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Comment by noqc | Hacker News Reader

The main problem with it is that it takes too long to cook, and the T-intersections of the pasta are still undercooked when the rest of the pasta is done. Further, the non-uniformaty of the joints of the pasta means that the ruffley bits had a tendency to shear off during the cooking process, or in the final step when you cook it with sauce.

When I tried to leave a 4-star review on their website, along with my commentary, it was rejected. In all honesty, my 4 stars was too generous though. The main "problem" that this pasta claims to solve is much more easily solved by cooking the pasta in your sauce for 30 seconds, after which your sauce will happily adhere to any shape of pasta you can imagine.

Ultimately this is a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine iteration, which should not be surprising.

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When you said your 4 star review was denied, I figured it must be out of 10. But no, it's out of 5, and the store does indeed show 138 reviews with an average of 5 stars.

That's wild. I know deleting 1 star reviews is common and I hate that as well but these people aren't even trying to make it look legit. Pathetic.

It’s also dangerous territory with the FTC, who have fined companies millions for doing exactly that. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/01/...

yeah, even target.com won't publish any 1 star reviews of their products - I bought a play kitchen years ago that was pretty terrible but sure enough they would never publish the review

> When I tried to leave a 4-star review on their website, along with my commentary, it was rejected

Whenever I see a website displaying their own reviews, I always assume they're at best cherry picking or at worst outright forging.

I mean, sure if you’re comparing a 5-star first party review to a 4-star third party review.

But nobody should be doing that sort of comparison anyway — that is, cross-site review comparison.

If I’m looking at first party reviews, I’m comparing them to, at most, reviews on other products of the same site.

They for me, they still carry some relative (intra-site) weight, but definitely no absolute (cross-site) weight.

A lot of novice cooks I know will fully cook their pasta, strain it, and get it pretty dry before putting sauce on. The starchy pasta water is actually a "glue" that helps adhere the sauce to the pasta. If you leave your pasta a bit wet before saucing, you get better adhesion by a lot, and it's even better if you cook the pasta (and pasta water) into the sauce to release more starches into the sauce.

Even worse - it's not uncommon to give the pasta a short rinse with cold water to make them "les sticky", and then complain the sauce isn't sticking.

The texture differential at the T-intersections was a deliberate choice for the mouth feel component and is one that I appreciate. It gives an inner region of tooth resistance. The frills stay on if you time it right. If I want to cook it in the sauce I pull it out of the water earlier. NBD. I haven’t yet used what Trader Joe’s offers. I suppose it’s possible the two products are not identical.

I can tell you the Trader Joe's version was so bad with the frilly parts coming off that I hoped it was just their version being cheap, but apparently that's not the case based on parent's comments.

I’ve cooked the TJ version a number of times - the only time the ribs have fallen off was when I overcooked them. I don’t think it’s a bad pasta but I do think its virtues are being oversold- there are many pastas that achieve exactly the same thing.

Never had the frills come off. Must be the TJ version or a bad batch.

He used the term ‘toothfeel’ in the podcast, which is analogous to al-dente.

I’ve found that the amount of salt in the water, and how crowded the pot is will play a big part in how well it cooks.

You are right, but it goes beyond 30 seconds of cooking. To any reader who does not know how to properly sauce pasta, this might change your life: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-right-way-to-sauce-pasta

I dunno, I tried it and greatly enjoyed it. I didn’t notice any uniformity problem but I’m also not that all that discerning when it comes to pasta.

If you aren't particularly discerning, why would you greatly enjoy spending so much more money for what you basically consider equal to cheaper pasta?

Sometimes you're just curious if you'd notice the difference or if you like it. Just because you're not discerning doesn't mean you won't notice differences or have preferences this time.

I'm not a discerning drinker, but sometimes I'll still order a fancier beer or glass of wine, because... why not? I don't do it often, so I don't mind dropping some extra bucks, and sometimes I experience something new and interesting.

In this case, I would take discerning to mean noticing smaller details that other people might notice. That doesn't preclude having preferences.

Also, $5 for a pound doesn't really seem like a lot of money. Pasta is cheap in general.

They greatly enjoyed the pasta. They didn’t say they “greatly enjoyed spending so much more money”.

I didn't notice the price and don't really care. Either way it's much cheaper than eating out and I'm happy to pay a bit more in absolute terms for better food. (E.g., even if the relative difference is a 100% price increase, it's still a couple of bucks for a big bag of pasta).

I like the shape and the texture, and it does seem to hold a lot of sauce. By "not particularly discerning" I meant that I'm not a pasta expert and I might well not notice something like it not cooking perfectly evenly, and I wouldn't really know whether there being other equivalent pastas out there that have similar or better features. I'm just familiar with the usual stuff (spaghetti, macaroni, ravioli etc.).

Unfortunately agree. Idk if the one they sell at Trader Joe's is the same from the article, seems like it is, and what you describe is exactly what happened to mine.

If you click the article then click buy, the top of the page has a link to Americas Test Kitchen saying the Trader Joe’s variant is much worse and not recommended. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/6189-trader-joe...

That's too bad. I would love to try the Sfoglini brand but it doesn't have kosher supervision, as opposed to the TJ's.

Pasta needs kosher supervision? The only two ingredients are durum wheat and water.

I guess I see conflicting responses regarding other production in the facility and vessels.

https://twitter.com/cRcKosher/status/237565128952905728?lang...

https://siks.org/en/siks-standards-of-kosher-certification/

I have no idea about this pasta but keep in mind Americas test kitchen also claimed it's impossible to get crispy skin on a piece of pork belly in an oven and insisted it must be fried.

The Trader Joe’s version isn’t very good. The main version is much better.

Agreed. It’s not a very good shape. Uniformity of thickness is important for pasta shapes. It’s why wheels or farfalle also suck. They have thicker and thinner points that cook unevenly

I may be in the minority here, but I appreciate pasta shapes which result in a gradient of aldentitude (made up that word).

I tried it, thought it was good, but not revolutionary.

Do you think every other shape of pasta beyond the first was a "marketing gimmick rather than a genuine iteration"? Can't it just be another option among many?

When you say it was "rejected", are you saying you received a message saying it was rejected, or it didn't appear on the site, or it was removed? I see a number of less-than-5-star reviews citing both of the flaws you mention.

Why do you cook pasta with the sauce?

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