Is Fresh Pasta Better Than Dried Pasta?

Neither fresh nor dried pasta is better than the other. They excel in different areas and bring different flavours, textures, and conveniences.

Homemade fresh pasta vs. dried pasta

In the world of gastronomy, "fresh" is a buzzword you'll hear bandied around a lot. The word evokes notions of high-quality, nutritious, delicious, virtuous, wholesome, and simply superior food. The truth is that just like fresh tomatoes vs. tinned tomatoes, fresh and dried pasta have their place and excel in different areas.

The differences between fresh and dried pasta

There's always an exception to the rule, but producers almost always make dried pasta with semolina (durum wheat) and water, while they typically make fresh pasta with flour and eggs. This makes them different in eight key areas: texture, freshness, flavour, colour, cost, shelf-life, convenience, and nutrition.

Texture
Al dente ("to the tooth") is something you'll hear a lot if you watch as many cooking shows as we do. It's an unwritten law in Italy that dried pasta must be served with firm resistance. Soft or mushy pasta is considered a culinary crime.

For our tastes, some restaurants take this rule too far and serve uncomfortably firm pasta, but no doubt retaining some resistance in the pasta provides a uniquely enjoyable eating experience.

Because fresh pasta has never been dried, it cannot provide an al dente texture. Instead, its high moisture content yields a silkier, more tender bite than is possible with dried pasta.

Freshness
Fresh doesn't necessarily mean as fresh as you might assume. The pasta you buy at your local farmer's market or order at your favourite Italian restaurant will usually have been made that day. Because it will have been made with raw eggs, it must be refrigerated and eaten within a day or two. Because dried pasta is a mix of flour and water that has had most moisture removed, there's nothing in it to "go off," so it can be safely kept at room temperature for two years or more.

Fresh supermarket pasta is a different thing entirely. To increase their shelf life, manufacturers pasteurise the eggs, which extends their life by up to 6 weeks. But whenever guests come over, and we want to serve our signature carbonara sauce with perfect al dente pasta, we'll make the spaghetti the day before, let it dry at room temperature for 24 hours, and then serve. On that occasion, our dried pasta is fresher than fresh pasta. Confusing, right?

Flavour
Pasta made with eggs has a rich flavour that we love, but some people find it off-putting, especially if it has been made just with yolks. On the other hand, dried pasta has a more neutral flavour that many people prefer because they argue it takes on the sauce's flavour better than its fresh counterpart.

You'll find fresh spaghetti, penne, and fusilli in chilled supermarket aisles, but it excels with filled pasta like tortellini or our personal favourite, agnolotti. These shapes are always made with egg-based dough and are widely considered the Holy Grail of skilled pasta making.

Colour
Eggs give fresh pasta an appealing yellow hue that often looks more appetising than its dried, somewhat beige cousin. When chefs make dough using only egg yolks, especially if they choose eggs from hens whose diet is rich in carotenoids, the colour of the dough can be an incredibly vibrant dark orange.

Both dried and fresh pasta can be coloured in other ways, often with a puree of vegetables like spinach or beetroot or sometimes with a dried vegetable powder. You'll find plenty of elaborately coloured dried pasta in your local TK Maxx. Still, because fresh pasta is generally regarded as a more artisan product, you will likely see more colour experimentation in the fresh stuff. If you believe in eating with your eyes, this can significantly enhance your eating experience.

Cost
It's no great surprise that pasta made from eggs will almost always be more expensive than pasta made from water, although exceptions exist. Take Atavi pasta, for example. Their dried tagliatelle will set you back a staggering £20 for a 280g box.

Shelf life
The process of drying pasta doesn't only give it the ability to be cooked to a perfectly al dente texture; it also dramatically lengthens its shelf life, making it a convenient pantry staple. Although conventional wisdom says to eat it within 2 years, it can last considerably longer if kept in a cool, dark place. Fresh pasta, on the other hand, should ideally be eaten the same day, although, just like pesto, it will generally last in the fridge for 2-3 days before its quality starts to deteriorate.

Convenience
We love making pasta from scratch, although it is undeniably messy, time-consuming, and far from convenient. Making a semolina-water dough takes the same amount of time as a flour-egg dough, but in the case of dried pasta, you need to factor in the drying time, which can take many hours or even days, depending on the temperature and humidity.

Once made, neither fresh nor dried pasta is a great hardship to cook, although the fresh stuff wins when it comes to cooking time. Fresh pasta needs just 2-3 minutes in boiling water, while the dried alternative can take up to 15 minutes.

Nutrition
Dried pasta is often enriched with vitamins and minerals, offering a considerable nutritional punch. However, very few foodstuffs can rival the humble egg in the superfood stakes, meaning that fresh, egg-based pasta wins hands down when it comes to all-round nourishment.

Yolks, in particular, contain generous amounts of protein, vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids, making eggs one of the most nutritious foods on the planet. Despite historically being considered unhealthy because of their high fat and cholesterol content, they are now regarded as excellent weight-loss foods and even feature heavily on most weight-loss diets. They also score highly on the "satiety index," which grades the ability of foods to make you feel full for longer.

Things start to blur for dieters when they decipher whether fresh pasta is better than dried pasta for their waistline. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer because it depends entirely on what kind of diet you are following. Let's break it down into the three most common diets: low-fat, low-carbohydrate, and low-calorie.

Deciding whether to eat fresh or dried pasta is a no-brainer for those on a low-fat diet. Pasta made with water rather than eggs offers a better way to reach your weight goals, provided you pair it with an equally low-fat sauce.

If you're following an Atkins-style, low-carbohydrate diet, you should avoid pasta altogether. Despite being nowhere near as enjoyable, you can get a hint of the pasta-eating experience by buying noodles made from konjac flour. These contain less than 1% carbohydrate and provide practically no calories or nutrition, but they are better than nothing if you're craving a big bowl of spaghetti.

If you've been following the Atkins diet religiously and feel like you deserve a night off, fresh pasta is better than dried. Eggs aren't just high in protein and fat; they are low in carbohydrates (usually less than 1%), meaning you'll consume fewer carbohydrates than if you were eating dried pasta. Also worth noting is that egg dough is primarily used to make filled pasta, which means a lot of what you sit down to eat will be the filling, not the dough. Despite many exceptions, meat and fish fillings tend to be high-protein and low-carbohydrate, further compounding fresh pasta's credentials for low-carb dieters.

We've written at length about the number of calories in pasta because it's a complicated topic. A perfectly reasonable assumption would be that fresh pasta made from flour and eggs will be higher in calories than dried pasta made from flour and water. But stop to look at the nutritional labels on your favourite fresh and dried pastas, and you'll be forgiven for concluding that the fresh stuff is lower in calories. So, what gives?

To understand what's going on, we need to look at the weight of both types of pasta before and after cooking. Because fresh pasta starts with a high water content (often over 50%), it takes on hardly any water as it cooks, meaning it will broadly weigh the same after cooking as it did before.

On the other hand, dried pasta has a very low water content (usually less than 10%), meaning you're buying highly concentrated carbohydrates, which can often be higher in calories than some fresh pasta. When it cooks, though, it rehydrates, effectively diluting the calorie density per gram. That means you need to use a lot less of it and end up with a bowl of pasta that's the same weight as the fresh one.

We're not usually ones to sit on the fence, but there is very little in it when determining whether fresh pasta is better than dried pasta for your waistline. We'll continue to enjoy both without guilt and just make sure we use the stairs rather than the escalator.