Reducing the cooking water-to-dried pasta ratio and environmental impact of pasta cooking
Author(s)
Cimini, Alessio
Cibelli, Matteo
Moresi, Mauro
Date Issued
July 8, 2018
Type
Article
Abstract
BACKGROUND: During daily pasta cooking, the general consumer pays little attention to water and energy issues. The aims of this work were to measure the cooking quality of a standard format of dry pasta by varying the water-to-dried pasta ratio (WPR) in the range of 12 to 2 L/kg, and assess the environmental impact of pasta cooking.
RESULTS: In the above range of WPR, the cooked pasta water uptake (1.3±0.1 g/g), cooking loss (3.7±0.9 %), and degree of starch gelatinization (11.2±0.8 %) resulted to be about constant. Also, the main Texture Analysis parameters (e.g., cooked pasta hardness at 30 and 90% deformation, and resilience) showed no statistically significant sensitivity to WPR. On the contrary, by reducing WPR from 12 to 2 L/kg, the specific electric energy consumption linearly decreased from 1.93 to 0.39 Wh/g, and carbon footprint and eutrophication potential of pasta cooking lessened by about 80% and 50%, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS: By using the environmentally sustainable pasta cooking procedure tested here, there would be no need to cook dry pasta in a large excess of water (i.e., 10 L/kg), as commonly suggested by the great majority of pasta manufacturers. However, such a great mitigation in the environmental impact of pasta cooking asks for novel more proper pasta cookers than those currently used.
Citation
Cimini, A., Cibelli, M., Moresi, M. 2018. Reducing the cooking water-to-dried pasta ratio and environmental impact of pasta cooking. "Journal of the science of food and agriculture" DOI 10.1002/jsfa.9299
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