When Stanley Tucci announces he’s making a cozy winter pasta, you know before he even picks up a spatula that it’s going to be good. In a recent video, Stanley whips up pasta with lentils—a humble, deeply comforting dish—and slips in a move that sent the comments section into delighted chaos. Before cooking, he folds a dish towel around thick spaghetti and snaps it into small pieces by rolling it up jelly roll–style, explaining that it’s how his mother and grandmother always prepared it. The broken pasta, he says, pairs beautifully with lentils in its “fractured state,” giving the dish a texture that’s both rustic and satisfying.
It’s the sort of trick that bumps straight into one of cooking’s most persistent debates: whether or not pasta should ever be broken. Stanley’s answer, delivered with his usual charm, is essentially yes—and if Nonna did it, who are we to argue?
Is breaking pasta a faux pas?
Among pasta purists, snapping spaghetti to fit a pot is often treated like a minor culinary crime. Long strands are designed to twirl, after all, and breaking them just for convenience makes you look like you missed the point. But Stanley’s method isn’t about cramming pasta into too-small cookware; it’s an intentional choice that changes the experience of eating the dish.
Short, irregular shards of spaghetti behave almost like rustic-cut pasta. In this dish, they mingle with lentils and vegetables instead of sitting on top of them, turning the meal into more of a stew than a tidy nest of noodles. And he’s far from alone in the way he treats his spaghetti. Many Italian home cooks break long pasta for soups and brothy dishes that call for smaller shapes—think pasta e fagioli, minestrone or pasta e ceci—where smaller pieces are easier to spoon up and distribute evenly.
These are just some of the preparations where broken pasta isn’t just acceptable, it’s ideal. I make rice dishes with broken pasta often, adding toasted, snapped spaghetti to rice pilaf for a nutty depth and a tender bite. The key difference is intention. Breaking pasta to shape a dish is technique; breaking it out of impatience or inadequate pot space is what tends to raise eyebrows.
How to Make Stanley Tucci’s Favorite Winter Recipe
@stanley.tucci The perfect winter recipe. Hearty, healthy, easy to make. Pasta with lentils, you can add a little sausage or guanciale, but this is a great vegetarian dish. I hope you give it a try. #veggie #pasta #homecooking ♬ original sound – Stanley Tucci
Stanley starts his dish with a generous glug of olive oil—essential to many great Italian dishes—warming in a pan. In go the chopped onions, carrots, celery and garlic to build a classic aromatic base. He cooks the vegetables until they’re soft, then adds two big handfuls of lentils and enough water to cover them. Fresh basil and a scoop of pureed marinara join the party, and the mixture simmers for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are tender and the broth has turned rich and savory.
Meanwhile, he performs his controversial move: rolling thick spaghetti in a dish towel and snapping it into small pieces. The pasta cooks separately, then is tossed with a touch of oil to prevent clumping. To serve, Stanley spoons the hearty lentil mixture over cooked pasta, letting the sauce settle into all those nooks and edges.
The result is cozy, textured and deeply wintery—a bowl that sits somewhere between soup and pasta, with each bite catching lentils, vegetables and tender spaghetti fragments. It’s simple comfort food with a bit of flair, and a reminder that sometimes the best kitchen rules are the ones worth breaking.
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Dining and Cooking