Pasta – the difference between noodles and pasta

languagenoodlespasta

Is pasta just a fancy name for noodle? Or is pasta always an Italian style noodle?
Is all pasta noodles? Or the other way around?

This may be more of a language question than an actual food question…

Best Answer

I think the problem here is that the definitions overlap quite a bit, which is always a good cause for confusion.

Pasta is defined as shaped dough made of Durum wheat and boiled in water. That is the traditional pasta in my opinion.

Noodles are uaully long and thin, and can be made of any starchy material, like rice or even beans.

Basically, things like risoni or even fusilli are pasta, but not noodles. Spaghetti and fettuccine are both noodles and pasta. Rice noodles like ramen are noodles but not pasta.