Pasta - losing the plot

Status
Not open for further replies.
gillrogers

gillrogers

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1.5 LADA
Pronouns
She/Her
Ok so I made a pasta bake, and used the cooked carb weight to do calcs after measuring the right dry weight. I cooked it in the bake liqure. I spiked terribly high. It's just dawned on me that if I'm cooking it in the bake liqure then the starch is kept in the meal and not drained away like it would be if cooked seperately. Would this be why I spiked so high?
 
Almost certainly as there is a lot of starch that comes out in the water, if you have every left it in the pan it looks like wallpaper paste when it is cold.
Why don't you try the lower carb pasta like black bean or edamame bean as it is only 15g carb per 100g dry wt pasta.
 
Leadinglights said:
Almost certainly as there is a lot of starch that comes out in the water, if you have every left it in the pan it looks like wallpaper paste when it is cold.
Why don't you try the lower carb pasta like black bean or edamame bean as it is only 15g carb per 100g dry wt pasta.
Click to expand...
Ooh thank you. I'm on gluten free pasta anyway. Yes I'll try that thanks.
 
I don't believe you lose many (of any) carbs in the cooking liquor you use for pasta.
I suspect the reason you went high is because you excluded the weight of the liquor when calculating the carb count.
If you take 100g of dry pasta and cook it, it will soak up a lot of water resulting in more than 100g pasta. I don't know how much but for illustrative purposes, let's say you end up with 200g pasta.
If cooked pasta is 30% carbs (again for illustrative purposes), the cooked pasta above would have 60g carbs in it.
If you calculated the carbs from the dry weight, you would have only calculated 30g carbs.

The same is true for rice: the carb density of cooked pasta is less than the carb density in raw pasta and rice.
 
I can't help on the carb counting.
But with regard to the pasta.
Some of us find cooking the pasta, rinsing it, letting it cool, and using it cold then reheating it lowers the carb hit by a substantial amount.
 
I'm probably going to sound daft, but could someone explain this to me? So -100g dry pasta has 30g carbs, and when cooked it becomes 200g pasta because it has absorbed water. Fair enough. But water has no carbs. So where do the other 30g carbs come from?

I don't have a scientific brain so please be gentle with me!
 
I honestly use this with low carb veggies with spag bol and it hits the spot and replaces actual pasta that I have missed eating .
 

Attachments

  • CA2E9A3A-995C-4912-8036-7EC9F064EEDB.png
    CA2E9A3A-995C-4912-8036-7EC9F064EEDB.png
    224.3 KB · Views: 16
  • 8669B19D-91DA-488A-A435-DB66E2AE830C.png
    8669B19D-91DA-488A-A435-DB66E2AE830C.png
    109.6 KB · Views: 16
helli said:
I don't believe you lose many (of any) carbs in the cooking liquor you use for pasta.
I suspect the reason you went high is because you excluded the weight of the liquor when calculating the carb count.
If you take 100g of dry pasta and cook it, it will soak up a lot of water resulting in more than 100g pasta. I don't know how much but for illustrative purposes, let's say you end up with 200g pasta.
If cooked pasta is 30% carbs (again for illustrative purposes), the cooked pasta above would have 60g carbs in it.
If you calculated the carbs from the dry weight, you would have only calculated 30g carbs.

The same is true for rice: the carb density of cooked pasta is less than the carb density in raw pasta and rice.
Click to expand...
Hi Hello,

I use nutracheck to make my recipes and the carbs for the liquor had been taken into account as had the carbs for cooked pasta. Made the same recipe tonight and the huge high didn't happen, it worked so something else must have caused that high. Just one of those blips I suppose.
 
Jacinta (Australian) said:
I honestly use this with low carb veggies with spag bol and it hits the spot and replaces actual pasta that I have missed eating .
Click to expand...
Thanks for that. Im now trying 5o find an alternative here in the UK.
 
Martin.A said:
The nutrition information panel on some packs of pasta can be confusing to say the least. It caught me out in the early days. Others are more helpful. A pack of Napolina Farfalle pasta we have in our larder, for example, only gives info for uncooked amounts. A pack of Sainsbury's Macaroni gives it for a cooked portion but in brackets says how much uncooked that is. I use chickpea pasta as it has far fewer carbs but when I weigh out a portion I record the uncooked weight in my food diary.
Click to expand...
I agree!

Basically I just double the uncooked weight of my portion to calculate the carbs, as I refuse on principle to spoil perfectly cooked pasta by letting it get cold while I weigh it!

But I still don't understand why introducing carb-free water to a portion of pasta should double the amount of carbs in it?
 
I suspect it is to do with the release of starch during the cooking process.
 
JJay said:
I agree!

Basically I just double the uncooked weight of my portion to calculate the carbs, as I refuse on principle to spoil perfectly cooked pasta by letting it get cold while I weigh it!

But I still don't understand why introducing carb-free water to a portion of pasta should double the amount of carbs in it?
Click to expand...

I always found around 30g to 40g of carbs per 100g of cooked spaghetti.
Around 70g when uncooked.
Weight increases by around 100% when it's cooked, so that seems fairly consistent.
 
Have a look at this maybe? 3 net carbs per serving. I am going to have a go at making it. Looks very easy, three ingredients. https://www.thedietchefs.com/keto-pasta-noodles-recipe/
Also check out his amazing cheese cake, going to do that too but substitute the filling with one on the Philadelphia cheese Australian recipe site for my all time fav coffee cheese cake, used to have it loads in Australia when I lived there, been searching for recipe for years, my mum refused to tell me, how mean is that?!
https://www.philly.com.au/recipe/coffee-liqueur-cheesecake/
 

Attachments

  • 78567BFC-D669-4C41-88B0-9D124429174F.png
    78567BFC-D669-4C41-88B0-9D124429174F.png
    234 KB · Views: 2
I could eat a whole pot of pasta, and frequently do. Not, I hasten to add,every day, week,or even monthly. I tend to have it as a notion several times a year, was brought up on it, and find it hard to completely do without!
 
travellor said:
I can't help on the carb counting.
But with regard to the pasta.
Some of us find cooking the pasta, rinsing it, letting it cool, and using it cold then reheating it lowers the carb hit by a substantial amount.
Click to expand...
I go a stage further and put the almost cooked pasta into 120gm portions, and freeze them. When required, I plunge a portion into boiling water for a few minutes. Works well for me.
 
JJay said:
I'm probably going to sound daft, but could someone explain this to me? So -100g dry pasta has 30g carbs, and when cooked it becomes 200g pasta because it has absorbed water. Fair enough. But water has no carbs. So where do the other 30g carbs come from?

I don't have a scientific brain so please be gentle with me!
Click to expand...
youre not only 1 wordering this
 
Leadinglights said:
My Carbs and Cals book shows most pastas are approx 10g carb per 30g cooked weight of pasta, which looks like a fairly measly portion, about 15 of the spirals or 8 shells.
Click to expand...
oh wait the water does add more wight to it but it wouldn't add more carbs to it? as water doesn't have carbs in.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top