The Best Types Of Pasta To Pair With Cream Sauce

Pasta is nothing if not versatile. After it's boiled, you can toss it with an infinite number of sauces, ending up with a new taste experience each time. Looking for a lighter plate of noodles? Just toss your pasta in marinara with some tongs (aka the right way). In the mood for something rich and decadent? A cream sauce is your best bet.

When pairing pasta with the luxuriousness of dairy, chef Jasper J. Mirabile Jr., owner and chef of Jasper's Restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri, and host of "Live! From Jasper's Kitchen Radio" has a crucial tip for you — choose the right type of pasta. His first choices might not surprise you, as one of them is famously friendly with Alfredo (which you can give a major steak upgrade). "Fettuccine for sure and then Tagliatelle. The old school fettuccine cut allows the sauce to coat each strand evenly and the same goes for tagliatelle and my all-time favorite pappardelle, a wider cut of pasta," he told Chowhound in an exclusive interview.

These long, flat pasta shapes have plenty of surface area for sauce to cling to. That means you'll enjoy a perfect proportion of pasta and sauce in every bite, without any disappointingly bland mouthfuls. If you prefer rounder pasta shapes, no worries — Chef Mirabile has a few recommendations for you there, too.

When it comes to shorter pasta shapes, Chef Mirabile is no less pointed in his advice. "Mostaccioli and penne along with rigatoni also hold up well with cream sauces, where the sauce will adhere to the pasta," he said.

As one of the most notable noodles in the world, you're probably no stranger to penne. The hollow body of this pasta makes it an excellent sauce holder. Then, on the outside, you'll find little ridges etched onto the exterior. These ridges also help sauces stick to the pasta tubes. However, a variant of the penne lisce, called mostaccioli in Southern Italy, doesn't have these ridges. Instead, they're smooth on the outside.

Rigatoni has the same cylindrical shape as penne, but instead of having pointed ends like penne, it's straight-cut, so each piece of pasta looks like a short tube. This pasta is always ridged, so you can count on it to cling to your cream sauce the moment you combine the two.

Take whichever you like best (or have in your pantry at the moment), and get to work on that Olive Garden Alfredo sauce (which relies on heavy cream as a secret ingredient) you've been meaning to try. A piping hot plate of cream-sauced pasta is a comforting choice for dinner no matter the season.