Whole Grain Pastas, Decoded and Conquered: Three Ways
Whole Grain Pastas, Decoded and Conquered: Three Ways
Wishing you could get alternative noodles to behave more like the best Italian stuff? So were we.
This news cannot be sugar-coated: Only Italian-style dried pastas can deliver that magical creamy-chewy-toothsome combination of textures. Whole wheat, brown rice, and other gluten-free and high fiber options will never behave the same way. And you may as well toss any hope of true al dente out with the boiling water. But that doesn't mean anyone who wants to—or must—cook with these alternative noodles deserves to be punished with a bowl of broken promises.
The reasons that cooks around the world adore traditional pasta have to do with the type of wheat (durum, which is ground into the pleasantly gritty semolina flour), the way they are shaped (extruded through brass dies that gently heat the dough before drying slowly), and the fact that they're high in gluten (and low in fiber). Perfection is easily achieved. You boil the noodles in salted water until just shy of fully tender, then toss with sauce and some of the cooking liquid and they finish cooking in a couple minutes. The margin for error is manageable.
Give whole grain dried noodles the same treatment, and they go from brittle bundle to sticky mush in a moment. It's not your fault. They have a tiny window of doneness. They soak up liquid before your very eyes. They tear and fall apart at the slightest touch. They are unforgiving of even the slightest inattention. So instead of trying to make alternative pastas something they will never be, here are three techniques to turn their weaknesses into your strengths.
For those of you interested in specific products, over the years I've worked with many whole wheat and non-wheat pastas at every price range. Some are available in supermarkets; others must be ordered online or at specialty stores. They vary in taste and texture but have always posed challenges in terms of keeping them from overcooking. I've kept at it for the nutritional benefits of whole grains, sure, and also because I'm an optimist with a puzzle to crack for myself and our readers. I bought both of the delicious long pastas shown in this piece from Community Grains, a company we've written about before. Ancient Harvest makes corn-brown rice-quinoa macaroni used in the baked pasta and the Succotash Shells recipe below. They're my favorite non-wheat whole grain noodles for their lack of fillers and binders and their pleasantly toasty flavor. We’d love it if you’d share the alternative pastas you like to cook with in the comments below.
Now, on with the three key alternative pasta cooking methods, plus one technique detour wedged in the #2 slot:
Suspend doneness.
(Capture the clouds.)
Anticipate doneness.
The hell with doneness.
Suspend doneness.
To successfully substitute whole grain and gluten-free noodles in recipes designed for pasta made from durum wheat, I now rinse alternative noodles and coat them in oil before tossing with sauce. Breaking the golden rule of Italian pasta making is a drastic move, not taken lightly. So hear me out.
When the pasta just turns pliable in the boiling water—before it's edible or even remotely close to al dente—transfer the noodles to a colander in the sink and chill them down fast with cold tap water. Scooping them out of the pot with tongs or a strainer is ideal so you leave behind the water in the pot (more on that in the next section), but whatever you do save more cooking liquid than you normally would. Don't worry about rinsing off the starch; that's part of the plan. Remember, the goal here is to minimize stickiness.
Shake the noodles gently to drain excess water. Then drizzle with olive oil or a good-quality neutral vegetable oil (like safflower or grapeseed) and toss lightly with your hands. The noodles should still feel a little stiff and not at all warm. Putting a barrier around the undercooked pasta causes it to absorb moisture more slowly and to release less starch into the sauce. (The exact reasons not to do these these things to durum pastas!)
You've now bought yourself up to an hour to get your dinner ducks in a row. I’ve got a simple tomato sauce thickened and bubbling in a large skillet. When you’re ready to serve, you heat the sauce, toss in the noodles—stirring gently from underneath with a spatula for just a minute or two so they heat through and become tender without sticking or too much breaking—and serve right away.
I've also tried suspending doneness after rinsing by letting the noodles rest in a bowl of cold water, the way that you do for white rice sticks and other Asian noodles. That worked pretty well, too, but the results were softer when sauced; they soaked up some water after even a few minutes in the bowl. Spreading rinsed, un-oiled noodles out on a rimmed baking sheet (a restaurant trick that works well for traditional pastas) caused too much sticking.
Some recipes to try with the suspending doneness method:
Bucatini (or Rigatoni) Amatriciana
Pasta with Balsamic Onions
Ma-Ma's Pasta "Milanese"
Pasta Primavera
Capture the clouds.
A brief pause here to talk about the cooking water. Look at all that starch alternative noodles throw off, even after boiling just a few minutes. The reason I suggest pulling out the noodles (as opposed to reserving some of the cooking water before turning the pasta and water into the colander) is so that you can capture the starchiest, cloudiest liquid at the bottom of the pot. All you do is let the sediment settle for a minute then tip the pot to drain the bulk of the water. (You might even save it for soup.) The super-cloudy liquid left will help you build creaminess back in as you combine the noodles and sauce.
Anticipate doneness.