Tinkyada White Rice Pasta Review

Now with a new addendum!

Whenever I go to a grocery store in another town, I always try to peruse their gluten-free options to see if they have any products I haven't seen in Portland. Last weekend I was excited to find a gluten-free pasta I hadn't seen before called Tinkyada White Rice Pasta.
I have been looking for a white rice pasta since I went to Italy last spring. They have excellent gluten-free pastas there, and all of them are made from white rice flour. I haven't been able to find one like the Italian version in Portland. Imagine my surprise when I found a white rice pasta in Carson City, Nevada! The Raley's supermarket there has an excellent health food section.

The ingredients listed on the pasta are: stone ground white rice and water. The cooking instructions should be taken with a grain of salt: the package tells you to cook it for 16-17 minutes! I know GF pasta takes a bit longer to cook, but I didn't boil it for nearly that long and it came out fully cooked - if you consider "al dente" to be fully cooked. They claim that the pasta can stand a lot of over-cooking, but I wasn't foolhardy enough to find out. I did rinse the pasta as instructed and found that to be a good idea, as it had a fairly starchy coating.

The pasta is a solid white color before and after cooking. It does not have the disturbing translucent look that asian rice pastas can sometimes get, but it also doesn't pass for a semolina pasta. The texture is good: the noodles are not at all brittle like some corn pastas, and it doesn't have the gooey or gritty feel of some brown rice pastas.

All in all, the Tinkyada White Rice Pasta was a great find. This brand seems to be easily available online, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled to find it in stores here in Portland. Please let me know if you've seen it around!

For recommendations on other pastas, read my post The Best and Worst of Gluten-free Pasta.

Addendum:

The fine folks at Tinkyada have informed me about where to find their products in Portland:
Whole Foods in the Pearl District, 1210 NW Couch
Food Front 2375, NW Thurman
New Season's Sellwood, 1214 SE Tacoma St.

Incidentally, I timed my pasta cooking last night and realized that I did indeed cook it for 17 minutes (15 for al dente). Once again, the fine folks of Tinkyada come through with their accurate information!

Comments

Rebecca said…
Raley's is the best. I thought of an idea for making your white pasta yellower (if that is a word). Try adding a bit of tumeric to the cooking water and see what happens. At worst, you'd dye your spaghetti flourescent orange. At best, it would look more like semolina pasta, thus satisfying your sense of sight as well as taste.

Bonus: some studies have linked tumeric to decreased risk for Alzheimer's!
February 22, 2009 at 10:47 PM
l'actrice said…
I found it in an asian store in Berlin!
February 23, 2009 at 2:35 PM
Anonymous said…
Both New Seasons and Whole Foods are pretty good about special ordering things, so if you ever find a product in another city, you could try asking these stores if they'd order it for you. If you know one location carries it, it shouldn't be a problem.
February 24, 2009 at 3:07 PM
Anonymous said…
Tinkyada is our favorite pasta! I am rather obsessed with their penne.
March 4, 2009 at 7:38 PM
Damion said…
I eat the Tinkyada Brown Rice pastas all the time. I've seen them in at least 2 New Seasons stores (Concordia and Arbor Lodge). I have only one complaint about it.... The longer it sits, the firmer it gets. If I make a pasta salad, I have to eat it within 3 days or so, otherwise the pasta literally starts to get crunchy!
March 10, 2009 at 4:17 PM
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