In our home, we eat a fair amount of spaghetti for dinner. My son who is a picky eater will eat spaghetti as long as the sauce is smoothe and there is no meat on his. This was always easily acommodated by keeping some sauce separate from the meat and serving his separately. So, when we switched my son over to a gluten free diet I set out to find a suitable gluten free substitute.

There are a lot of options when it comes to "doing spaghetti" gluten-free style. There's corn pasta, rice pasta, and even quinoa. We've tried out several different blends and brands and by far the favorite is Tinkyada Brown Rice Spaghetti. My experience with gluten free spagetti and other pasta is that it tends to have a few issues in either the consistency department or it sticks to itself, or both. Thankfully most gluten free pasta tastes pretty good and is quite close to "the real thing". Though usually, with spaghetti or any pasta you are putting some type of sauce over it anyways.

Tinkyada pastas are among the best in terms of consistency, looks and taste. Preparation of this Tinkyada Spaghetti takes slightly longer than regular spaghetti in terms of your boil time. I usually like to boil my water and then put in the spaghetti and let it boil for as long as 10-15 minutes. According to the packaging it says "can withstand overcooking". I'm really not sure what that is supposed to mean other than saying that if you boil it for too long it will still come out edible. It's been my experience that you really need to boil it longer than regular wheat based pasta or otherwise it is way too al dente and crunchy. In terms of how the spaghetti looks, uncooked it is significantly darker than regular spaghetti (it is made from brown rice). Surpringly after it is cooked it looks only slightly darker in color - and once you put red sauce on then the color doesn't matter anyways. Tastewise, I think that Tinkyada Brown Rice spaghetti tastes almost exactly the same as real spaghetti does. The true taste test would be my son's reaction, and he eats this just as he would 'normal' spaghetti. Because it looks the same I can make him this and serve us traditional spaghetti and the food on his plate looks no different (aside from his lack of meat).

I normally purchase this Tinkyada Brown Rice Spaghetti by the 16 oz bag in a local specialty store or in the extensive "nature's market" section of my grocery. A bag of this costs under $3, which is cheap in the world of gluten-free foods, though more expensive than a box of wheat laden Spaghetti you'd find on the grocery store shelves.

Tip for the GFCF (gluten free casein free) diet: If you are using jarred sauce be sure to check your sauce for inclusion of dairy or cheese. Many jarred sauces are not casein free.

Ingredients: Brown Rice, Bran, Water

www.tinkyada.com



Recommended: Yes