Pasta shapes · Italian cuisine
Fusilli
Spindles and spirals – hand-wound on an iron rod, or factory-made as single or double helices.
At a glance
- Origin
- Italy; the handmade form has local variants differing in length.
- Dough
- Semolina and water; at home also soft flour or egg.
- Production
- By hand around a ferretto; industrially extruded.
- Pairs with
- Thick and chunky sauces.
- Cooking time
- Dried about 10 min, depending on the maker; handmade ones depending on thickness.
Fusilli are pasta twisted into a corkscrew spiral. Handmade ones run from about 5 to 15 cm depending on the area; factory ones are usually short, a single or double helix of varying width and thickness. The related fusilli bucati are made by twisting a thin tube.
Home dough is durum semolina or soft flour with water, sometimes with egg; factory dough is only semolina and water. By hand, a piece of dough is pressed onto a thin square iron rod (ferretto), rolled quickly along it on a board and tapped off – leaving a spiral. Factories extrude the shape through a special die.
The coils catch thick and chunky sauces.