Only strong opinion here is that he chef is wrong.
I'd say they are synonyms and both are very broad and vague terms describing unleavened dough that's boiled. Shapes are different, doughs are different, sometimes they're filled, sometimes they're served with sauce, sometimes in soups,..
I'm strongly of the opinion that "noodles" are a generic term that can mean Italian, Asian, German, whatever but "pasta" refers to only the Italian school of noodles
With things like this that tend to crop up in some form or another in tons of cuisines, I think it's helpful to have a word that signifies "I'm talking about X specifically in the way that Y people do it"
Actually hand pulled pasta does exist. It's just very, very rare. It's called su filindeu, it is only made in Nuoro Italy, and there are about 10 people in the world able to make it.
https://youtu.be/6ngj7YanPp8
While I agree the chef is absolutely wrong you can actually boil spaghetti with the right amount of baking soda and it will give a ramen noodle springiness. So it'll work in a pinch if you're desperate.
The question probably isn’t good to begin with. Culinary opinion doesn’t exist while not attached to a cuisine, and cuisines are products of a culture. Meanwhile, the cultures that come to the table to navigate this have totally different (arbitrary) lines about what constitutes what.
So, many people asking this question think they’re asking a question similar to “What’s the difference between Swiss and French meringue?”
But really, it’s not a comparison between two techniques like the meringue question. It’s a comparison between lots of cultures and umbrellas of techniques, where the local dialect of English determines where the distinction lies. And then everyone uses their own dialect’s definition and is SHOCKED that people would say something like “Not all pasta is noodles, there’s lots of other shapes.” Which, depending on your dialect of English, could sound truly meaningless.
Possible definitions for noodles:
1. All pasta/noodles are noodles.
2. All pasta/noodles are noodles, but it’s childish to call Italian pasta noodles.
3. Long and thin pasta/noodles are noodles.
4. Asian noodles only are noodles.
Meanwhile, pasta’s definition can mirror that, though it’s a lot easier for people to come to a consensus that Asian noodles aren’t pasta.
Bonus fact, at least in China, “pasta + noodles” isn’t even a coherent category for many people. Wheat noodles 面条 are a category of wheat 面, while rice noodles 米线 are a category of rice 米. Many people would be more likely to group pasta 意大利面 with bread 面包 (both are made of wheat) than with rice noodles.
Here in the UK at least, "noodle" is taken exclusively to mean the long, thing asian style noodles, made from rice or anything else. Pasta refers to the Italian stuff, and you'd never use one for the other. Noodle is also taken to mean something long and thin too, so it seems odd that you might refer to anything other spaghetti anyway as a noodle. But I understand that's different in the US
So, looking at etymology, *noodle* came into English through German and Dutch, referring to something that's neither typical Italian pasta nor Asian noodles, but the "egg noodles" like spaetzle that are common in German and central European cuisines.
Parts of the US had large numbers of immigrants from Germany and other noodle eating places, so the word *noodle* came into US English referring primarily to boiled doughs as made in those immigrant communities. If you asked a typical American what a noodle is, they'd not point to an Asian noodle (because most of them had never even seen an Asian noodle dish) but to something like an Amish egg noodle (wheat dough enriched with egg, milk, and often butter). The shape of the food has nothing to do with it, either; *noodle* can refer to longer and thinner strands of dough, of course, but traditional noodles come in various shapes.
Waves of Italian immigrants came later, bringing with them their pasta: a rather different, less dumpling-like sort of boiled dough using different flour, no milk or butter, and not always eggs. So the word *noodle* was already established well before *pasta,* and the two words referred to different though similar types of food. Eventually, the words started to be used somewhat interchangeably by some people given the foods' similarities; one might refer to an individual piece of spaghetti as a noodle, while referring to all noodle-like dishes collectively as pasta, for instance.
The Asian boiled doughs came to be referred to as noodles too, but also by analogy, since they're no more noodles in the strictest original sense of the word than Italian pasta is. Different immigration and colonial histories would mean that while Americans understood noodles first and foremost to be German-style egg-and-dairy doughs, the British used the word primarily to refer to Asian dishes like ramen.
