Stop Cooking Too Much Pasta
It's the oldest joke in the kitchen: you try to cook pasta for two people, and you end up with enough food to feed the entire neighborhood. Our Dry to Cooked Pasta Calculator puts an end to the madness by giving you exact measurements.
The Standard Pasta Serving Size
The USDA standard serving size for pasta is 2 ounces of dry pasta per person. This yields approximately 1 cup of cooked pasta. This is a great side-dish portion, but if pasta is the main course, many people prefer a 3-ounce or 4-ounce portion.
How to Measure Dry Pasta
Measuring pasta can be tricky because of the different shapes:
- Long Pasta (Spaghetti, Fettuccine, Linguine): You can't measure this in cups. 2 ounces of long pasta is a bunch about the diameter of a US quarter (1 inch).
- Short Pasta (Penne, Macaroni, Bowties): Short pasta has a lot of empty space. 2 ounces is usually equal to about 3/4 cup of dry pasta, which yields 1.25 cups of cooked pasta.
- Egg Noodles: Egg noodles are lighter. 2 ounces is equal to about 1.25 cups of dry noodles, yielding 1.25 cups cooked.
Frequently Asked Questions
The standard serving size for dry pasta is 2 ounces (56 grams) per person. If you are serving pasta as the main course, you may want to increase this to 3 or 4 ounces per person.
2 ounces of dry pasta typically yields about 1 to 1.25 cups of cooked pasta, depending on the shape. Short pasta (like penne) takes up more volume than long pasta (like spaghetti).
You can measure long pasta like spaghetti or linguine by gathering it into a bunch. A bunch with a diameter of about 1 inch (roughly the size of a quarter) is equal to 2 ounces.