If mostaccioli has turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use it with confidence and how to choose it, cook it, store it, what to substitute, and 13 recipes to try it in.

What is mostaccioli?

Mostaccioli is a tube-shaped pasta, smooth-sided and cut on the diagonal at each end, very close to penne. The name comes from the Italian for little mustaches, a nod to the slanted cut. In much of the American Midwest the word is used almost interchangeably with penne.

The main difference is the surface. Classic mostaccioli is mostaccioli lisce, meaning smooth, while most penne sold in stores is rigate, meaning ridged. Those ridges grip sauce more aggressively; the smooth mostaccioli tube is sleeker and lets a sauce slide and coat rather than cling.

It is a medium-size tube, usually around two inches long and hollow.

That hollow is the whole appeal. Every bite carries sauce in the middle as well as on the outside.

Cooking With Mostaccioli

This is a sturdy, everyday shape built for hearty sauces and for baking. Cook it in well-salted boiling water until just shy of al dente, around 10 to 12 minutes, then drain.

If it is going into a baked dish, pull it a minute or two early, since it keeps cooking in the oven.

Baked mostaccioli is its signature dish, an Italian-American casserole of pasta and tomato sauce under melted cheese. Marvelous Mostacciol builds exactly that, the tubes holding their shape and trapping sauce through a long bake.

It is just as good tossed simply. Dorothy's Mostaccioli Vegetarian Pasta coats it with vegetables and a light sauce, and Chicken Artichoke Mostaccioli in Bechamel Sauce shows how the smooth tubes carry a creamy sauce without turning gluey.

Save a splash of the starchy cooking water before draining. Stirred into the sauce, it helps everything emulsify and cling to the smooth pasta.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Mostaccioli loves hearty company. Chunky tomato and meat sauces, sausage, ricotta and mozzarella, roasted vegetables, and cream or bechamel all suit its size and hollow shape. Delicate oil-only dressings slide off the smooth surface, so it does better with something that has body.

The most common mistake is overcooking, especially before a bake. Mushy mostaccioli collapses in the oven, so undercook it slightly when a casserole is the plan.

The other mistake is drowning it. Because the tubes are smooth rather than ridged, a thin watery sauce will pool at the bottom of the dish instead of coating each piece, so reach for a thicker sauce or reduce yours before tossing.

Substitutes

Penne is the natural stand-in and the closest match in size and shape; use it one for one. If you want the smooth feel, look for penne lisce, but the common ridged penne works fine and grips sauce even better.

Ziti is another easy swap, similar in length but with squared-off ends instead of the diagonal cut. Rigatoni works too, though its tubes are wider and ridged, so it suits a chunkier sauce.

Any medium tube or sturdy short pasta will carry a baked dish; the shape matters more than the exact name once cheese and sauce are involved.

Buying and Storing

Dried mostaccioli is sold in the regular pasta aisle, sometimes labeled penne lisce if the brand does not use the mostaccioli name. Either smooth tube works for the same recipes, so buy whichever you find.

Like all dried pasta, it keeps almost indefinitely in the pantry. Store it sealed in a cool, dry cupboard away from moisture, and an unopened box stays good well past its printed date, though flavor is best within a couple of years.

Cooked mostaccioli keeps three to five days covered in the fridge. Leftover baked pasta reheats well and often tastes even better the next day once the sauce has settled into the tubes.

Quick facts

In Chinese

mostaccioli

British (UK) term

Mostaccioli

en français

mostaccioli

en español

mostaccioli

Recipes using mostaccioli

There are 13 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 13 recipes