12 Tips for Cooking Great Gluten Free Pasta - A Little Bit Yummy (2024)

FAQs

Is there a trick to cooking gluten-free pasta? ›

Once you've added the pasta to the pot of boiling water, stir every 30 seconds for the first five minutes of cooking to move the olive oil around and keep the pasta loose. Gluten-free pasta requires more stirring in the initial cooking stage than regular pasta so that it doesn't (surprise!) stick together.

Don't forget to salt the water.

On its own, gluten-free pasta is really pretty tasteless. It needs seasoning, in the form of salt, just like regular pasta. After the water comes to a boil, add enough salt to make the water taste like the ocean (about 1/4 cup for a large pot of water), before adding the pasta.

Gluten free pasta tends to absorb more sauce than normal pasta. This means you might need to add more water to the sauce as you mix it through the pasta. Don't rinse your pasta.

Because of the starch, gluten-free pasta noodles tend to cling together. Add a glug of olive oil to the water and make sure to run a spoon through it to redistribute every 30 seconds during the first few minutes of cooking. Once the pasta has begun to plump you don't have to worry about it as much.

The usual rationale for the addition of olive oil to the pasta water is that it helps prevent the noodles from sticking together. While that technique doesn't work as well for glutinous pasta as maintaining a rolling boil, it actually does help with the gluten-free variety — as it tends towards mushiness.

Avoid foods that list gluten-containing ingredients such as ale, barley, beer, bleached flour, bran, bread flour, brewer's yeast, brown flour, brown rice syrup (unless the food is labeled gluten-free), bulgur, couscous, dextrin (unless the source is gluten-free), durum, farina, farro, hydrolyzed vegetable (wheat) ...

Save the starchy water.

It acts as a sauce for the pasta recipe. Gluten-Free Spaghetti Aglio e Olio (pictured above) is a great example of this. If your pasta water gets super-starchy, that's okay in this recipe because that's exactly what it calls for!

Unfortunately, it is not advisable to reheat gluten-free pasta because it is made of corn and rice, both of which break down more quickly and easily than wheat. As a result, gluten-free pasta tends to become mushy and tasteless when cooked a second time.

Overcooked gluten free pasta is mushy and falls apart. Start checking pasta for doneness at the lowest cooking time shown on the packaging. You want the pasta to have a little bite to it like traditional pasta does.

What happens when you overcook gluten-free pasta? ›

If cooked properly, it turns out perfectly al dente and is even good cold in a pasta salad. Gluten-free pasta in general is tricky and one minute overcooked will produce a mushy pasta that splits and falls apart.

Once the pasta is cooked and cooled in cold water, it can be wrapped in an airtight container or bag and stored in the refrigerator up to three days and reheated. The results will be excellent.

This couldn't be further from the truth! Gluten free pasta can be cooked just as easily as wheat pasta. Thanks to our unique blend of corn and rice, there's no risk of mushy pasta. The only difference is that the whole grain rice pasta may take a bit longer to cook as the grain must be broken down.

According to Sarah Schmalbruch's INSIDER article Here's the Real Reason You're Adding Olive Oil to Boil Pasta – And It's Not Sticky Noodles, the real reason to add olive oil is to prevent the pasta water from boiling over the pot itself rather than to prevent noodles from sticking.