What is your favorite pasta shape?

Bowtie pasta.
It's alphaghetti for yuppies.

Orecchiette. It's a very small cup (the name means little ear) which holds a little bit of sauce, but not so much that you get overzealous and try to fill it up.

i cant recall italian name of the pasta, but it was like spaghetti, much thicker and hollow inside. the inside gets filled with sauce, super delicous
- Bucatini?

I've always been partial to wagon wheels.

Linguine as long as it's cooked correctly. It's toothsome in the right way.
Orzo can fuck all the way off and when it gets to fuckoffville it can fuck off even further.

strozzapreti - not only is it a great shape for holding sauce and fun to eat, it's got a delightful name: the "priest strangler"
E: typos
- It looks sooooo good:
- Dont think I've had it but I'm sold already. Going to keep my eye open for some priest stranglers now
  
  It's a handmade pasta, so you probably will see it in nicer restaurants rather than stores, but if you have a place that makes fresh pasta in your town that's another place to look. Or make them yourself!

Fusilli. The spiral shape allows the right amount of pasta sauce to stick to it so you get a nice pasta-to-sauce ratio.

Bucatini is nice. Or pappardelle.

For mac and cheese: medium shells, ditalini
For red sauce pasta: medium shells, rotini
For pasta alfredo: medium shells, fettuccine
So I guess you could say my favorite pasta is potato gnocchi

that's like picking a favorite child, and it's timmy, and penne

Farfalle is the correct answer
- It’s the fanciest pasta - always wearing a bow tie.

Whichever one is currently working it's way into my mouth.
- Hey, it's me, your pasta.
  
  I take it back. This shape sucks.

It’s completely dish dependent, but if there’s sauce involved I prefer a rigati (ridged) pasta.
- Disagree, I don't think having a favorite is dish dependent. You probably have a favorite pasta dish and your preferred noodle for it. Probably your favorite shape.
- This is my answer too. I like different noodles with spaghetti sauce than I do with alfredo. You wouldn't want elbows in lasagna. This is why we have so many variations.

Lots of americans from these answers but it entirely depends on the sauce. Some types of pasta dont necessarily work with certain dishes. Some sauces work with multiple types.. try making a carbonara with penne or a mac and cheese which seems to be a popular choice here with spaghetti, they just wont work as dishes. Maybe some people jist eat the same pasta dish all the type and thats how they are basimg their answers.
- It's not about what dish you're making. It's what's your favorite. What's the dish you prefer to make with it? Pick a favorite, it's not a crime.

Alphabetti Spaghetti
I make no apologies.
- Spaghetters

Cascatelli really is the best shape. I also like rotini

Spaghetti/capellini/linguini. Wrapping pasta on the fork is part of the fun!
Alternatively, fusilli.
Penne and other hollow variations are among the least favorite because they can retain a bit of water inside and getting that onto your tongue is not fun.

Pipe rigate for cheese based sauces, fusilli (rigatoni) for tomato based sauces.

Yes.

Ziti's no-nonsense. Dead simple, and great.

Conchiglie, the medium size of shells.

That pillow shape if it's filled with parmesan.

Rotini holds lots of whatever sauce plus seems like a great consistency - substantial but not solid

Farfalle, because its also a firework. If im not taking fireworks into consideration I'd have to say rigatoni, they have a good heft to them and take on sauce well. Good with butter and hot sauce.

Some dude invented a new pasta shape in the last few years called cascatelli (little waterfall)
NPR did a segment on it
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/978877878/for-pasta-lovers-bored-by-spaghetti-theres-a-new-short-wavy-sauce-holding-shape

Shells. Also linguine and spaghetti

Conchiglie - kon-kill-ee-a (last letter rhymes with 'hay')
Little shells, each one a cup for sauce.

I'm a ho for orecchiette, I just love how toothsome it is. Maybe not the absolute #1 for sauce retention but I'm all about that texture.

To eat cooked? Orzo! I love rice and pasta, and they made a rice shaped pasta. It's a win-win!
To eat raw? Wholewheat spaghetti or if I'm feeling especially daring, farfalle.
- Real talk, do you chomp it raw like chips? Or do you like . . . suck on it until it softens??
  
  Chomp it raw. I think this habit of eating raw pasta came from my old habit of eating bones.
  
  Eww

Cavatappi, hands down

People like hating on elbow but I think it’s quite nice… cavatappi gives me anxiety. I do also really love a standard flat square ravioli.

fusilli but i pronounce it F. U. Silly
- hahaha glad I'm not the only one :) I can't call it this around the house because kids.

Lasagna plates if that counts. If not Macaroni. Compromise between shelf space per serving and ease of getting the portion size right (1.25dl raw, 2.5dl cooked). Contender is spaghetti which wins on shelf space but I always end up with too much or too little without resorting to the kitchen scales.
I find the larger variants are hard to get a good mix of sauce and pasta in your mouth regardless if you use a spoon or fork.

Fossili!

Idk why but bow tie shaped fucks so hard for me.

noodle

The curly tubes

Ziti because the sauce gets up in the hole :)

People can say "penne rigate" or declare not to be Italian without actually writing it
- Italian food snobism ruined Italian cuisine
  
  Penne rigate are the opposite of snobism!
- Oh man, my local shop sells these as "makkaroni" and I was so confused, because I knew those to be a different shape. Now I just checked Wikipedia and it literally has a heading like:
  "Makkaroni" in Germany
  And it says that apparently we refer to any longer, straight, tube-shaped pasta as "makkaroni". I guess, it's alright that we don't use the Italian spelling after all. 🫠

If tortellini counts, that’s my preference.

Fettuccine. Honestly I just love noodles, and the thicker the better.
- I like fettuccine but when you hit udon size they're too thick for me
  
  Udon is the best.

Lately I've been really liking gemelli! More pasta per pasta.

Penne.

Spaghettini!

Kraft spiral 😩

Fusili for the consistent sauce-to-pasta ratio.
Edit: Oops looks like Wardacus beat me to it.

It is absolutely dependent on what I am making.
In general my preference is tortiglioni/elicoidali, but that doesn't work with everything. As long pasta I prefer thick spaghetti-like shapes, like vermicelli, spaghetti alla chitarra or tonnarelli (with egg). Obviously if we are talking about fresh pasta there is also much to choose from, but I would say one of my favorite type is quadrucci, very good in soups. Also good gnocchi are amazing (do they count as pasta?), bad gnocchi are terrible.
Pasta that I don't like the most, probably farfalle and bucatini. Fun fact, bucatini are called "abbotta straccioni" in Rome, which roughly translates to "peasants stuffers", because more uneducated people who wouldn't know how to eat long pasta would "suck" and ingest lots of air (due to the hole) and get filled more, so restaurants could serve smaller portions. To this day, I will take tonnarelli/gnocchi/rigatoni with amatriciana to bucatini any day.

Baby Shell, makes fantastic mac n cheese

I really like Capeletti, they have a great texture.

cock and balls
- First time I was in a sex shop was together with my parents to buy some penis shaped pasta to bring home as a joke gift for my brother.
  
  interesting

telephone