheat, as lasagne is similar to Bolognese. But layered presentation, the sheets of pasta and the bechamel sauce, put it in a class of its own. Lasagne may actually have its origins in Greece, as the name derives from the Greek word lasagnum, meaning dish or bowl. In Bologna, where the Lasagne most of us would recognise first become popular, it is traditionally made with green pasta sheets which incorporate cooked spinach. It can be time consuming and difficult to prepare for the amateur, but when it’s done right, it’s easy to see why lasagne is popular the world over.
So there you are, the top three most popular pasta dishes! Of course, what made these dishes so popular isn’t where they really originated, or the exact traditional family recipe. Everyone has their own spin, their own secret ingredients and methods of cooking. That, and the ease of cooking with pasta, is what has made these dishes into the favourite they have become today!
