Review of Brown Rice Pasta

I’d first heard of brown rice pasta after reading books about a dietary condition that I have; I suffer from IBS-C. I could never ever live without the greatness that is pasta but unfortunately, my stomach just cannot tolerate it. Even whole wheat pasta does not improve my pasta-less situation.

After much sadness, and really, continuous suffering because I just could not give it up, I discovered brown rice pasta. Brown rice. Hmm. Not the most exciting of flavours out there, but at that point, I was willing to try anything.

Brown rice pasta is gluten free, is lower on the glycemic index than white rice and contains more fibre, meaning it makes you feel full longer.

So I tried it.

Wow. Not only does brown rice pasta cook so similarly to regular pasta, to my surprise, I could not even tell the difference between it and regular white pasta. It’s fantastic!  You don’t get the grainy texture you get with whole wheat pasta, so it’s even better than that. how is this possible? I have no idea. I checked the ingredients only to find one sole ingredient. Brown Rice. Magic!

I’ve been eating it for around two years now, and I usually buy the President’s choice Brown rice pasta because it takes a bit less time to cook for some reason. My favourite is the PC Brown Rice Fusilli. Do you want to know what I do with it very often? I KD-it up! I buy the Sharp Cheddar Kraft Dinners(my favourite one), and I take out the cheese packet, then use my brown rice pasta instead of the noodles it comes with. This habit has unfortunately left me with a ton of regular pasta elbows. I’ve got three huge Tupperware containers full! I’m saving it for when I may need to make a pasta salad for a potluck(but typically choose to make more exciting appetizers).

At non-PC grocery stores, the main brand offered for brown rice pastas is the Tinkyada brand. It has a little goat’s head on it. These brown rice pastas are also great, you just have to cook them for around 13 minutes.

Oh, and you’ll find that when you cook your brown rice pasta, the water will turn white, just like when you’re cooking actual rice. What I do when the pasta’s ready to be drained, I also rinse it quickly to remove the starchiness.

Even if you do not have a dietary problem, brown rice pasta is like eating pasta completely guilt free. The brown rice pastas also come in the most common forms of pasta, including fusilli, spaghetti, linguine, elbow, and some others. Try it and you won’t be disappointed.

Now if only the restaurants would follow suite and offer brown rice pasta as an option, I would be in pasta heaven. Brown rice pasta is always found in the organics aisle of grocery stores, so you won’t find it in the pasta aisle.

~Darleya~