Best Tasting Whole Wheat Pasta – Mishry Reviews

For the last few months, we’ve been busy reviewing and recommending the best snacks, dairy products across available brands. We got a lot of requests to find the best tasting Whole Wheat Pasta, so here we are! After trials and tasting sessions over 4 days at our review lab, and also at a top hotel kitchen in New Delhi, our Top Pick for the Best Whole Wheat Pasta that delivers both health and taste in equal measure comes from Del Monte. We cooked Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta multiple times, and every time it turned out to be the tastiest amongst contenders, delivering the perfect ‘wheaty’ (also ‘earthy’ for some) flavor, along with the distinct texture and bite which doesn’t make you miss the regular ‘white’, made-from-refined-flour kind of pasta.

Mishry Top Pick: Best Tasting Whole Wheat Pasta

 Here’s how you can pick the best whole wheat pasta for your family

Mishry Top Pick: Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta

Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta, 500g

Del monte’s whole wheat pasta was able to retain its mild-nutty flavor even after it was cooked with butter, olive oil, and truffle oil. In short, it created a perfect and tasteful blend.

Why is Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta is our Top Pick:

Whole wheat pasta should have a distinct ‘wheaty’ flavor. Some may even describe this as ‘earthy’, nutty. Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta had the most appealing, natural taste amongst all the brands we reviewed.

We followed the same cooking process for all brands, (unless the brands specifically mentioned the process) and found that Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta cooked really well. It was not rubbery, hard or chewy.

We tasted all brands in a 4-step process. First cooked as is, then in butter, followed by tasting each with olive oil, and lastly with truffle oil.

This 4-step method helped us gauge the taste of the pasta with a range of accompanying flavors. In all tastings, Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta tasted the best.

Our Review Process

Most people like eating pasta. Those who eat it a little more regularly may complain that whole wheat pasta does not taste as good as regular ‘white pasta. Our review aims at finding the best whole wheat pasta for those who are looking for healthier options. Additionally, when pasta is added to a cold salad, it becomes all the more important that you add something that tastes good on its own – and cannot hide behind the flavors of the sauces added.

For all these reasons, our process was a step ahead this time. Meaning we didn’t restrict the cooking and tasting trials to our kitchen alone. We wanted to get the perspective of someone who cooks this kind of pasta on a daily basis. We also wanted to hear from someone who is committed to delivering tasty food, even when you are cooking with healthier ingredients. Who better than the Executive Chef of one of Delhi’s premium hotels known for serving quality food for years. That’s why we turned to Chef Prem Kumar Pogakula, who runs the restaurants and banquets at The Imperial, New Delhi.

Within the first few minutes of discussing the review with him, Chef Pogakula had very interesting inputs. In their kitchen, they routinely serve pasta dishes cooked with whole wheat pasta. However, they don’t cook the pasta ‘al dente’ in water – they only half-cook it, and then take it directly to a pan to cook it further in an open flame, using some of the pasta water.

That’s the process we decided to adopt for our review. We also chose not to taste the final pasta dish with tomato or cream-based sauces – such as bechamel and alfredo. We wanted to be able to taste the ‘pasta’ more than the accompanying sauces. Traditionally, in Italy too, more often pasta dishes are prepared simply just with the use of butter, olive oil, a little garlic and a few fresh herbs such as basil and thyme. Aglio Oglio, for example, is a very simple dish where you actually taste the pasta (spaghetti, or any type of pasta of your liking) itself.

Also Read: Types Of Pasta: 17 Different Variants Of Pasta

The Brands We Picked:

Colavita

Del Monte

Borges

Barilla

How We Picked Our Brands?

We picked as many commonly available pasta brands that regularly do whole wheat pasta. Beyond this, we tried to keep the type of pasta as similar in shape and size as possible. While 3 out of 4 brands have wholewheat Penne available, Colavita was the only brand where we had to pick Fussili since Penne was not available anywhere.

In addition to that, the price range also plays an important role in our decision for brand picking, for the price of a product can be directly linked to its quality and type, thus we often go for the products belonging to a similar price range. The brands in the review are not very expensive and can be used by most cooks at home.

Who Is This Review For? 

Pasta, once considered to be a gourmet food in India, has in recent times, become even more popular due to its wide-availability and easy-to-make characteristic. Other than that, pasta has now become a delicacy that one can enjoy in the comfort of one’s home, thus making it a more homely dish rather than something that’s exotic. So, it is clear that this review is for people who are looking for a pasta dish that’ll give them that authentic Italian taste (of course) and give them a little break from regular Indian food.

Apart from the taste, whole wheat pasta also has a higher nutritional value when compared to the traditional one. Hence, if you are looking for a flavorful and healthy treat, then this review might just be for you.

The Tasting Process:

One of the main components of a pasta dish is often the sauce, which can sometimes overwhelm the natural flavor of pasta, thus making it impossible for us to judge the natural taste of pasta during the review. Due to this, we needed to arrive at a process that would enable the real flavors of the pasta to come out. To create a perfect, and fair method, we decided to consult with Chef Prem Kumar Pogakula, Executive Chef at The Imperial, New Delhi.

Chef Prem helped and guided us throughout the different steps of our review process, which was done as per the instructions he provided. The cooking and tasting trials were conducted both at our review kitchen and at the kitchens of The Imperial, in a separate section at a time when the kitchen was not attending to guests’ orders.

Steps Involved In Our Tasting Process

1. Half-Cook

The first step for our review process was exactly the same as the first step in the usual preparation of any pasta dish. For this step, we simply boiled pasta in different batches and took note of each one of their taste before going on with the next step.

2. Cooking With Butter

For the next step, we decided to pan-cook the boiled pasta in a little butter. After the process, we again tasted them and noted down our likes and dislikes for further climbing up the ladder. The pasta was taken off the fire now and tasted.

3. Adding Olive Oil To The Mix

The next step involved the addition of olive to the butter-cooked pasta. This process was important because the addition of olive oil tends to bring out the nutty flavor of the wheat pasta, and not to mention the various health benefits associated with olive oil itself. Again we noted down the tastes of different kinds of pasta after this process.

4. Finishing It Up With A Bit Of Truffle Oil

Though recently introduced, truffle oil has emerged as a great culinary ingredient that is often used as a finishing oil in various recipes including pasta. This was the final step for our tasting process after which we reviewed our results in order to come up with our top pick.

The Result Of Our Review Process

Based on the four different tastings, we can say that Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta, turned out to be our top pick. It is soft, non-sticky, cooks perfectly, and most of all, its mild-nutty, ‘wheaty’ flavor goes very well with even simple additions like olive oil and garlic. For the other brands, Barilla’s Whole Wheat Pasta also had a somewhat near-perfect taste, yet it could not surpass the flavor of Delmonte Penne Rigate Whole Wheat Pasta.