Barilla Makes Pasta Dinner, Lighting-Fast!
Do you really want to cook tonight? Maybe you won’t have to! Everyone loves pasta, but even though it cooks on the stove, it can be a messy pain the the you-know-what to make. You’ve got to lug out the heavy pot, wait for the water to boil, and then watch the pasta until it cooks. Then you have to drain it (that’s when I always burn myself). But for most, it’s the sauce that makes the pasta so yummy. That takes even more time to make, and not everyone has the time or talent to do it right.
Barilla, however, is known for some of the highest quality pasta around. Even better, this company now offers busy people a new way to eat pasta and sauce in less time than it takes to find a can of sauce, and open it! These meals have pasta and sauce in healthy combos, and they’re ready in literally, 60-90 seconds from microwave to table.
There are five different types of these Barilla pasta dishes: Mezze Penne with Tomato & Basil Sauce, Mezze Penne with Traditional Marinara Sauce, Whole Grain Fusilli with Vegetable Marinara Sauce, Whole Grain Mezze Penne with Tomato & Basil Sauce, and Mezze Penne with Spicy Marinara Sauce. All are all natural with no preservatives. That’s going to be the first big plus for people who want to eat healthy, but fast. The serving size is 9 oz. which is big enough for a man, but you could split it in half and share it as an appetizer or serve two small children with one meal. My favorite, the Whole Grain Mezze Penne Integrali Pomodoro e Basilico (whole grain mezze penne with tomato & basil sauce) is just 310 per tray (all the meals are under 320 calories), for a large, single serving. Only 45 calories are from fat and there are only 8 grams of sugar but 11 grams of dietary fiber. While the sodium level is high at 690 mg, it is far less than most prepared food. This whole grain mezze with tomato and basil pasta had a sauce that was full of chunky tomato, and it wasn’t too sour or too sweet. Jar sauces have a distinctive taste, but the Barilla Tomato & Basil sauce tasted like someone cooked it on the stove, If I didn’t know if was taken directly from a plastic microwave bowl, I’d never have known! The whole wheat pasta is normally challenging to cook well, but in this microwave dish it was very tasty and not over or under-cooked.
In the past, microwaved pasta was rubbery, dried out and gummy, but these new Barilla Meals cook quite nicely as long as you follow the directions. You might want to adjust the cooking time based on how your microwave works (all of them are a little different), but 60 seconds in my microwave was enough to cook the pasta and heat the sauce (which is housed in a separate dish). Be careful when you lift off the attached, film cover, because the sauce dish can lift up, and I nearly burned myself (the cooking directions do caution you to hold the sauce tray down with your thumb and slowly remove the covering film). I like my pasta al dente (slightly chewy) but you can add a teaspoon of water, mix, and re-cover, nuking the dish for another 30 seconds, if you like it softer.
Do these taste like you slaved over a hot stove for hours? Well, maybe not quite that authentic, but they are good. If you put the pasta and sauce in a nice dish with the sauce on the top (maybe a bit of freshly grated cheese), you might just get away with accepting compliments to the chef that should really go to Barilla. With no “bad stuff” in these dishes, it’s a great way to keep your kitchen cool and feed your family, fast. Better still, you don’ t have to refrigerate or freeze these, so stack up a bunch for those times when you simply don’t want to be in the kitchen, add a green salad, perhaps a glass of wine, and dinner is ready.
This Summer, treat yourself to time off and do something more fun than slave over a hot stove. They’d be the perfect thing for lunch at your desk, too. Your co-workers may actually get jealous! But you can direct them to Duane Reade and grocery stores around town (and I heard some talk that they’ll be offered through Fresh Direct some time later on in the year). At $3.29 per package you can stack them out and they’ll last a year on your shelf. However, I guarantee that they won’t stay in your larder for that long.
Learn more at http://www.barillaus.com
