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Italian Dishes Word Search

A word search dedicated to classic Italian dishes, perfect for exploring one of the world's most loved cuisines. Hidden in the grid are eight words to find: pizza, pasta, risotto, lasagna, focaccia, ragu, pesto and gnocchi. Each dish carries the story of a region and a tradition. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for a cultural lesson or a food-themed classroom activity.

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Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Italian Dishes, one by one

Italian cooking is loved around the world, and many of these dishes began as simple, everyday food. The eight words in this grid are great classics, and below is a short note on each, useful for talking about where it comes from.

Pizza — Born in Naples, perhaps the most famous dish on the planet; the Margherita bears the colours of the Italian flag.

Pasta — Comes in hundreds of shapes, each designed to pair perfectly with a particular sauce.

Risotto — A northern Italian specialty, slowly cooked while stirring until wonderfully creamy.

Lasagna — Layers of egg pasta, ragu and bechamel — the classic Sunday family dish.

Focaccia — Soft bread topped with olive oil and salt, a Ligurian specialty perfect for a snack.

Ragu — A slow-cooked meat sauce from Bologna that fills the whole house with its aroma.

Pesto — A green Ligurian sauce of basil, pine nuts and cheese, traditionally made by crushing ingredients in a mortar.

Gnocchi — Soft potato dumplings, traditionally eaten on Thursdays according to old custom.

Say it like an Italian

Italian dishes are fun to say aloud, and they make a good pronunciation lesson. Pizza is pronounced PEET-tsa, not PIZ-a; gnocchi is NYOK-kee, with gn like the ny in canyon; focaccia is fo-KAH-cha; and ragù puts the stress at the end, ra-GOO. The double letters in gnocchi, risotto or pizza are really pronounced, with a slight pause before them, which is one of the secrets of an Italian accent.

The names also come from everyday life. “Focaccia” comes from the Latin focus, the hearth, because the bread was once baked on embers; “pesto” means pounded, from the same Latin root as the English word pestle; and “lasagna” probably comes from the Latin lasanum, a cooking pot, so it named the pot before the food. “Ragù” was borrowed from the French ragoût, a word that meant to revive the appetite. As for pizza, the word appears in a document from Gaeta, in southern Italy, dated 997.

Four ideas from the grid to the table

These dishes lend themselves to geography, writing and even a little maths:

  • Map the dishes. On a blank map of Italy the children stick a label for each dish on its region: Campania for pizza, Liguria for focaccia and pesto, Emilia-Romagna for ragu and lasagna, and the north for risotto. Then they add dishes from their own families.
  • Which pasta? Bring five shapes of dry pasta to class and ask the children to name them and draw the shapes: spaghetti, penne, fusilli, farfalle, shells. For the youngest it is a first lesson in geometry.
  • The restaurant menu. Each group writes a menu with a starter, a first course, a main course and a dessert, using the dishes from the grid and a few inventions; then the other children “order”. It is a good way to practise spoken English.
  • Five-line recipe. Pick one dish and have the children write the ingredients and steps in five lines. With older children, add the quantities and work out the amounts for four people.

How this grid is built

This 12×12 grid holds eight dishes: three horizontal, three vertical and two diagonal. FOCACCIA, with eight letters, is the longest word and runs down the fifth column, right beside LASAGNA in the fourth; RAGU, with four letters, is the shortest. There is only one crossing: PESTO and LASAGNA share the letter S. RISOTTO slopes down to the left from the right-hand edge, so it is read from the top right.

A themed evening

Plan a themed evening by opening the generator with the Food theme and adding more regional dishes: arancini, polenta, tortellini, carbonara, parmigiana. The generator removes spaces and accents by itself, so you can type ragù with its accent and it will appear as RAGU, exactly as in this grid.

Also in Italian

In Italian these dishes keep the same names, and ragù is written with its accent. Italian also uses the plural lasagne for the same dish. The Italian version of the puzzle, Crucipuzzle dei Piatti Tipici Italiani, contains the same eight words, arranged differently: two horizontal, three vertical and three diagonal.

More word searches to try

From the kitchen you can move on to geography or desserts:

If you are using these Italian words to learn the language, the guide in the article will help Word searches for learning Italian.