Friuli Pasta Recipes
Pasta Dishes from Italy's North-East Corner
Pasta isn’t the first thing most people think of when they think of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In a region where polenta has been the staple carbohydrate for centuries, pasta plays a much smaller role than in other parts of Italy. But when Friuli does pasta, it does it entirely on its own terms.
Some of these dishes celebrate Friuli’s connections to its past. Others just make clever use of the region’s diverse produce. Whether you want jet black pasta dish, dressed with cold-smoked mountain trout. Or one scattered with poppy seeds and icing sugar, Friuli certainly has some unusual but fantastic pasta recipes to try.
Buon appetito! 🇮🇹
Duck Ragu
Duck has been cooked in Friuli for a long time. The flatlands around Udine and the lagoon at Grado have always had waterfowl in abundance, and the region developed a slow-cooked ragù that is richer and darker than anything you’d make with chicken, and more approachable than wild boar.
The meat braises until it falls apart completely into the sauce, which takes on enough fat and depth to cling properly to wide pasta ribbons. Not a complicated dish – the long cooking time does the work – but the result is the kind of ragù that makes the whole house smell right for an afternoon.
Lasagne ai Semi di Papavero
Lasagne ai semi di papavero is one of the most genuinely surprising pasta dishes in Italy. There is no ragù here, no pasta sauce. Instead: you dress fresh pasta sheets with melted butter, ground poppy seeds, and a generous dusting of icing sugar. Sweet, nutty, faintly floral – and quite unlike anything else you’d find in an Italian kitchen.
The poppy seed tradition crossed into Friuli from Austria and Slovenia, where poppy seed pastries are a staple. Friuli put the flavour on pasta. The result sits in that Central European sweet-savoury register that makes Friulian cooking so different from the rest of Italy. Don’t mistake it for a dessert – Friulians eat it as a first course.
Tagliolini al nero di seppia con trota ‘fil di fumo’
Tagliolini – thin egg pasta ribbons – dyed black with cuttlefish ink, dressed with trota fil di fumo, cold-smoked trout from the mountain streams of Carnia. The combination brings together the produce of two of Friuli’s most distinct geographical features into a single dish.
The ink is briny and mineral. The smoked trout is gentle and fatty. They don’t fight each other – the smoke sits alongside the sea flavour rather than against it. One of the most visually dramatic plates of pasta in Friuli, and one of the most original in the region.
Spaghetti con Sardine e Pomodoro
This is a simple seafood pasta recipe from Grado, a fishing town on a narrow peninsula that just into the northern Adriatic. For as long as anyone can remember, they have been making spaghetti and sardines, with cherry tomatoes, anchovies, garlic, and white wine. Quick to cook, deeply savoury, built entirely from things a Friulian kitchen keeps in stock year-round.
The anchovies melt into the oil first, the tomatoes cook down to a sticky sauce, the sardines go in at the end. Treat them gently – they only need a minute or two. The dish is super simple and really delivers a taste of Friuli’s Adriatic flavours..
More Friuli Recipes
Explore the full range of Friuli-Venezia Giulia recipes - from mountain soups to Adriatic seafood.
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