What Is Pasta, fusilli and How Can I Use It?

Here's everything worth knowing about pasta, fusilli and how to pick it, what it is, how to store it, and what to use instead, plus 34 recipes to cook tonight.

Key Points

Short corkscrew with spiral grooves that grip sauce, dressing, and small vegetables
Great in pasta salads, pesto, cream sauces, and brothy soups; weak with thin sauces
Cook dried fusilli 10 to 12 minutes; start tasting at nine since the twist is thin
Rotini is a near-identical one-for-one swap; cavatappi and penne also work
Buy durum or semolina fusilli; cooked pasta keeps three to four days refrigerated

What is pasta, fusilli?

Fusilli is a short pasta twisted into a tight corkscrew, like a spring or a piece of rope wound around itself. The name comes from fuso, the Italian word for spindle, the tool whose spiral the shape echoes. Each piece has open spiral grooves along its length.

Those grooves are the whole trick: they catch and hold sauce, dressing, and small bits of vegetable far better than a smooth shape can.

A close cousin, rotini, has a sharper, more angular twist; the two are often used interchangeably and are easy to confuse on the shelf.

Cooking With Fusilli

The corkscrew shape is a workhorse. It holds creamy and chunky sauces in its spirals and floats well in brothy soups without packing down. That range is why it ends up in so many weeknight dishes.

Dried fusilli cooks to al dente in about 10 to 12 minutes. Because the twist is fairly thin, it can tip from firm to soft quickly, so start tasting at the 9-minute mark rather than trusting the clock.

For a pasta salad, cook it a touch past al dente. The spirals firm up again as they chill, and a slightly softer cook keeps the salad from going chewy in the fridge. For salting and water amounts, see the pasta hub.

Sauces and Pairings

Fusilli does its best work with sauces that have texture to grab. Pesto coats the spirals evenly, and a chunky vegetable sauce like the one in Fusilli with Olives & Cauliflower tucks into the twists instead of sliding off.

Cream sauces work well too, since they cling to all that surface area; Fusilli with Creamy Tuna is a good example. It is a natural in cold salads, where the spirals hold vinaigrette in every bite, as in Carole's Pasta Salad with Basil Vinaigrette.

The one place fusilli falls short is with a thin, silky sauce meant for long strands. A light butter or oil sauce just runs off the spirals and collects at the bottom of the bowl, so keep those for spaghetti or linguine.

Substitutes

Rotini is the closest swap by far, near-identical apart from a tighter, more angular twist; use it one for one. Cavatappi, a longer hollow corkscrew, works just as well and adds an interior to trap sauce.

Penne or another short ridged tube will stand in when you need sauce-grip but not the spiral look, and rotelle wagon wheels fill the same playful role in a kids' meal or salad.

Buying and Storing

Pick fusilli made from durum wheat or semolina, which the package will list. The hard wheat keeps the twist springy and intact through cooking and reheating, while soft-wheat pasta loosens and goes limp.

Tri-color fusilli, tinted with spinach and tomato, is mostly for looks and adds little flavor.

Dried fusilli keeps for around two years in a sealed container in a cool, dry spot, staying safe well beyond that with only a small loss of texture.

Cooked fusilli holds three to four days in the fridge. Toss leftover plain spirals with a little oil so they do not clump before you reheat or dress them.

Nutrition

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 2 oz (57g)

Amount per Serving

Calories 211Calories from Fat 7

% Daily Value *

Total Fat 0.9g 1%

Saturated Fat 0.2g 1%

Trans Fat ~

Cholesterol 0mg 0%

Sodium 3mg 0%

Total Carbohydrate 42.6g 14%

Dietary Fiber 2g 7%

Sugars 1.5

Protein 7.4g

Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 0%

Calcium 1% • Iron 10%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your caloric needs.

recipeland.com/nutrition

Quick facts

Where to find pasta, fusilli: Pasta, fusilli is usually found in the pasta section or aisle of the grocery store or supermarket.

Food group: Pasta, fusilli is a member of the Cereal Grains and Pasta US Department of Agriculture nutritional food group.

In Chinese: 意大利面，螺丝粉
British (UK) term: Pasta, fusilli
en français: pâtes, fusilli
en español: pastas, fusilli

How much does pasta, fusilli weigh?

Amount	Weight
2 ounce	57 grams

Cereal Grains and Pasta

Amaranth flour 28 Arrowroot flour 91 Pearl barley 219 Buckwheat flour 37 Cracked wheat (bulgur) 179 Cornmeal 811 Cornstarch 2554 Couscous 155 Millet 62 Quinoa 111

Recipes using pasta, fusilli

There are 34 recipes that contain this ingredient.

Olive & White Mushroom Soup with 3-colors Fusilli

Once upon a time I was reading a magazine article about good cooking. The journalist tried to convince me not to use some combinations of ingredients. One of the "banned" combinations mentioned was green and black olives. And so this soup was born to enjoy me.

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