Brown Rice Pasta

After Dr. Kooky told me to lay off the wheat (which I haven't, and the pains are subsiding...but that's another post), I bought some brown rice pasta at Trader Joe's.

It sat on the counter and looked at me dolefully daily. I didn't cook it. And I didn't cook it. And after everyone one else in my life convinced me that wheat was not my source of pain, I started to think that there would be something really off with pasta made of brown rice. It would taste bad, I thought. It would smell funky, I thought. It would have a weird texture, I thought.

I thought these things so much that I stopped at the store on the way home to get my regular whole grain spaghetti (200 cal, 0.5g fat, 6g fiber) for our quick spag & meatball dinner. And when I poured the whole grain spaghetti into the pot of boiling water, the brown rice spag silently sat there. Judging me.

So I cooked some of each, and we had a taste test. The brown rice pasta was definitely stickier as soon as I took it out of the water; I did not rinse it, which may have minimized stickiness. We all tasted the brown rice pasta first. It didn't have a strong taste, nor did it have a "bite"--I only cooked it for 7:30 minutes--and people who like an overtly nutty, flavorful pasta would dislike it.

But if you like your pasta a little more well-done, you would love brown rice pasta. Now, I'm not saying this is mushy pasta. It just isn't as toothsome. Moving onto the whole grain pasta--which has 4g of fiber more per serving than brown rice--I found it to be almost hard in comparison.

My soon-to-be teen said, "I like all pasta, so they're both good." But when I pointed out it was rice-noodle pasta like his beloved "bun", he perked up and gobbled it down.

I think my husband prefered the brown rice pasta because he said, "I don't hate the normal stuff. Is the first stuff [brown rice] expensive or something?"

We've got brown rice pasta converts here, I think!