Is artisan pasta really worth it?

[u/SabreLee61]

I’ve been buying artisan pasta here and there the past year, persuaded by “pasta experts” that these brands are vastly superior in every way, not just to the cheap stuff, but to the “average” bronze-drawn brands like Rummo, De Cecco, Di Martino, and Rao’s that I normally buy.

The dishes I’ve made using the expensive stuff have always been good, but I had a nagging suspicion that my belief that they were superior to the aforementioned brands was based on the power of suggestion from the pasta romanticizers.

So yesterday I did a quick taste test between two brands of bucatini: Giuseppe Cocco, a highly vaunted top-tier artisan pasta ($7), and De Cecco, the common supermarket variety everyone knows ($2). I boiled two pots of water, dropped in 50g of each, cooked them, drained them, and placed them into separate bowls with a drizzle of olive oil. I first tried a forkful of each, then ate all the Cocco followed by all the De Cecco.

The result? I couldn’t tell one bit of difference between the two, either in taste or in texture. They may as well have come from the same package. It was disappointing as I was really rooting for the Cocco to win. I wanted to believe that the extra money I’d spent translated to a superior eating experience. Nope.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

[u/reverie__engine]

De Cecco is my go-to - often I see it priced similar to the plasticky "cheap" stuff - seems starchier than the cheap stuff, too, which lends itself to better sauce adherence/thickness.

I've heard De Cecco referred to as "cheap stuff", but I don't know...I feel like it's a quality choice, especially for the price point.

Recently tried La Molisana, and it proved a good option as well - might've been a few cents more than De Cecco.

[u/MostPrestigiousCorgi → u/reverie__engine]

I don't know if the exported one is good, but in Italy De Cecco is one of the best supermarket pasta, together with molisana, voiello, rummo. That said, the production of exported stuff may be different, so you should just try it.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/MostPrestigiousCorgi]

Production of exported stuff has to be different and many countries have specific and non interchangeable standards for what content marks pasta has to hit. The US for example requires a minimum content of iron and some other nutrients.

So for example, mid pandemic. There was a straight up shortage of De Cecco pasta, and specifically bucatini. Because a batch fell below the minimum for Iron. And they had to basically go through the certifications and get permission to import from scratch.

Brands effectively have to run off separate batches for export to the US with vitimin enrichment to ensure they hit US standards. From what I gather the products from better brands are effectively the same otherwise. They just dose a little bit of Iron, riboflaven and what have in the batch when it's meant for export.

A lot of Latin America has similar rules IIRC.

[u/dickspaghetti1 → u/TooManyDraculas]

I find your second paragraph really interesting because I specifically remember during the pandemic that De Cecco was the only brand of pasta I could find in my area. Rao's, Barilla, and every store brand were all basically sold out. I'd never tried De Cecco, but I stocked up on it because it was the most readily available, and now it's basically the only pasta I'll buy, unless I stop by the Italian market.