What's The Best Type Of Sauce For Your Seafood Pasta?

When you're fortunate to have a fresh seafood bounty on hand, pasta makes for a terrific vessel. Not only does a starchy backbone round out marine ingredients into a full meal, but the noodles sop up flavorful drippings in the process. Still, it pays to throw in a complementary sauce to zhuzh up your pasta meal: Consider arrabiata for the job.

Bold arrabiata translates to angry in Italian, and this moniker makes sense thanks to a generous dose of chili flakes, which give the sauce its iconic spice. Supplemented by ingredients like garlic, crushed tomato, olive oil, and oftentimes basil or parsley, the sauce essentially forms a riff on a basic tomato sauce. Tangy and savory, with a dash of heat, it's a classic pasta supplement that melds wondrously with various types of seafood. 

Whether you go with a simple canned sardine pasta or a broader assortment of shrimp, fish, squid, scallops, and mussels, the flavors will add up. There's a good reason garlic is a popular seafood seasoning while the tomatoes and chili flakes mesh incredibly with seafood's brininess. Using only a few ingredients, arrabbiata taps into a complex array of flavors, all while keeping seafood as the centerpiece — precisely what a top-tier pasta dish is all about.

Arrabbiata with seafood is versatile; you can tailor the sauce to whatever marine ingredients you're using. The most traditional route is the classic Italian frutti di mare, consisting of a seafood melange covered in the spicy tomato sauce. Made with an assortment of fresh shellfish plus anchovies and occasionally cured meats, it's a winning formula — but not the only one that pairs with arrabbiata.

If you don't have high-quality marine life to buy, you can whip up a simpler version with canned tuna – the sauce's flavors tremendously enhance a tinned fish. Not to mention, a perk of arrabbiata is that spiciness is easily adjustable, letting you tailor the quantity as well as the type of dried peppers to your seafood ingredients.

For example, pair the mild and fruity notes of Aleppo pepper flakes with delicate scallops. Pile on the Calabrian chili flakes alongside the sweet salinity of shrimp, which can withstand a stronger kick without being dominated. A moderately spicy arrabbiata can even meld with firm fish, like cod and halibut. Regardless of what seafood you use, just remember to reduce the sauce sufficiently, a marked difference from the looser fra diavolo sauce (which also pairs well with seafood). Then add the seafood upon conclusion, being careful to not overcook the delicate protein, rounding out a flavorful meal.