Perforated Pasta Drying Tray and Lid 30 x 40cm White

Buy the perforated tray and its matching lid together and you save 5%. The tray's perforated base and walls let air at fresh pasta from every side so it dries evenly instead of sweating and sticking, and the lid sits over the top to keep dust, flies and anything knocked off a shelf out of it while that happens. Air still moves through the perforations with the lid on, so nothing stops drying when you cover it. It holds ten litres on a 30 x 40 cm footprint that fits a domestic fridge shelf and stacks several deep, and both pieces are made in Italy from food-grade PE-HD rated from -40°C to +80°C.

What's in the Set

• 1 x perforated pasta drying tray, 30 x 40 x 10 cm, 10 litres
• 1 x tray lid, 30 x 40 x 2 cm

What the Lid Adds

A perforated tray does the drying, but it leaves whatever is in it open to the room. If a batch is going to sit on the bench for an hour, go into a fridge alongside everything else, or wait at the bottom of a stack, you want something over the top of it, and that is the lid's job: keeping dust, insects and anything knocked off a shelf out, and protecting the pasta underneath from being crushed or disturbed.

What it does not do is seal, and it is not meant to. Neither piece is airtight, and with perforations through the base and walls air keeps moving regardless, so pasta carries on drying with the lid in place. That is the useful part, because it means you have nothing to time. Cover it when you want it protected, lift the lid off when you want it out of the way, and the drying looks after itself either way.

Working Through a Batch

Cut shapes go into the open tray in a loose layer with semolina and lose surface moisture from above and below at the same rate. Twenty minutes takes the edge off before cooking, an hour or two firms the surface for bagging or freezing without the pieces fusing, and fully dried shapes will hold in the tray for a day. Put the lid on at whatever point you want the batch protected, and the same tray goes into the fridge or the freezer with nothing decanted.

Size, Stacking and Storage

At 30 x 40 cm the tray fits most domestic fridge shelves and sits comfortably on a worktop beside a pasta machine, which makes it the practical size for making pasta at home or working in a small prep area. Delis and smaller restaurant kitchens use this size too, often three or four deep in a stack.

That stacking works because of the raised external base, which lifts the tray off the surface and lets the base of one tray cover the tray beneath it. One lid on top of the stack is enough, though a further tray will still stack on top of a lid if you would rather cover each layer, and since our perforated and solid Genus Dei boxes share the same profile you can mix them freely in the same column. For volume production with a cold room to fill, the 60 x 40 set is the better fit.

Beyond Pasta

The same ventilation suits anything else that needs air moving through it, so washed salad, herbs and blanched vegetables drain in the tray rather than sitting in their own runoff, herbs, chillies and sliced mushrooms air-dry in it, cured and salted preparations rest in it while the moisture leaves, and baked goods cool in it without soft undersides. The lid keeps any of that covered while it happens.

Buy Separately or Compare Sizes

The 30 x 40 perforated tray and the 30 x 40 lid are both available on their own, and if what you actually need is to hold humidity in for proofing pizza dough, the solid 30 x 40 set is the one to buy instead. The full range sits in dough boxes and storage.