Trader Joe’s cost $3.49 for 9 ounces Palmini $5.29 for 12 ounces. The pastas’ price may also influence which one you prefer. And the other said the softer texture of TJ’s gave the dishes a richer taste. “It reminds me of angel hair pasta and it paired well with the marinara,” said one. Two of the testers preferred Palmini, but the other two thought the softer consistency of the TJ’s noodles was a plus. “You can twirl this one on a fork,” one tester said. The noodles were longer and that made them more pasta-like, too. It had a firmer texture than TJ’s every way we tried it. If you like your pasta al dente, Palmini is the better of the two. Palmini’s more neutral taste worked better with pesto and in the stirfry, although all of the testers thought pesto wasn’t the best topping for either brand of hearts of palm pasta. That flavor was muted once the noodles were mixed with the other ingredients, Keating says. But both hearts of palm pastas were pretty good, and the one to choose depends on your taste.īoth products had a vegetal flavor when tasted plain, with TJ’s being slightly stronger. The verdict: You could tell you weren’t eating pasta-neither product had pasta’s body, springiness, or smoothness. For the marinara and stir fry, she added them to the pan toward the end of cooking and heated them through for about 5 minutes. For the plain, EVOO, and pesto versions, she warmed the noodles in a skillet in a little oil before tossing with the other ingredients. Keating prepared the pastas, starting with rinsing and draining the noodles. Really? Four staffers from CR’s food team tasted Palmini and Trader Joe’s Hearts of Palm Pasta-both labeled linguini-five ways: plain, with marinara, with EVOO and parmesan, with pesto, and in a stir fry with Hoisin sauce. In fact, Palmini, one of the most familiar brands, calls the resemblance to pasta “extraordinary.” But one of the reasons why people are crazy for hearts of palm pasta is, they say, because it tastes more like the real thing. Noodles made out of vegetables aren’t new-think spaghetti squash and zoodles. Neither party responded to CR’s requests for comments. Canavan says that the sooner countries work to manage explosive growth the better.īoth Trader Joe’s and Palmini (a popular brand) source their hearts of palm sustainably, according to their websites, from farms in Ecuador. “Existing farms are close to communities with poverty and if people are being offered money, not just farmers but also owners of forestland or other habitat, you end up destroying the ecosystem,” she says. “I would be concerned,” she said of the future of hearts of palm. The next step when demand grows further are large mega-farms and extensive monocropping practices, “which can disrupt or destroy the biodiversity of an area, from the soil all the way up to large wildlife species," she says. What Canavan has seen with those crops is a loss of local farming practices, including crop rotations. Canavan said the explosive growth of hearts of palm reminds her of other worrisome trendy foods, such as avocados and quinoa. Karla Canavan, the World Wildlife Fund’s vice president of commodity trade and finance, works with the biggest brands in the world to help them build sustainable supply chains. Palm trees are found wild in the jungle, on the land of smallholder farmers, and now on large farms in order to meet demand. (Palm trees put out new shoots at the bottom that can be harvested later.) The crown is debarked to get to the inner core and then cut into different lengths or styles and typically processed by heating and adding salt. To get to the edible part, the crown of the tree trunk is cut down-but not the entire tree. Many types of palms produce a soft vegetable core that becomes what we know of as hearts of palm. Hearts of palm grows commercially in the U.S., but much of what we eat comes from South America, and Ecuador is a top exporter.
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