The Most Popular Pasta Dishes in Italy
Pasta is a staple in the diet in Italy, one of the reasons for that is you can do so many different things with it. There are really no rules when it comes to pasta so you can get pretty much anything that you want. That being said there are some dishes that are more popular than others, there is probably a reason for this.
It will probably come as no surprise that the most popular of the pastas is spaghetti, however this does vary depending on the region that you are in. in reality all of the pastas are quite common in Italy and the one that you choose is going to depend in large part on personal taste. You will be able to get pretty much any shape of pasta that you want at any time and since the shape is really the only difference the pasta itself really doesn't make a big difference.
The thing that separates the different pastas from each other is what goes on them. By far the most popular sauce to go on top of a pasta dish is tomato sauce. This is something that most Italians will eat every day. However you can put almost any kind of sauce that you want on your pasta. After tomato sauce, cream and cheese sauces are the most widely used. This in itself allows for a great amount of variety because of all the spices that can be used. You could eat tomato sauce every day and not have it taste the same twice since you have so many options for spices.
It is fairly common to add meat to your pasta as well. Beef is the most widely used, followed by chicken and then fish. Again this is another case where you can add variety to your pasta since you can cook the meat in so many different ways. Spaghetti with meat balls is of course a classic and probably the most popular of all the dishes that are available in Italy. However you can also get it with meat sauce or with the meat grilled before it is served with the pasta.
The most common type of pasta are the ones where the sauce is served on top of the noodles, spaghetti is the classic example here. However stuffed pasta is also fairly common as well. This would be things like ravioli, there are several other options available as well. You can of course stuff the pasta with pretty much anything that you want but you will find that most common is a tomato sauce with beef, just like with spaghetti. When all is said and done it really doesn't matter how you serve the pasta since it is really just noodles and sauce, just choose the noodles and the sauce that you like best.