Paccheri substitutes

The everyday answer, and the one most recipes quietly mean when they say large tube pasta. Ridged and about half the diameter of paccheri.

Best for

ragu, genovese, baked pasta, vegetable sauces

Because the tube is narrower, sauce clings to the outside ridges rather than pooling inside, so each bite is more evenly coated and less of a surprise. A chunky Neapolitan genovese with onions and shredded beef will sit alongside rigatoni instead of getting caught inside it. Cook one to two minutes less than the box says if you are baking it afterward.

Smooth-walled tubes, which is closer to what paccheri actually are, since paccheri are usually sold lisci rather than ridged.

Best for

baked pasta, ragu, ziti al forno

The smooth surface behaves like paccheri: sauce slides rather than grips, so you want a sauce with real body or fat, not a thin one. Narrower again than rigatoni, so slightly less sauce per bite and a springier chew.

The best diameter match on a supermarket shelf. Cut each long tube in half and you have something very close to paccheri in width and length, with enough room to stuff.

Best for

stuffed and baked paccheri, paccheri with ricotta or sausage filling

The walls are thinner than paccheri, so they collapse more easily when you pipe filling in and they can split during baking. Boil them a full three minutes short of al dente, cool them in a single layer, and stuff with a piping bag or a zip bag with the corner cut off. Expect a softer, more lasagna-like bite rather than paccheri's dense chew.

The most reliable swap if the recipe is stuffed and baked, because shells are designed to hold filling and to sit upright in the dish.

Best for

stuffed and baked, ricotta fillings, make-ahead dinners

A shell is a cup, not a tube, so the filling is exposed on top and browns and dries where paccheri would keep it sealed and creamy. Cover the dish for the first twenty minutes to compensate. Shells also hold noticeably more filling per piece, so budget about a third more.

Calamarata are the same diameter as paccheri but cut short into rings; lumaconi are large snail shells. Both are usually found in the same specialty aisle, so if you were looking for paccheri you may find these instead.

Best for

seafood sauces, ragu, chunky vegetable sauces

Calamarata behave almost identically to paccheri with a loose sauce and are actually better with seafood, since the rings mimic squid. Too short to stuff. Lumaconi hold a lot of sauce and can be stuffed, but they look rustic rather than sleek.

The last resort, and worth naming because most people have it in the cupboard.

Best for

ragu, baked pasta, weeknight substitution

Roughly a third of paccheri's diameter, so a sauce built around big tubes ends up with the chunks of meat or vegetable sitting outside the pasta rather than inside it, and the dish reads as ordinary weeknight pasta. Cut the meat and vegetables in the sauce smaller and it works fine.