How to Cook Gluten-Free Pasta (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.

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. Drain your pasta using a colander (large sieve) but don't rinse it.

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.

Properly salting your water absolutely combats this. I usually use 2 – 3 heaping teaspoons of salt when cooking a box of gluten free pasta. The only time to pull back some on the salting is if you'll be serving your pasta with a salty sauce. A good example of this is a parmesan heavy cheese sauce.

After 6 minutes remove one piece of pasta and carefully bite into it to check if it is 'al dente' meaning cooked but with some bite. Watch out it will be hot so blow on it first! If it feels too hard then continue to boil and test again at no more than one minute intervals until the pasta is cooked.

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.

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.

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.

Why does my gluten-free pasta fall apart? ›

In fact, pasta will continue to cook for several minutes after it is taken out of the pot. Any pasta that has been overcooked will start to fall apart and dissolve, especially pastas made with less-starchy ingredients that don't naturally bind together.

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.

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.