stories : Feature
Whole-Wheat Pasta Taste Test
Healthy sacrifice or tasty alternative?
Cooking with whole-wheat pasta is a good way to work whole grains into your diet. Unfortunately, the end result is often gritty and tastes of cardboard. CHOW wanted to see if there were any versions we’d actually enjoy eating, so we tasted five brands of whole-wheat spaghetti—both plain and with tomato sauce—and ranked them from 1 to 5 (1 being the best). Below are our comments on their flavor, texture, sauce retention, and appearance.
|
Roll over for |
$5.58 for two 12-ounce packages
|
$3.99 for a 17-ounce package
|
$2.49 for a 16-ounce package
|
$2.99 for a 16-ounce package
|
$2.99 for a 13.25-ounce package
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| RANKING | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| They say | “Contains only high-quality natural ingredients and provides 20% of recommended daily fiber intake.” | “Wheat for the De Cecco family mill comes from the world’s best wheat crops and gives this pasta its excellent aroma and nutritional quality.” | “Made in a century-old pasta factory in Tuscany, Italy … dried slowly and naturally at low temperatures.” | “Made from semolina obtained from only the finest Durum wheat grown in the best growing region in Italy, Tavoliere di Puglia.” | “All natural and made from whole grains.” |
| Flavor | It tastes like regular pasta, and that’s a good thing. | A little earthy and wheaty, but overall pretty good. | Very nutty and grainy, which makes it taste chalky. | It tastes like bran cereal—gritty and hard. | It tastes bleak, like paper. |
| Texture | Tender and smooth. | Cooks to a nice al dente—firm and a little chewy. | Rough and gritty, almost like pebbles. | It reminds us of cardboard. | Tough and chalky on the outside, mushy in the middle. |
| Sauce Retention | Holds the sauce well. | Grabs the sauce well. | Holds the sauce well. | Soaks the sauce right up. | Holds the sauce just fine. |
| Appearance | Doesn’t even look wheaty. By far the best-looking of the bunch. | Light in color. It looks appetizing. | Flecked with brown spots, it has a sort of healthy appeal. | Thick and dark brown. This can’t be spaghetti. | Too dark and thick. Looks like PVC piping. |
I much prefer whole wheat pasta's taste. Ronzoni is fine, as are Barilla and Trader Joe's, the other easily available brands in my area. The prices you quote seem high - I'm paying less. I'm even noticing store brand versions of whole wheat pasta, but haven't yet tried them. I welcome the move toward readily-available alternatives to the white starches.
Life's too short for whole wheat pasta. Take a spoonful of bran or psyllium after dinner to get your fibre fix and enjoy the glorious white flour. (Unless, of course, you enjoy whole wheat pasta.)
DId you compare the nutrition facts and ingredients? I wonder if these pastas really are equivalent from a health perspective...
Whole Wheat pasta can be really good with hearty pasta dishes. I love the fuller flavor they have. Barilla is my fav
Yes, I also like whole wheat pasta with heartier dishes. Which to me means a nice arrabiata sauce. Something about the whole wheat and the spiciness does it for me.
I think that the Barilla Plus pasta is a pretty excellent alternative to regular pasta; it has extra protein, fiber and omega-3s for health, but it tastes almost exactly the same as regular pasta. It's also very hard to overcook (you have to leave in in like at least 5 or 6 extra minutes), which is excellent for people who like their pasta al dente. A lot of "health" pastas are pretty foul, but this one isn't.
how about the fresh stuff ??? Us downtown new yorkers love to hear the sound of the cutting machine as it pounds out linguini from the sheets of paper thin pasta at Rafettos !!! YUM ,,,
I love brown rice pasta!
Barilla WW Pasta has my vote-and the vote of my girlfriend, who was born in Italy. She's a total pain in the as* when it comes to authentic Italian flavor, especially with pasta, but this stuff she likes. She made an oil based sauce with sun-dried tomato/olives/garlic & dried pepper for the Barilla WW angel hair that was unbelievable. Too bad they didn't include Barilla in the bake-off above. Wonder why??
My favorite whole wheat pasta is Trader Joe's. Delicious! Sorry it wasn't part of the testing.
I wish they had included "enriched" pasta in this test. I know it's not a true whole wheat product, but it's got loads of protein and fiber which is what people are looking for. Barilla makes a good one and actually my market, VONS, has a private label brand of enriched pasta that's really cheap and really good.
The Ronzoni "healthy" white pasta is really good too--I forget the name of it, comes in a purple box. It has as much fiber per serving as the Ronzoni Healthy Harvest, but tastes a whole lot better.
Yeah, why no Barilla? It's a widely available brand. I like their Plus pasta as well as the whole wheat. I also like the Racconto Bella Terra line of whole wheat pastas.
I agree with sibaik. The Ronzoni "Smart Taste" pasta is really good and it has three times the fiber of regular pasta and as much calcium as a 8 oz. glass of milk. It tastes just like regular pasta!
I usually find that whole wheat and other alternative pastas are better tasting in short-pasta form (penne, fusilli, etc) than in spaghetti form.
For those who are diabetic or on low carb diets, Dreamfields Pasta is the best I have had. It tastes exactly like regular pasta but with 5 grams of digestible carbs. It shoud have been part of the survey.
De Cecco makes the best dried pasta i my estimation. Its the reason why a lot of high end Italian restaurants use De Cecco to supplement their fresh pasta.
I've had their whole wheat spaghetti and it is really great al dente with Olive oil and Garlic and Anchovies or even your basic tomato sauce..
Trust in the Blue Box.
I've tried De Cecco, Da Vinci, Hodgson Mill, Nature's Promise (by Stop & Shop), and Delallo whole wheat spaghetti. The best is De Cecco. Pair it with Rao's marinara sauce and you'll lick the plate clean. Stop & Shop's own Simply Enjoy marinara sauce is a surprisingly close second.
I think you have to appreciate whole wheat pasta as a separate and distinct food from regular white flour semolina pasta. They're both good, but for different reasons and with different sauces and accompaniments.
Take a look at _La_Cucina_Italiana_ (past issue) for an excellent primer on whole wheat pasta and what goes well with it. My personal bias is for heartier, earthier, meatier, more wintry flavors with whole wheat pasta... semolina better complements delicate flavors, testures and sauces.
Why would they list the price of the Davinci pasta based on TWO packages, but only ONE package for every other brand?
And yes, I like whole wheat pasta, especially for earthier dishes where white pasta just sort of blechs out.
Racconto makes an 8 grain pasta in a few shapes that is awesome.
Farro pastas are sold at some specialty stores. I think they're absolutely great.
Whole wheat pasta is fine but never comes up to traditional pasta in flavor. Nutritious? Yes but the amount of fiber and vitamins it contains are pretty small compared to many other foods in a healthy diet. And it costs 2-3 times that of regular pasta. Plus, it contains a small amount of oil in the germ that whole wheat includes, thus is shelf life is limited (oil slowly becomes rancid).
Check out my latest (Nov/08):
Tried and True Recipes from a Caterer’s Kitchen—Secrets of Making Great Foods
www.eloquentbooks.com/TriedandTrueRec...
www.howfoodswork.blogspot.com
The choice is yours
I personally find barilla very tasty and it cooks fast as well. Even my husband (not a real fan of whole wheat or grainy anything) enjoys my pasta dishes. Oil-based sauces help the texture of the pasta. Just made a dish with WW Barilla rotini, fresh minced garlic, onion, green pepper, fresh parsley, oregano and basil, chicken breast, white wine and red pepper flakes...AMAZING!!!!!