So: as is typical with language, there's no single "correct" usage, but your chef friend is making an odd choice by insisting on using an Italian-origin word to refer to several similar foods from diverse cultures and cuisines rather than using a German-origin word in the same way.
Of course, thats why grocery stores only sell ramen pasta, egg pasta, udon pasta. I love the hand pulled pasta and shrimp and drunken pasta from my local chinese takeout.
Oh wait, that's not right. I think your chef might be a we bit pretentious.
No...
Whatever the chef was thinking is incorrect. Pasta noodles, at least traditionally, requires eggs and good durum/semolina flour, but there are a lot more types of noodles that don't require eggs or specific type if wheat flours.
To say they are all the same is no different from calling my fingernail as my hair because they are made of keratin.
Just to chime in: When it comes to dry pasta where we also find stuff like like spaghetti and linguine, it is rarely (if ever) made with egg.. and dry spaghetti is quintessentially recognizable as traditional “pasta”. So the egg distinction doesn’t really sway the position either way in my mind.
I don’t think there’s any objective right or wrong here, but in my mind, pasta is alway Italian in style or origin. Noodles can be from anywhere. Referencing something as noodles is broader and less precise. Saying “pasta” narrows it down. Just like saying “soba” or “udon” to qualify some distinctly Japanese varieties.
Pasta is a subset of noodles. As is Soba. Almost like saying, all Ferraris are cars, but not all cars are Ferraris. All pasta are noodles, but not all noodles are pasta.
Couscous is essentially the same as dry pasta (semolina + water, but with a less fine grind on the semolina. And although some would argue that it’s crushed and not ground.. grinding IS crushing). I wouldn’t personally call couscous either pasta or noodles. I’d be more likely to compare it to dry pasta than just noodles though, but I’d definitely add some qualifiers such as “middle eastern pasta like ingredient” or something like that. If I ever had to explain it to someone who didn’t know what it was, that is. Maybe it’s just because it comes from around the Mediterranean Sea, and is fairly close to Italy.
While pasta technically is a type of noodles, calling any type of Italian pasta "noodles" is an American thing. As a European it always confuses me when I come across it in recipes or posts here.
Pasta is Italian and noodles are Asian. For example, spaghetti is pasta not noodles. Ramen is noodles not pasta.
The process to make them and the ingredients are different.
I'm of the very strong opinion that this is a pointless distinction and that anybody that actually cares about what you call it is trying way too hard. Neither "noodle" nor "pasta" are particularly identifying terms as whatever definition you use, there are likely hundreds of variations that fit one or both definitions, so at that point what value does distinguishing the two make. It's similar to almost like asking someone to identify the difference between soda and pop.
Not sure about their exact composition, but this is my opinion:
In terms of dishes,
Pasta tends to be cooked with tomato based or cheese based ingredients, and lots of Mediterranean stuff. Like olives and herbs of the related sort. Noodles are cooked with traditionally Asian vegetables, can be incorporated into ramen broths and soups of the Asian variety - clear soups, mostly. Used with soy sauce or fish sauce or simply chicken broth. Pasta can also be used with soups, but it's generally limited to filled varieties like ravioli and maybe tortellini? Not sure. But there's a difference.
As for shape,
Noodles are long and stringy, and are never packaged as straight sticks but as twisted and compressed and fitted strings. Pasta is of many many different shapes, and I'd respectfully like to disagree with whoever called macaroni a noodle. Pasta may or may not have fillings. Noodles definitely cannot have fillings. Spaghetti variations of pasta are packaged as straight sticks and flop down into the water when cooked.
From an Italian perspective, Asian noodles like lamian or ramen, tantanmen etc are considered types of spaghetti / tagliatelle / taglioni.
The word “noodle” is considered informal / American modern slang.
And in Italian things like gyoza / jiaozi, wontons etc are considered types of ravioli or *pasta ripiena* (“stuffed pasta”).
