The curves and grooves of rotini pasta holds sauce very well, especially with pesto or herb-based oils that stick all around. This spiral-shaped pasta has several nooks and crannies for sauces, seasonings, and cheese to stick.
Rotini pasta is the ideal choice for soups and meat sauces because it can trap the broth or sauces, making every bite flavor-filled.
What to eat with rotini? Traditionally, rotini pasta is served with pesto sauce. However, it is not limit with this sauce and can also be coated with tomato, oil, or cream-based sauces.
Furthermore, this noodle shape goes well in pasta salads as well as baked pasta dishes with chunkier heavy sauces, vegetables, cheese, and meat that gets caught into the spiral shape.
If you are looking for the best shape to prepare pasta with, go with rotini because its corkscrew shape allows the noodle to hold more sauce for enhanced flavor. That being said, let’s look at the sauces, cheeses, and seasonings that pair perfectly with rotini.
What pairs well with rotini?
Classic ways to serve rotini is with sauces, including oil-based, cream, and tomato sauces. However, rotini pasta can also be added to salads and baked pasta dishes.
In order to achieve a classic dish, choose the ingredient pairings wisely using these recommendations:
- Fruits: kiwi, pineapple, banana, apple, peach, cantaloupe, pears, lemon
- Vegetables: asparagus, squash, eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, green beans, carrots, celery, spinach
- Nuts: pine nuts, walnuts
- Meats: ground beef and pork, chicken
- Cured meats: bacon, sausage, salami
- Seafood: shrimp, mussels, scallops, clams
- Fish: halibut, salmon
- Herbs: mint, basil, sage, rosemary
What seasoning goes well with rotini?
In general, rotini goes well with hot, spicy, or acidic seasonings. This type of pasta is quite laid-back, therefore adding classic seasoning can improve the flavor profile.
- olive oil
- garlic butter
- Italian dressing
- dijon mustard
- vinegar
- tarragon
If you love extra bold flavors, go with some coarsely ground chopped mignonette or pepper, paprika, cayenne, and curry powder to garnish the rotini.
What sauce goes well with rotini?
Traditionally, pesto sauce is served with rotini, but the next most popular sauces that pair perfectly with rotini are butter and oil-based sauces.
With sauces, it’s easy to get a nice flavor coating to glaze whatever is inside the pasta. It traps the herb-based sauce, owing to its grooves and curves.
Here are other classic sauces that go well with rotini:
- ragu
- bolognese
- marinara
- alfredo
- tomato
What cheese goes with rotini?
Whether you are preparing sauce or garnishing pasta with shredded topping, cheese is an essential ingredient when it comes to pasta. It adds texture and elegant flavor to the dish, making it hard to separate those two.
What to serve with rotini?
Rotini is pretty versatile and can be served with a variety of dishes. These dishes include:
- Roasted vegetables: Not only are they a healthy option, but vegetables add crunch, sweet taste, and texture to a rotini pasta meal. Roasted broccoli, zucchini, cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, mushroom, kale, spinach, or asparagus make rotini even more mouthwatering.
- Meat: Rotini pasta is such a great main entrée to include meat as protein. Chicken, beef, shrimp, pork, turkey, and salmon also pair perfectly with rotini.
- Salad: Rotini itself can be served as pasta salad for side dishes. However, if it is the main pasta dish, consider adding fresh chopped caesar salad or simple mixed green salad with Italian dressing to give a refreshing acidic taste before serving pasta.
- Bread: Breadsticks or garlic bread are typically served with any pasta. The fresh baked bread melts in your mouth, and dipping in herbed butter provides an amazing pair with rotini pasta.
- Wine: Pinot Noir provides rich, earthy flavors to rotini. Merlot, Riesling, and Zinfandel wines will add acidity, making rotini pasta less dreary.
Eat with Rotini: Conclusion
The corkscrew shape of rotini allows it to hold cheese and sauces, making it a relatively popular pasta. Rotini is a blank canvas making it easy to blend with most foods, sauces, and cheese.
Most well known way to serve rotini is with pesto or oil-based sauces. However, due to its shape, it can actually go well with all kinds of sauces including tomato, meat-based, or cream-based sauces.
Rotini is a versatile pasta that can easily be transformed into pasta salad and baked pasta casserole without loosing its shape. Furthermore, it still holds on to chunky and heavy sauce when mixed with vegetables, cheese, and meat.
That being said, you can never go wrong with rotini pasta. Try rotini and these unique pairings next time you are unsure what to prepare.