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Everything spaghetti can do, angel hair pasta can do faster. Which is part of why it’s a pantry staple for me. Really, it’s just spaghetti—except thinner, which means that it cooks in half the time (about six minutes). I’ve found that the strands are somehow less susceptible to breaking with overenthusiastic tossing, and because it’s so thin, it absorbs flavor all the way through to the center of each noodle in a way you can rarely achieve with thicker pasta types.
All through summer, I toss angel hair pasta withpesto—the thinner strands mean more surface area, which means (yup, you guessed it) more pesto in every bite. I’ve even cooked it into a golden Parmesan-crusted pasta frittata.
虽然天使长发面食是伟大的,我有一个big soft spot for the short variety, which can be found simply labeled as “short-cut angel hair pasta” or “broken angel hair pasta.” I love it because it cooks even faster, it’s brilliant for tossing into soups and fry-ups, and it’s easier to handle than long strands. Plus, you can eat it with a spoon. No need for bibs to protect your white top from spaghetti-twirl splatter!
If you can’t find short-cut angel hair pasta, look for the short Spanish noodles called fideos, or just use longer angel hair pasta and break it up into two-inch lengths yourself.
My go-to way with short-cut angel hair pasta is to fry it up with other flavorful, quick-cooking ingredients. Specifically,garlic, butter, bacon, and cabbage. Super speedy and shockingly good, this has quickly become a fan-favorite from my cookbook,RecipeTin Eats Dinner.
This quick dinner starts with boiling the pasta for a quick stint while you sauté bacon, garlic, and onion just until the bacon begins to brown and the onion has turned translucent. Next, the cabbage goes into the skillet with a tablespoon of butter, to soften and sweeten for a few minutes before it all gets tossed together with the cooked pasta and a shower of Parmesan and a squeeze of lemon for freshness. Finally, a good sprinkle of coarsely ground black pepper gives it a bold finish.
The result is buttery, garlicky, and bacon-y with a good hit of savoriness from the Parmesan and little pops of heat from the pepper. The angel hair pasta soaks up all that delicious flavor and gets caramelized edges, while the cabbage softens and gets tangled up in all the pasta bits so they become one. The pasta is cooked and ready for the skillet by the time you have the rest of the ingredients prepped, and the whole dinner is on the table in 12 minutes flat, from start to finish—a feat that mostpasta recipescan only dream of.