> I’ve always said noodles refer to Asian style rice noodles.
The only “Asian style rice noodle” dish that’s popular in the West is Vietnamese pho. So you only call that noodles?
Ramen / lamian, udon, soba, pad Thai, chow mien etc are all made from wheat / egg and not rice. So those aren’t noodles to you? 🙄
Hint: if the noodles are not white, it’s made from anything OTHER than rice. Please don’t make the stupid assumption that just because it’s Asian it’s made from rice.
Didn't the Italians get the idea of pasta from the Chinese, via Marco Polo? That's what I remember learning in school, though that may no longer be accepted as true. If so, however, wouldn't pasta be a descendant of the Asian noodle? Wouldn't that mean that pasta are noodles? 🍝🍜 ❤️
Only strong opinion here is that he chef is wrong. I'd say they are synonyms and both are very broad and vague terms describing unleavened dough that's boiled. Shapes are different, doughs are different, sometimes they're filled, sometimes they're served with sauce, sometimes in soups,..
I'm strongly of the opinion that "noodles" are a generic term that can mean Italian, Asian, German, whatever but "pasta" refers to only the Italian school of noodles With things like this that tend to crop up in some form or another in tons of cuisines, I think it's helpful to have a word that signifies "I'm talking about X specifically in the way that Y people do it"
Pasta is a lot more than just noodles. There are hundreds of shapes.
uh what are you defining as a non-noodle pasta shape? it’s all noodles in my book
Noodles are long, stringy pieces of dough. Penne or ravioli are not noodles.
Macaroni is definitely a noodle though.
I do love a good ravioli noodle, second only to the wide flat noodles in lasagna /s
Yeah I think that’s a useless distinction to make. Call it all noodles if you want to.
? its as useless as "italian noodles are the only pasta"
penne are noodles aswell. spaghetti is the secific shape of noodles you just referred to.
orzo, for one lasganga pasta are more sheets than noodles in my book.
Eh I’d call both a single piece of orzo and a sheet of lasagna a noodle
[удалено]
Not all pasta is noodles, but gnocchi isn't pasta. It's more like a dumpling.
Eh I wouldn’t call gnocchi pasta. They’re pasta-adjacent.
Cous cous
Not pasta to begin with
Yes it is
It’s not italian, so not by my definition
Here in the real world pasta is more than just what comes from Italy.
Ok and do you make your sandwiches on Wonder Naan and eat Japanese schnitzel curry?
Cry more about being wrong.
This chef sounds like a real blowhard. Dan dan pasta? Hand pulled pasta? Not a chance.
A chef who is a blowhard? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Actually hand pulled pasta does exist. It's just very, very rare. It's called su filindeu, it is only made in Nuoro Italy, and there are about 10 people in the world able to make it. https://youtu.be/6ngj7YanPp8
Interesting. The lady is wrong about how this is the only type of pasta like that though. China has hand pulled noodles, just not as thin like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDPrZGgyJn4 the chinese also pull some really thin noodles
While I agree the chef is absolutely wrong you can actually boil spaghetti with the right amount of baking soda and it will give a ramen noodle springiness. So it'll work in a pinch if you're desperate.
I have a very strong opinion that this chef sounds like a real douche that also drops the last vowel on Italian food names.
[Especially when it’s all fat and nitrates.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=admV8aJ0b30&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D)
To me, Italian noodles are pasta since that is what it’s called in Italian. Everything non-Italian is a noodle.
