Spaghetti

Spaghetti is a long, thin, solid pasta that comes from Italy. It is a very important part of traditional Italian food. Like other kinds of pasta, spaghetti is made from milled wheat and water. Sometimes, it is made with special wheat called durum-wheat semolina, which gives it a nice texture.

Spaghetti is usually white because it is made from refined flour, but sometimes people add whole wheat flour to give it more nutrients. There are different thicknesses of spaghetti: spaghettoni is thicker, spaghettini is thinner, and capellini is very thin.

Over time, people started to like shorter lengths of spaghetti more. Today, the most common length is about 25 to 30 centimeters, or 10 to 12 inches. Spaghetti is often served with tomato sauce, meat, or vegetables, making it a favorite dish in many places around the world.

History

See also: Pasta § History

Spaghetti comes from an old kind of thin bread from the Middle East. This bread was flattened and sometimes dried to keep it fresh. Later, people in Persia started cutting this bread into strips, calling it rishta.

As people traveled, the idea of drying pasta spread. By the 7th century, Arabs brought this custom to places like Sicily. There, it mixed with local ways of making fresh pasta. By the 12th century, farms in Sicily were making lots of this long, dried pasta.

Over time, spaghetti became a common food in Italy. In the 17th century, especially in Naples, it became a staple food for everyone, not just rich people. People began cooking it faster and enjoying it with tomato sauces. By the mid-20th century, Italy was making huge amounts of spaghetti, both for its own people and to share with the world.

The story that Marco Polo brought pasta from China to Italy is a popular legend, but it is not true. This idea started long after Polo's time and was likely a mix-up of facts.

Production

Spaghetti is made from ground grain (flour) and water. You can also find whole wheat and multigrain spaghetti. Most spaghetti is made in factories using special machines called auger extruders. The ingredients are mixed and shaped carefully to make sure the pasta is smooth and doesn’t have air bubbles. The machines that shape the pasta are cooled with water to keep the pasta from getting too hot. When the spaghetti is drying, workers make sure the strands don’t stick together and stay just the right softness.

In Naples, spaghetti is made thinner than in the United States. There are also different sizes of spaghetti: spaghettoni is thicker, and spaghettini is thinner, though still a bit thicker than the pasta from Naples.

Nutrition

Pasta gives us important things our bodies need, like carbohydrates, protein, iron, dietary fiber, potassium, and B vitamins. When pasta is made from whole wheat, it has even more dietary fiber than pasta made from regular flour.

Preparation

Spaghetti can be fresh or dry, and it is cooked in a big pot of boiling water with salt. After cooking, the water is drained using a special container called a colander. Sometimes, spaghetti is cooked just right so it is still a little firm when you bite it, which is called al dente.

In some parts of Italy, spaghetti is broken into smaller pieces and served with vegetables, beans, or in a soup. This started a long time ago when money was tight, and breaking the spaghetti helped save food. Today, broken pieces of spaghetti are still sold and sometimes given to hospitals and nursing homes.

Serving

Main article: List of pasta dishes

Spaghetti, a symbol of Italian cuisine, is often served with tomato sauce that includes herbs like oregano and basil, olive oil, meat, or vegetables. Other ways to prepare spaghetti include amatriciana or carbonara, and grated hard cheeses such as pecorino romano, Parmesan, and Grana Padano are usually sprinkled on top.

In the Philippines, a special version called Filipino spaghetti is enjoyed. This type is sweet, using banana ketchup or sugar to sweeten the tomato sauce. It often includes a lot of giniling (ground meat), sliced hot dogs, and cheese. This dish started between the 1940s and 1960s when there was a shortage of tomatoes during World War II, leading to the use of banana ketchup. Spaghetti was brought by Americans and changed to fit local tastes for sweet food.

• Spaghetti dishes

  Spaghetti alla carbonara

_[Spaghetti alle vongole](/wiki/Spaghetti_alle_vongole)_

_[Spaghetti aglio e olio](/wiki/Spaghetti_aglio_e_olio)_

• .jpg)

  Spaghetti alla puttanesca

_[Spaghetti alla Nerano](/wiki/Spaghetti_alla_Nerano)_

• _(cropped).jpg)

  Spaghetti bolognese, common outside of Italy

In popular culture

Spaghetti has appeared in many fun and famous moments in movies and TV. In the 1931 silent film City Lights, the actor Charlie Chaplin tried to eat a very long piece of spaghetti, which made for a funny scene. Another famous moment happened in the 1955 animated film Lady and the Tramp, where the two main characters shared a plate of spaghetti and accidentally kissed while eating the same strand. This scene is very well-remembered in American film history.

The TV program Panorama once showed a made-up story about spaghetti growing in Switzerland on April Fools' Day in 1957 for fun.

Sometimes, messy or tangled computer source code is called _spaghetti code because it looks like a jumble of spaghetti. The same idea applies to messy cable management, called "cable spaghetti". In clothing, very thin straps on a dress or top are called "spaghetti straps". The term spaghetti Western describes Western-style movies made in Europe by Italians.