People worldwide have accepted pasta as a true and tested delicacy. The love for pasta also revolves around the number of shapes it comes in, from rigatoni to spirals of fusilli and rotini to tubes of penne. However, the basic difference between farfalle and conchiglie is also that it is a hurdle to package it. This is because it requires large bags and boxes to accommodate different sizes of pasta, leading to plastic waste. The plastic used in packaging products is a primary reason for landfills all around the world. Further, it also litters the oceans and other water reservoirs. Thus, it is essential to come up with a good food packaging form that can help reduce waste and contribute towards a sustainable future.
A research team took up this problem and successfully developed flat pasta with the ability to take different shapes once it is cooked. The morphed pasta has all the essential qualities of the traditional one and feels, looks, and tastes exactly like it. This can be considered as a unique and vital contribution to the Pasta Market as this development opens up several new possibilities for food design. Now manufacturers and packers can easily cut back on packaging and save space in storage and transportation. Furthermore, the new flat pasta may also decrease the time and energy required for cooking it.
In order to produce this pasta, the team impressed tiny grooves into flat pasta dough, which was made from semolina flour and water. The patterns made helps the pasta to morph into several shapes after being cooked, such as spirals, waves, tubes, and twists. In addition, researchers revealed that they were inspired by flat-packed furniture that saved space and made storage and transportation easy. Thus, they thought of looking at morphing matter technology which had the ability to create flat-packed pasta.
The pasta was made through careful planning. It took the team some trial and error to understand where and how to put the grooves so that the Shape of the pasta could be controlled and it would take the desired shape once cooked. The grooves were stamped into the flat pasta sheets, leading to an increase in cooking time in that area. This ensured that the pasta would morph into the desired Shape only.
The team is optimistic that their newly developed flat pasta would reduce the carbon footprint related to cooking. This is because, in Italy itself, 1% of greenhouse emissions are formed due to pasta cooking. In addition, as this pasta cooks faster than tubular pasta, it might lead to fewer emissions during the cooking process. Moreover, the team stated that the process and theory used in this research could also be useful in soft robotics and biomedical devices, giving this research an edge over all others.