What is the Italian name for rice-shaped pasta?

The Italian name commonly used for rice-shaped pasta is orzo. Despite its appearance, orzo is made from wheat pasta dough—usually durum wheat or semolina—not from rice.

The shape is a short-cut pasta resembling a large grain of rice. In Italy, it is also known as risoni, meaning “large grains of rice.” The word orzo itself creates a useful language trap: in Italian, orzo normally means barley, while the pasta name is especially common in English-speaking countries.

Orzo can be used in soups, salads, pilafs, baked casseroles, and dishes prepared in a risotto-like style. It is also found in cuisines beyond Italy, including Greek cooking, where a similar pasta is called kritharaki. Stelline means “little stars,” acini di pepe means “peppercorns,” and ditalini are small tubes, so none describes the rice-grain shape as directly as orzo.