Penne Pasta. Organic & Whole Wheat at that..
Any good? Well, we bought a box of DeBoles to cook up and evaluate to find out. Our review..
So here’s the deal. The box describes the product as Whole Wheat Penne made with Jerusalem Artichoke Flour, it displays the USDA Organic Label, the 100% Whole Grain Lable and is certified organic by QAI. The Nutrition looks reasonable and has 5 g of dietary fiber, click here for the full details.
Appearance-wise this product is a light brown with the penne a bit on the shortish size coming in at 1″ full circumference length (if one includes the flared tips then total length is 1.5″).
The product cooked up with no problems. We needed to cook ours for the full 10 minutes. Drained and tossed with some unsalted organic butter and a little sea salt & ground pepper. We resisted the temptation to put this together with a sauce since we wanted to taste the only the pasta in order to correctly check it out.
Well, the first thing you notice is that this pasta has good body for want of a better term. That is to say, it has and maintains a good texture from the first bite through all the time that you’re chewing. Not an underdone kind of thing since the pasta was cooked to perfection but just a good texture that holds up and doesn’t fall apart after it hits your mouth. We like this, and envision that we’d really be able to slowly eat & savor with a good sauce & glass of wine. It’s also noteworthy that there’s none of the stickiness as you can encounter with “conventional” pastas and the ridges on the outside would tend to hold a sauce pretty well.
Taste..we were concerned that this would have an over-the-top nutty flavor that would overwhelm the sauce (which should be the star of the show).. Well we were wrong. The pasta did have something going on, sort of a nutty grain flavor but it held itself in the background nicely and would play a solid supporting role to the sauce instead of stealing the show.
In summary, we like this product. Here’s why..it’s organic, the Jerusalem Artichokes reportably have health advantages, high fiber, great texture, non-sticky and tastes great with flavors subtle enough as to not overwhelm the sauce. Enjoy this pasta and live naturally.
