Pappardelle substitutes

Narrower flat egg ribbons, around six to ten millimetres wide, sold dried in nests or fresh.

Best for

braised beef and short rib ragu, wild boar and duck ragu, mushroom and cream sauces, any pappardelle recipe

The obvious answer and a genuinely close one, since these are the same pasta cut narrower. Egg dough, same tender chew, same porous surface that sauce clings to. The only real difference is scale: a strand of tagliatelle is a third the width of pappardelle, so instead of broad sheets folding around chunks of meat you get a tangle of ribbons, and very large pieces of braised meat can end up sitting beside the pasta rather than wrapped in it. Shredding the meat a little finer as you fold it through fixes that completely. Fresh versions cook in two to four minutes, dried nests in six to eight.

Ordinary flat lasagne sheets broken lengthwise into ribbons roughly the width of pappardelle.

Best for

braised ragu, short rib and oxtail sauces, mushroom sauces, when the shop has no ribbon pasta at all

The best-value trick in this whole list, because a lasagne sheet is dimensionally just a very wide pappardelle. Snap each sheet into two or three long strips, or cut them with a knife if you want tidy edges, and cook them in plenty of well-salted water, stirring more than usual because wide flat pasta loves to stick to itself. The result is remarkably faithful, with the same broad drape and chew. Differences: most dried lasagne is made without egg, so the pasta is a shade firmer and less rich, and the edges come out ragged, which honestly looks rather good. Add a minute or two to the cooking time compared with pappardelle.

Short, wide, curly egg noodles sold in bags in the pasta or kosher aisle of most supermarkets.

Best for

beef and mushroom ragu, stroganoff-style sauces, braises with gravy, weeknight substitutions

Closer than its reputation suggests, because it is a wide egg-dough noodle, which is exactly what pappardelle is. It carries a heavy meaty sauce well and tastes rich in the same way. Two clear differences: the noodles are short, three or four centimetres rather than long ribbons, so you lose the drape and the dish eats more like a hearty casserole than a plate of Italian pasta, and they are softer and more delicate, cooking in five to seven minutes and turning mushy quickly after that. Undercook them slightly and finish them in the sauce, and do not stir them hard.

Long flat ribbons with ruffled or frilled edges, roughly pappardelle width or slightly narrower.

Best for

ragu, creamy sauces, sausage and tomato sauces, when you want the sauce to cling harder

Arguably an upgrade rather than a substitute, and often stocked in shops that have no pappardelle. The ruffled edges give the noodle even more surface than a plain ribbon does, so a thick ragu grips beautifully and the plate looks handsome. What changes is the bite: those frills stay a little firmer and springier than a smooth pappardelle sheet, so the texture is more animated and slightly less silky. Most versions are durum wheat rather than egg dough, so the flavour is cleaner and less rich, which a butter-enriched sauce more than compensates for.

Big ridged tubes or cupped shells with plenty of texture and hollow space to trap sauce.

Best for

chunky braised ragu, sausage sauces, baked dishes, feeding children, make-ahead meals

If there is no long pasta in the house, this is the right kind of compromise, because it keeps the thing that matters most: a rough, generous surface that holds on to a heavy sauce. Paccheri, being large smooth tubes, and rigatoni, being ridged ones, both trap chunks of meat inside them, which is a different pleasure from pappardelle's drape but a real one. The dish changes character, becoming sturdier and more rustic, with a firmer chew and no silkiness at all. Avoid smooth narrow shapes like penne lisce or spaghetti, where a chunky sauce simply slides off and sinks.

A simple fresh egg dough rolled out and cut by hand into wide strips.

Best for

ragu, special occasions, when the shops have failed you, cooking with children

Worth mentioning because pappardelle is the easiest fresh pasta to make well, needing no machine and no fine cutting. Mix roughly one egg per hundred grams of plain or 00 flour, knead for five to ten minutes until smooth, rest it for half an hour, then roll it as thin as you can, flour it, fold it loosely and slice into wide strips. It cooks in two to three minutes in boiling salted water. The result is more tender, more golden and more absorbent than any dried pasta, which is exactly why the great ragu recipes ask for it. The honest cost is about forty minutes of your evening.