FOOD NEWS
The Pasta Type You Need For Traditional Greek Pastitsio
By Grace Allison
Many Greek dishes include acidic, Mediterranean ingredients, like lemon, olives, tomatoes, and feta cheese, but there's a hearty, meaty, and creamy dish you need to try: Pastitsio.
Traditional pastitsio features a pasta layer, a ground meat ragu layer, and a thick upper layer of creamy béchamel sauce. It's baked in a rectangular pan, similar to a lasagna.
Traditional Greek pastitsio uses pastitsio pasta — a long, thin, hollow noodle. Bucatini is the next best thing due to its similar shape, but it has a smaller diameter.
You can also use other shapes, like penne or ziti, but tighter tubes, like pastitsio and bucatini, give the dish a denser pasta bite and provide a traditional visual presentation.
A round hollow pasta gives baked, sliced pastitsio a beautiful cross-section of circles on the bottom and captures all the sauce from the ragu and béchamel when cut.