Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on the new science-backed method for cooking pasta

If you’ve ever tried to cook pasta at home, you’ll know the struggle - one minute it’s undercooked and chewy, the next minute it has disintegrated into a sticky mush. If you’ve ever attempted to cook gluten-free pasta, your experience has probably been even worse. So is there an idea way to cook pasta and does gluten-free pasta need different treatment?  New research published in the journal Food Hydrocolloids used some of the most advanced research tools on the planet to look deep inside pasta as it cooks to find out.  Using powerful beams of X-rays and neutrons from particle accelerator facilities usually reserved for studying materials, medicines and magnetic particle, they were able to figure out how to make better spaghetti.  The researchers took regular and gluten-free pasta and used X-rays and neutrons to see how the pasta’s internal structure changed during cooking, specifically the behaviour of gluten and starch.  They even used heavy water (which contains a different form of hydrogen) to make one ingredient invisible at a time. This way, they could isolate and study gluten and starch separately.  In regular pasta, gluten forms a strong internal framework which holds everything in place even when the pasta is boiling and swelling.  This is why:  Regular spaghetti stays firm. It doesn’t fall apart easily. It digests more slowly (lower glycaemic index). In gluten-free pasta, there is no gluten scaffold. That means:  The starch granules swell and collapse more easily. The pasta can turn mushy faster. It breaks down more quickly in digestion. Manufacturers try to replace gluten with processed starches, but the study showed these substitutes are much less stable, especially when overcooked.  Most of us add salt to pasta water because it tastes better, but the research found it also strengthens pasta’s internal structure.  The perfect amount of salt was found to be 7 grams (1.5 teaspoons) of salt per litre of water.  Salt helps gluten hold its shape and protects the starch granules so the pasta stays firm.  More salt is not better When the researchers doubled the amount of salt, the pasta broke down faster.  What did the scientists determine as the ideal cooking method for pasta?  For regular pasta:  Add 7 g of salt per litre of water and boil for 10 minutes  For gluten-free pasta:  Add 7 g of salt per litre and boil for 11 minutes  Gluten-free pasta is simply less forgiving and even two extra minutes or too much salt can turn it into mush.  This research isn’t just about perfecting dinner. Understanding how pasta breaks down at the microscopic level can help food scientists design better gluten-free pasta that:  Holds its shape better. Feels more like wheat pasta. Doesn’t spike blood sugar as quickly. And more broadly, the study shows how cutting-edge scientific tools, normally used to study batteries, magnets and biological molecules are now being used to understand everyday foods.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.