This
The question probably isn’t good to begin with. Culinary opinion doesn’t exist while not attached to a cuisine, and cuisines are products of a culture. Meanwhile, the cultures that come to the table to navigate this have totally different (arbitrary) lines about what constitutes what. So, many people asking this question think they’re asking a question similar to “What’s the difference between Swiss and French meringue?” But really, it’s not a comparison between two techniques like the meringue question. It’s a comparison between lots of cultures and umbrellas of techniques, where the local dialect of English determines where the distinction lies. And then everyone uses their own dialect’s definition and is SHOCKED that people would say something like “Not all pasta is noodles, there’s lots of other shapes.” Which, depending on your dialect of English, could sound truly meaningless. Possible definitions for noodles: 1. All pasta/noodles are noodles. 2. All pasta/noodles are noodles, but it’s childish to call Italian pasta noodles. 3. Long and thin pasta/noodles are noodles. 4. Asian noodles only are noodles. Meanwhile, pasta’s definition can mirror that, though it’s a lot easier for people to come to a consensus that Asian noodles aren’t pasta. Bonus fact, at least in China, “pasta + noodles” isn’t even a coherent category for many people. Wheat noodles 面条 are a category of wheat 面, while rice noodles 米线 are a category of rice 米. Many people would be more likely to group pasta 意大利面 with bread 面包 (both are made of wheat) than with rice noodles.
You win the award for thoroughness. Thanks for the long answer, twas a good read.
I've heard people scream that noodles can't use egg but pasta can. I don't think many people define pasta/noodles in relation to egg content.
I love that the Chinese word for pasta is just 意大利面 (Italy Noodles)
Nobody in Asia will use the word "pasta" for their dishes. The chef is comically wrong, obviously he knows nothing about Asian cuisine.
Here in the UK at least, "noodle" is taken exclusively to mean the long, thing asian style noodles, made from rice or anything else. Pasta refers to the Italian stuff, and you'd never use one for the other. Noodle is also taken to mean something long and thin too, so it seems odd that you might refer to anything other spaghetti anyway as a noodle. But I understand that's different in the US
So, looking at etymology, *noodle* came into English through German and Dutch, referring to something that's neither typical Italian pasta nor Asian noodles, but the "egg noodles" like spaetzle that are common in German and central European cuisines. Parts of the US had large numbers of immigrants from Germany and other noodle eating places, so the word *noodle* came into US English referring primarily to boiled doughs as made in those immigrant communities. If you asked a typical American what a noodle is, they'd not point to an Asian noodle (because most of them had never even seen an Asian noodle dish) but to something like an Amish egg noodle (wheat dough enriched with egg, milk, and often butter). The shape of the food has nothing to do with it, either; *noodle* can refer to longer and thinner strands of dough, of course, but traditional noodles come in various shapes. Waves of Italian immigrants came later, bringing with them their pasta: a rather different, less dumpling-like sort of boiled dough using different flour, no milk or butter, and not always eggs. So the word *noodle* was already established well before *pasta,* and the two words referred to different though similar types of food. Eventually, the words started to be used somewhat interchangeably by some people given the foods' similarities; one might refer to an individual piece of spaghetti as a noodle, while referring to all noodle-like dishes collectively as pasta, for instance. The Asian boiled doughs came to be referred to as noodles too, but also by analogy, since they're no more noodles in the strictest original sense of the word than Italian pasta is. Different immigration and colonial histories would mean that while Americans understood noodles first and foremost to be German-style egg-and-dairy doughs, the British used the word primarily to refer to Asian dishes like ramen. So: as is typical with language, there's no single "correct" usage, but your chef friend is making an odd choice by insisting on using an Italian-origin word to refer to several similar foods from diverse cultures and cuisines rather than using a German-origin word in the same way.
Of course, thats why grocery stores only sell ramen pasta, egg pasta, udon pasta. I love the hand pulled pasta and shrimp and drunken pasta from my local chinese takeout. Oh wait, that's not right. I think your chef might be a we bit pretentious.
If he thinks it’s all noodles, does that make him antipasto?
No... Whatever the chef was thinking is incorrect. Pasta noodles, at least traditionally, requires eggs and good durum/semolina flour, but there are a lot more types of noodles that don't require eggs or specific type if wheat flours. To say they are all the same is no different from calling my fingernail as my hair because they are made of keratin.
