Nutritious pasta noodles

[Shule]

Many of you are probably already aware of this, but I wasn't until recently.

Apparently, garden rotini (also known as tricolor rotini) has spinach and tomatoes in the noodles. It must have a lot of spinach, because the fiber content is fairly high for pasta that isn't whole wheat. Anyway, it's lamentable that I didn't know about this in college, because it would have been very helpful. I just ate spaghetti and maccaroni then (there wasn't a lot of spinach in my diet).

The Barilla brand is done in about 7.5 to 8 minutes. The Great Value brand takes longer. The Great Value brand has more colorful noodles (without food coloring); so, it probably has more carotenoids. The Barilla brand has slightly more of one vitamin and somewhat more fiber than the Great Value. They both taste similar. The Great Value brand is a cheaper (one box is a whole pound).

I'm not sure how nutritious squid ink is offhand, but squid ink pasta is also a thing.

Do you know of any other cool nutritious noodles like this?

[karstopography]

Soba noodles are made from buckwheat.

[bower]

Soba noodles are great. Fast to cook and not at all 'grainy' textured like some of the other whole grain pasta.

I have tried a bunch with whole grain and/or vegetables and most were unpalatable due to awful textures. Maybe I'm cooking them wrong?? The exception has been a tomato-basil spaghettini (Catelli brand, and linguine from another brand I've forgotten) and found that tasty, colorful, and good textured.

I often use broad noodles or dumplings which contain some egg, so that is a bit more nutritious than classic plain pasta.

[pepperhead212]

There is also a pasta made with red lentils, but I haven't tried it yet.

[DriftlessRoots]

Don’t know how it affects the nutrition but I’ve made pasta with added beet or tomato powder. The beet had a better color. I’ve also incorporated fresh spinach into the dough. (I also add spinach or chard to the masa to make Tortillas de Quintonil)

[karstopography]

There’s a bunch of Asian noodles made with beans, seaweed, sweet potatoes, rice, and various other things. Search engine Asian noodles.

[worth1]

I bought a pasta noodle in a Korean market once that was made with sweet potato.
Can't find it anymore or since.
Could have been Japanese and it wasn't expensive in the Korean store.
But the Asian noodles seem to be jacked up in price in western stores.
I've used beet juice in pasta before.
Another use for beet juice.
Get ready for it....
Mixed with bourbon or whiskey in a cocktail.

[bower]

I bought some black bean pasta and chick pea pasta for my mom, as a protein boost, but the novelty wore off quickly and sensory qualities were not worth a repeat.

[worth1]

I remember my wife buying some sort of health pasta.
I wouldn't eat but one bite and gave it to the pasta loving dog.
BooBoo turned his nose up and walked away.
My wife was trying to force herself to eat it and I took it away and tossed it all outside.
Thankfully we don't mix the sauce with the pasta so all I had to do was make normal spaghetti.
The look on Boo Boos face was priceless.
Looking at me like really you want me to eat this crap.
He wasn't a picky dog either.

[MissS]

I have a box of Bonza noodles made with chickpeas that aren't bad at all.

[Shule]

I personally prefer the taste of the garden rotini to pasta without spinach and tomatoes in it, too. It's definitely not worse, in my opinion.

[worth1]

This stuff wasn't anything like y'all are talking about, It was some sort of soy stuff or something.
The whole wheat pasta is another no go for me as well.

[worth1]

And spinach pasta is good.
But growing up I ate spinach all the time.

[Shule]

This stuff wasn't anything like y'all are talking about, It was some sort of soy stuff or something.
The whole wheat pasta is another no go for me as well.

I used to find the taste of whole wheat spaghetti to be less pleasant than the taste of regular spaghetti. But I recently (a few months to a couple years ago) discovered if you add a lot more salt to the water when you boil it, it tastes a whole lot better.

So, since it's cheap, and I can spoon it out, I use canning salt for that.

[Tormahto]

I bought a pasta noodle in a Korean market once that was made with sweet potato.
Can't find it anymore or since.
Could have been Japanese and it wasn't expensive in the Korean store.
But the Asian noodles seem to be jacked up in price in western stores.
I've used beet juice in pasta before.
Another use for beet juice.
Get ready for it....
Mixed with bourbon or whiskey in a cocktail.

I remember when ramen-type noodles, the plastic wrapped bricks, were 4 cents a piece, and made in Japan. How could anything like that be made and then shipped half-way around the world, and only cost 4 cents? I'm currently running low, so I'll have to see what they now cost. I usually buy about 50 at a time, 4 cases, so that I can have the base of a quick meal always on hand. Most of the time I toss the flavor packet, and make my own seasoning.

Japan has/had several thousands of flavors. Here, I remember more than 2 dozen flavors available at one time, now down to less than 10, the last time that I looked.

[worth1]

I think it's chicken beef and shrimp here.

[Shule]

@worth1
Those are the most common kinds here, too (for those sold at the regular grocery store). I've heard there are lots of different kinds if you check a more specialty kind of area for ramen, like maybe Asian stores and stuff (I'm not personally into it, though; so, I couldn't tell you offhand, but a relative tells me they're a lot better than what you find in the regular grocery store aisle). Back around the year 2000, for the regular grocery store kinds, I knew there was a hot shrimp flavor, too, and a chili flavor; probably a few others, like roasted chicken (actually roasted chicken was more recent, probably).

I've only ever had regular grocery store ramen, as far as I remember, but I stopped eating them after I started getting persistent acid reflux symptoms whenever I ate them. That might have been caused by the probably-GMO soybean oil that I was using, though (it tasted pretty good in the ramen), but even without the oil (after I started using it), I still got the acid reflux symptoms badly. I never had noticeable problems with ramen before that year, though (but I was eating a lot of it that year). I had had ramen since I was a child.

Anyway, now I avoid both the oil and the ramen noodles, and I feel much better. I'm even tolerating acidic things better again (not completely better, but a lot better than then); it's been a few years. That's one of the reasons I got into more kinds of pasta, is because of the void caused by not eating ramen anymore. It's also why I started experimenting with putting baking soda in more stuff (like orange juice); adding baking soda to anything reduced the symptoms.

There are a some scary informational sites on what ramen can do to your health. While I'm not sure how scientific any of it is, I'm inclined to think maybe there might be some truth to it. It's hard to say what was just made up, though.

[Shule]

To reduce oxalic acid intake, I think I'll be getting penne instead when I need more pasta (or just the regular rotini).

[Shule]

I wouldn't have thought there was much oxalic acid in the pasta, but my body tells me there may be, and so does a baking soda test. Having said that, oxalic acid can be good in the right contexts, but it can be problematic if you eat a lot of it cooked.

[Shule]

That would be awesome if instead of spinach they used kohlrabi greens. Convincing people that the greens and flowers are the tastiest and easiest-to-grow parts of the plant can be tricky, though.