I discovered a form of pasta with almost no carbs and plenty of fiber that tastes like glass noodles. Also, it’s easy to find- in the produce section at Wal-Mart or the health food refrigerated section of Festival Foods. AND it’s only about $3 per package.  AND if you are diabetic, you don’t have to give yourself insulin correction for it since it has no carbs your body can use (it’s all fiber).  This food is shirataki noodles.

So, what is shirataki? It’s a Japanese tuber or yam. It is purported to have health benefits like helping with weight loss/making you feel full because of it’s large amount of soluble fiber.  As far as the validity of these studies, the studies that show benefit were done with supplements that had the active ingredient in the shirataki pasta… so it would make sense LOGICALLY that the same benefits of the main ingredient in the pasta would have the same benefit in the food… but I don’t know of any studies done on the pasta by itself.  There is also a higher protein version of the noodle that includes tofu in the recipe.

The fact that it takes the place of pasta in recipes, but has nowhere near the amount of calories pasta has, and is high in fiber, is a great thing.  As far as taste, if you just open the package and start eating it, it doesn’t taste good.  However, it will take on the taste of whatever recipe you use it in, so it tastes good once you actually use it as an ingredient.

Other tips: the strands of noodles are long, so you may want to cut the noodles into halves or thirds before using it to avoid having a big bunch of noodles that doesn’t mix well with the rest of your ingredients. So here are some recipe ideas:

1.)  Drain and use instead of spaghetti in any recipe that calls for spaghetti.  You don’t have to cook it, though, you just need to warm it.  So drain it, rinse it, and add it to the cooked sauce to warm it for a few minutes before serving, but don’t boil it for 5-10 minutes like you would pasta.

2.)  At the end of a stir-fry, after sauteeing together the ingredients of your choice (leeks or onions, carrot, celery, beans of your choice, whatever veggies you have lying around in your fridge that need to be used up along with garlic, Chinese five-spice powder and sriracha to taste), add drained, rinsed shiritake noodles instead of cooked rice.

3.) Make a simple one-pot pasta, adding the shiritake noodles at the end instead of the beginning since they don’t need to be cooked: https://www.marthastewart.com/978784/one-pan-pasta.