If you’re a pasta fan, you’ll enjoy these factoids this National Pasta Month: Americans eat pasta for dinner forty times yearly. About 600 pasta shapes exist worldwide. The Chinese ate pasta 5,000 years ago; Italians, more than 1,500 years before Marco Polo’s time.
Now more facts and tips: To cook pasta, use 1 quart of boiling water per 4 ounces of dry pasta. Stir occasionally as pasta comes to a boil. Salt cooking water only if you want to. Skip rinsing after cooking, unless you’re not saucing it right away or using it for a salad.
Remember, 4 cups of cooked pasta equals 8 ounces of uncooked long pasta shapes (a 11/2-inch-diameter bunch); 1 cup cooked pasta is two Bread Group servings.
As you shop for pasta:
- Enjoy the fun shapes and flavors: bowties, spirals, twists, wheels, and tomato- or spinach-flavored pastas. (The flavoring gives hardly any nutrition boost.)
- Match pasta with sauces: angel hair with light, thin sauces; fettuccine with heavier sauces; penne or irregular shapes with chunkier sauces.
- Try wheat-free pasta for something different: made with barley, bean threads, buckwheat, oats, rice, or potato starch. If you have celiac disease (gluten intolerance) or a wheat allergy, read the ingredient list to be sure it’s wheat- and gluten-free.
- Need to watch egg yolks? Skip egg noodles if you have an egg allergy; read the ingredient list to check.
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