Bigoli substitutes

The closest all-round match. Historic bigoli were often made with wholemeal flour, so whole-wheat spaghetti gets you the same wheaty, slightly bitter, nutty background that stands up to anchovy and long-cooked onion. Bronze-cut whole-wheat pasta is also naturally chalky and rough, which is the whole reason bigoli exists.

Best for

bigoli in salsa, bigoli with duck ragu, anchovy and onion sauces, sardine sauces

Whole-wheat pasta has less stretch, so cook it a minute short of the box time and finish it in the sauce. It is thinner than real bigoli, so the bite is lighter, but the flavour is right.

The right thickness, roughly the diameter of bigoli, and almost always bronze cut so the surface is properly rough. The difference is the hole down the middle, which fills with sauce and makes each strand lighter and springier than solid bigoli. Made from white semolina, so you lose the wholemeal flavour.

Best for

bigoli in salsa, duck or goose ragu, sauces with rendered fat or oil

Bucatini takes longer than spaghetti, usually nine to eleven minutes, and it cooks unevenly if the pan is crowded. Use a wide pot and plenty of water.

Solid and properly chunky, so the mouthfeel is the closest to bigoli of any easily bought shape. What you do not get is the porous surface, especially with cheap Teflon-extruded pasta, which comes out slick and lets a thin anchovy sauce slide off into a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.

Best for

bigoli in salsa, rich ragu, cacio e pepe style sauces

Look for bronze cut on the packet. A slick strand can be rescued by tossing it in the pan over heat with a ladle of starchy pasta water until the sauce visibly grabs on.

Pici are the Tuscan hand-rolled thick strands, and if you can find them they give you the best texture match: dense, chewy, irregular and thoroughly absorbent. They are shorter than bigoli and slightly gummier, and they are almost as hard to find as bigoli itself, which limits how useful this option is.

Best for

anchovy and onion sauces, garlic and oil, meat ragu

Fresh pasta cooks in three to five minutes and needs a lighter hand with pasta water because it is already soft. Any thick fresh egg-free strand works the same way.

Right flavour, wrong cross-section. A flat ribbon coats differently from a round strand, holding sauce on its faces rather than around its circumference, so bigoli in salsa made with linguine tastes correct but eats slicker and slides apart on the fork more easily.

Best for

bigoli in salsa, sardine and breadcrumb sauces

A reasonable compromise if your shop stocks whole-wheat pasta only in ribbons. Toss hard in the pan so the ribbons do not stick to each other in sheets.

Being honest: this is not an Italian substitute and it will not taste traditional. What it does give you is the correct thick, chewy, round strand, and fresh or frozen udon is easier to buy in many places than bigoli. Udon is made from soft wheat and salted dough, so it is springier, blander and slightly slippery, and the sauce will not cling as well.

Best for

a thick-strand approximation when nothing else is available

Rinse the surface starch off, then finish the noodles in the anchovy and onion sauce with a little pasta water. Do not salt the sauce until you have tasted it, since udon dough already contains salt.