smarter pasta?

The range of non-wheat and specialty pastas continues to expand so I thought it timely to revisit them by starting with traditional pasta for comparison.

The most popular conventional commercial pasta is made with a single ingredient: refined durum wheat semolina. It doesn’t matter which shape or brand you name or how much money you pay, durum wheat semolina is the ingredient used to make traditional pasta. Very few commercial pasta manufacturers still add egg. Very few add salt. Wheat is cheap.

Apart from its energy and carbohydrate content, conventional traditional pasta delivers very little else of nutritional value. From a dietitian’s view, I have never been a big fan of traditional pasta. Most of the natural fibre and B vitamins in wheat have been stripped out because the wheat semolina is highly refined.

Conventional white pasta’s beauty is that its fairly neutral bland flavour carries sauces and dressings beautifully. It is an economical filler and meal extender.

Multi-coloured ‘vegetable’ pasta look pretty in a pasta salad. They are basically a traditional pasta with powdered vegetable concentrates for colour. One brand reviewed added oat fibre to the basic ingredients which doubles the fibre of conventional white pasta. You are not getting a significant amount of anything more than semolina.

Wholemeal pasta emerged decades ago but the taste and texture left much to be desired. Although it boasts more fibre (three times the fibre of white pasta) and more nutritional goodies than traditional pasta, for seasoned white pasta lovers, wholemeal pasta adds too much of an earthy gluey flavour that detracted from a meal.

High fibre pasta ranges are a compromise between wholemeal and traditional white pasta. In products boasting fibre as a label claim, oat fibre is commonly added. If only getting a bit more fibre is your goal, high fibre pasta products are the closest taste-wise to traditional white pasta.

Gluten-free pasta and low-gluten pasta made with other grains such as rice, quinoa and spelt are not automatically superior to traditional pasta made with wheat semolina. The brown rice and spelt pasta I reviewed have a very similar nutrient profile to conventional wheat pasta.

If you are flexible and happy to have new taste experiences, I know you could do a lot better nutritionally than the pastas listed above. But you will need to think of pasta in a whole new way.

Unconventional pastas bring their own flavour and texture to the table. They are not neutral or bland.

They are no longer just a carrier for other flavours. Their flavours may not compliment all sauces and toppings. You will need to experiment to find the varieties that go best with your favourite sauces.

Unconventional pastas are in the pasta aisle but they are not really pasta as we know it.

The unconventional pasta I reviewed are made with either a mix of legumes and lentils or exclusively with either chickpeas or red lentils. Nothing else added.

Diets rich in legumes and lentils are linked with less diabetes, heart disease and fewer circulatory problems.

Pasta made with legumes (pulses) and lentils is higher in protein, higher in fibre and lower in carbohydrate than traditional pasta (almost two times the protein, three to four times the fibre and up to 30% less carbohydrate). These are just the major nutrients.

Legumes and lentils provide more vitamins and minerals than refined wheat semolina. Energy-wise, they are very similar to traditional pasta but they have a better energy-balance: more nutrients associated with the energy.

Legume-lentil pasta takes about the same amount of time to cook as regular pasta. Their prices in Dec 2019 (in major supermarkets) ranged between $1.60 to $1.80 per 100g. Traditional white pasta ranges in price from 13 cents per 100g for a no name variety through to $1.40 or more for fancy shaped traditional pasta.

Even though they cost more, legume and lentil pasta are still great value when you consider they deliver a lot of protein and are an ideal meat substitute. The cooked edible price is about $6.40 per kg. Compare this with meat prices and you quickly see the value in legume-lentil pasta.

Stuck with regular traditional pasta?

If there’s resistance in your place to swapping from traditional pasta or you don’t like their flavour, I have six super simple simple tips to boost the nutrition of regular pasta meals.

1. For a secret nutrition boost, add red lentils to tomato red sauces. With cooking, red lentils fall apart. They add body to the sauce and go almost un-detectable both flavour and texture-wise.

2. Another hidden approach is to add mashed canned or cooked white beans (such as haricot, chickpeas, borlotti or cannellini) when cooking white sauces. Blend or puree them for a smoother sauce. You may notice a subtle underlying beany flavour especially if your sauce is very mild and delicate.

3. More obvious to the eye but still super easy is to add whole or mashed pre-cooked or canned legumes in the sauce. Black beans, soy beans, brown lentils, mixed beans … any hard bean works well. You can add them early to develop flavour with the meat or add them at the end to heat through. Reduce the amount of meat in the recipe so you have enough sauce and flavour for the beans. Replace all the meat for an easy meat-free meal.

4. For a fibre boost but no obvious flavour change, add oat fibre to any sauce. Start with a tablespoon in a recipe to serve four. You may notice the sauce develops a richer thicker texture due to the gumminess of oat fibre. Next time, try adding a little more until you find the best amount for you.

5. Reduce the amount of white pasta you cook to ensure you fit more vegetables in. Try spiralising zucchini, carrot and other vegetables into noodles. Layer up lasagna with thin slices of zucchini, eggplant and pumpkin to replace some lasagna sheets.

6. Less easy, is the addition of lupin flakes or chickpea flour for protein and fibre. These ingredients need to be cooked through well. Depending on the fineness of lupin flakes, there might be detectable grittiness in the sauce. Chickpea flour requires a skilled hand to avoid lumpy bits in the sauce.

 

Have you tried unconventional pasta? 

Tell me about your experience with unconventional and non-traditional pasta. Head over to my FaceBook page and add your thoughts on and experiences with different pasta varieties.

 

For those of you who have a head for numbers, further on is a detailed table of the macronutrients and energy content of different pasta varieties I found at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets.

This article is totally impartial and independent without industry influence.

I am self-funded through book sales. I am not affiliated with any of the brands or companies mentioned here or in the table that follows.