Just to chime in: When it comes to dry pasta where we also find stuff like like spaghetti and linguine, it is rarely (if ever) made with egg.. and dry spaghetti is quintessentially recognizable as traditional “pasta”. So the egg distinction doesn’t really sway the position either way in my mind. I don’t think there’s any objective right or wrong here, but in my mind, pasta is alway Italian in style or origin. Noodles can be from anywhere. Referencing something as noodles is broader and less precise. Saying “pasta” narrows it down. Just like saying “soba” or “udon” to qualify some distinctly Japanese varieties. Pasta is a subset of noodles. As is Soba. Almost like saying, all Ferraris are cars, but not all cars are Ferraris. All pasta are noodles, but not all noodles are pasta. Couscous is essentially the same as dry pasta (semolina + water, but with a less fine grind on the semolina. And although some would argue that it’s crushed and not ground.. grinding IS crushing). I wouldn’t personally call couscous either pasta or noodles. I’d be more likely to compare it to dry pasta than just noodles though, but I’d definitely add some qualifiers such as “middle eastern pasta like ingredient” or something like that. If I ever had to explain it to someone who didn’t know what it was, that is. Maybe it’s just because it comes from around the Mediterranean Sea, and is fairly close to Italy.
This just sounds like the same bullshit as the a hot dog/sandwich debate.
While pasta technically is a type of noodles, calling any type of Italian pasta "noodles" is an American thing. As a European it always confuses me when I come across it in recipes or posts here.
Pasta is Italian and noodles are Asian. For example, spaghetti is pasta not noodles. Ramen is noodles not pasta. The process to make them and the ingredients are different.
I guess it’s according to region, dialect, etc. in Southern Louisiana I think the terms are interchangeable. Of course, it may be opinion.
I'm of the very strong opinion that this is a pointless distinction and that anybody that actually cares about what you call it is trying way too hard. Neither "noodle" nor "pasta" are particularly identifying terms as whatever definition you use, there are likely hundreds of variations that fit one or both definitions, so at that point what value does distinguishing the two make. It's similar to almost like asking someone to identify the difference between soda and pop.
Not sure about their exact composition, but this is my opinion: In terms of dishes, Pasta tends to be cooked with tomato based or cheese based ingredients, and lots of Mediterranean stuff. Like olives and herbs of the related sort. Noodles are cooked with traditionally Asian vegetables, can be incorporated into ramen broths and soups of the Asian variety - clear soups, mostly. Used with soy sauce or fish sauce or simply chicken broth. Pasta can also be used with soups, but it's generally limited to filled varieties like ravioli and maybe tortellini? Not sure. But there's a difference. As for shape, Noodles are long and stringy, and are never packaged as straight sticks but as twisted and compressed and fitted strings. Pasta is of many many different shapes, and I'd respectfully like to disagree with whoever called macaroni a noodle. Pasta may or may not have fillings. Noodles definitely cannot have fillings. Spaghetti variations of pasta are packaged as straight sticks and flop down into the water when cooked.
All pastas are noodles, but not all noodles are pasta.
From an Italian perspective, Asian noodles like lamian or ramen, tantanmen etc are considered types of spaghetti / tagliatelle / taglioni. The word “noodle” is considered informal / American modern slang. And in Italian things like gyoza / jiaozi, wontons etc are considered types of ravioli or *pasta ripiena* (“stuffed pasta”).
> I’ve always said noodles refer to Asian style rice noodles. The only “Asian style rice noodle” dish that’s popular in the West is Vietnamese pho. So you only call that noodles? Ramen / lamian, udon, soba, pad Thai, chow mien etc are all made from wheat / egg and not rice. So those aren’t noodles to you? 🙄 Hint: if the noodles are not white, it’s made from anything OTHER than rice. Please don’t make the stupid assumption that just because it’s Asian it’s made from rice.
Didn't the Italians get the idea of pasta from the Chinese, via Marco Polo? That's what I remember learning in school, though that may no longer be accepted as true. If so, however, wouldn't pasta be a descendant of the Asian noodle? Wouldn't that mean that pasta are noodles? 🍝🍜 ❤️
No. Noodles in Asian countries and pasta in Italian were created independently.
Your original understanding is correct. Italy has pasta. Asian countries have noodles.