Spaghetti alla Puttanesca Recipe: A Guide to Puttanesca Sauce

Puttanesca is the sauce in the classic Italian dish spaghetti alla puttanesca. The sauce contains tomatoes, olives, capers, extra virgin olive oil, and garlic. It’s a simple pasta sauce that traditionally accompanies spaghetti, but you can use it with other common noodles—like linguine, penne, or vermicelli noodles. The dish spaghetti alla puttanesca has existed in one version or another since the 1800s, but one of the first references to modern puttanesca sauce is a reference by Italian author Raffaele La Capria in his novel Ferito a Morte (1961).

There are many regional versions of puttanesca sauce. The version common in Naples, Italy, does not include anchovies or garlic in it. Some regions add spice in the form of crushed red pepper flakes, and others add just about everything available in the kitchen.

In reality, any pasta works in a pasta puttanesca dish, as puttanesca is just a sauce and the pasta is the vessel for the sauce. Here are a few of the most common and popular types of pasta chefs use with puttanesca sauce.

• Linguine: A long, thin, somewhat flat pasta, linguine is wider than spaghetti but not as wide and flat as fettucini. The surface area of this pasta allows for more sauce to sit on the pasta, meaning more flavor and more sauce in each bite.
• Penne: A short, cylindrical pasta with ridges, penne has a hole running through the length of each piece. The hole and the ridges help trap sauce, ensuring the sauce adheres to the pasta and enhances the dish’s overall flavor.
• Spaghetti: The most traditional pasta to use with puttanesca sauce, spaghetti is long, thin, and round. This is also the traditional pasta for bolognese dishes and a classic serving of spaghetti and meatballs.
• Vermicelli: In Italy, vermicelli is thicker in diameter than spaghetti; however, in other countries, like the United States, product manufacturers sometimes label thin spaghetti as vermicelli. In either case, you can use vermicelli the same way you would use spaghetti.

There are countless variations of puttanesca. Other than maybe using tomatoes for its base, there are no strict rules for making the sauce. Still, there are actions you can take to help ensure a tasty sauce. Here are several tips for making puttanesca.

1. 1. Change up the olives. Black olives are traditional for puttanesca sauce, but you can use Kalamata olives, Castelvetrano olives, or a mixture of a few different olives for saltiness with a unique flavor.
2. 2. Cook the pasta al dente. When preparing a sauced pasta, it’s always a good idea to cook the pasta al dente (slightly undercooked) so that it can cook the rest of the way in the pasta sauce, absorbing all the flavor of the sauce as it does so. To achieve al dente results, cook the pasta for about two to three fewer minutes than the packaging instructs.
3. 3. Garnish with fresh herbs. Complement the umami flavor from the olives, capers, and anchovies, with fresh herbs for a brighter flavor profile. Fresh parsley or fresh basil generally pairs well with the sauce’s other ingredients and can elevate the dish.
4. 4. Save the pasta cooking water. Seasoned pasta water is full of the starches from the pasta. Save about one cup of the pasta water and add it to the puttanesca sauce after you add the pasta. This helps to emulsify the sauce and also gives you the ability to better control the sauce’s consistency.
5. 5. Rely on the main ingredients for salt. Puttanesca sauce takes on the saltiness and brininess of the olives, capers, and anchovies. Any more sodium might make the dish too salty, so try to avoid using additional salt.
6. 6. Use canned tomatoes. If tomatoes are out of season or not easily accessible, you can use canned tomatoes. The texture of the tomatoes is key to puttanesca—crushed tomatoes, plum tomatoes, San Marzano tomatoes, or generic canned diced tomatoes can all work well.