Tinkyada Brown Rice Fettucini Style Pasta Product Review

For my What's for Dinner? Wednesday blog carnival post I decided to do a dual product review/easy dinner idea: pasta with tomato sauce. I dressed mine up a bit with some sausage from New Seasons (they don't add any wheat or other fillers to their deli sausage) and some broccoli. However, this is always a go-to meal when I want something fast and satisfying. This has always been a favorite meal.

For other GF dinner ideas, visit Linda at the Gluten-Free Homemaker.

When I discovered Tinkyada pasta for the first time, I was pretty excited to try a new brand. They have a white rice pasta which I reviewed last month and thoroughly enjoyed. Then I realized that everyone else knew about Tinkyada pasta before I did! It's sold in most of the stores I frequent, including New Season's on NE 33rd and at Food Front on NW Thurman. (It's also widely available on the internet.) I read several blog posts about how good their brown rice pasta was, and I was eager to try it.

Well, I was disappointed. I actually like the Trader Joe's brown rice pasta better, if you want to campare apples with apples. To read about my all-time favorite pastas, Ancient Harvest and Mrs. Leeper's, read my review The Best and Worst of Gluten-free Pasta.

This pasta gave me problems from the start. Trying to be fair, I tried it three times. The first time I under-cooked it, and the noodles stuck together, probably because I paused before stirring to take this picture:
That picture was really not worth it. The second time I stirred it diligently so it wouldn't stick to itself, then I over-cooked it. The third time I stirred it and timed it diligently, I tested it often, I took it off the stove five minutes early (for a 13-minute stated cooking time, a 5-minute difference is significant), and it was still over-cooked.

I like my pasta al dente, it's true. It's possible my standards are too high. But for a product that proclaims right on the front of the packaging "NOT MUSHY AL DENTE" I thought it was pretty soft. It certainly didn't live up to the Tinkyada white rice pasta I had before (which I still haven't seen anywhere in town - any ideas?) It also didn't live up to its claim that it could "withstand quite a bit of over-cooking." I found the texture smooth enough for brown rice pasta, but otherwise the texture was a disappointment. I also found the flavor a bit lacking. I salted the water, but it the pasta was pretty bland.

Enough kvetching. Here is what I did for dinner:

I started some water boiling and heated a saucepan on another burner. I cut some sausage up into pieces and threw them in the saucepan. When the water started boiling I threw in the pasta and stirred it diligently. Then I put some chopped broccoli in the pan with the sausage. I stirred that for a bit then threw in some Classico spaghetti sauce (my favorite when I can't get home-made). By the time the pasta was done the sauce was hot and I served everything piled on a plate and with cheese on top. This whole process takes about 15-20 minutes.


Then I eat.

This is a shot of the meal prepared with the Ancient Harvest linguini. It was so much better!