There is a lot of celebrating going on tonight!!! Not only did I hit my goal of 13,000 friends on the “book of faces” right before the new year, but I also tapped into the world of paleo pasta!! Now THAT’S a party in and of itself.
Now, on occasion I still make my kids gluten free rice noodles, but I personally don’t do rice comfortably anymore. It sort of mimics gluten/dairy for me so I avoid it as a general rule. I have tried Cappello’s brand pasta before and thought it was great for those needing a grain free alternative. In fact, Cappello’s was sort of fabulous until I realized I personally was overusing almond flour during my transition to paleo. I basically inflicted an almond sensitivity upon myself and it has since become a migraine trigger unless I eat almonds sparingly. So sadly, a giant bowl of almond flour pasta is really not the best option for me, delicious as it is.
It is important to remember that pasta is a TREAT!!!! This is not unlike any other dessert or treat that you would eat sparingly or for special occasions. I only say this because these are carb happy noodles, like “real” noodles. These are not zucchini noodles which I absolutely adore (did you know zucchini was my favorite veggie!?). So please don’t go eat 6 bowls of this deliciousness and then tell me you had a carb hangover. Cuz it will happen. Use your noodle with these noodles.
And lastly, if you are the paleo police, you have the wrong address – we don’t do “perfect” here – mainly because there is no such thing. Move along now.
Soooooo if you are ready to pull your kisser up to a bowl of delicious noodles made without nuts – come on over, I gotcha covered!!! These will definitely fill the void when you just NEED THE NOODLES. Only a few ingredients and you are set!
Ingredients:
- 1 cup cassava flour (not tapioca) – you can find it HERE
- 2-3 pastured eggs
- 3-4 tablespoons cooking fat (olive oil, avocado oil, ghee…)
- 1/2 teaspoon or more sea salt
- Bring 8 cups of water to a boil on the stovetop over high heat (add a pinch of salt if desired)
- Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl
- Using your hands, kneed, mush, combine, blend, whatever you need to do to make a ball of dough – (it should basically feel like dense glutenous flour once combined thoroughly)
- Lightly dust an area to roll out your ball of dough with a bit of cassava flour
- Roll out your dough with a rolling pin to desired thickness
- Using a pizza cutter or straight edged knife, slice your noodles as fat or thin as you like
- Transfer them to the boiling water and let them cook until they float, just a few minutes
- Using a slotted spoon, remove them from the water and transfer them to a strainer
- Shake off excess moisture and serve with preferred sauce!
Hi! Was curious, do these hold well as leftovers for the next day? Can you freeze the uncooked pasta?
I have not experimented with freezing. I think it would refrigerate well overnight but I can’t vouch for freezing. Will you let me know if it works well if you try it? Thanks!
What is the difference between cassava flour and tapioca flour? Both comes from the same root!
Hi Daniela,
Tapioca is the starch from cassava and the flour is the entire root dried and ground. Think of it like the difference between potato flour and potato starch.
Is cassava flour also yuca flour? I live in Mexico and we have a lot of yuca and yuca flour; however, I was just wondering if it is the same thing, or at least would serve as a subsitute. Thanks!
Kelley
Yes it is the same as yuca flour but different than tapioca. Tapioca is just the starch whereas yuca/cassava flour is the whole root ground.
Hi!
This is soooo great, I love yuca and I’ve yet to try making the dough from scratch with a whole root, but these noodles look so doable with the flour. Thank you so much for putting together all of these recipes, they are life-changing! I will definitely be trying this out 🙂 I’ll letcha know how it goes!
Sam
Yay! Enjoy Sam!!
I will probably not ever make these noodles, but I do appreciate that they CAN be made. The main thing I appreciated here was the comment that rice mimics gluten/dairy sensitivity for you. It does for me too and I thought I was imagining it/crazy because of too much food sensitivity. I mean rice of all things! But yes, it does. And reading that someone else felt the same way was incredibly validating. It’s all such a huge bummer, but it’s nice to know that there are alternatives.
I understand Wendy, it can be really frustrating. Thanks for your appreciation!
Hi, these look sooo good!
A question though, do you think your original tapioca dough (the one made with the whole root) could work to make these? Sadly, I can’t get cassava flour where I live, BUT there is an abundance of tapioca roots!
I just get the impresion that the dough would be too chewy, but who knows… have you tried it? If not could you give me some tips to maybe make it work? I’m trying this anyway, so if ot works I’ll let you know 😉
Thank you for such an awesome recipe (and without almond flour, yay! Not that I don’t love it… rather the opposite, I like it way too much, and it is possible to eat TOO MANY nuts!)
Hi Alba,
That’s a great question – I’d think you could figure out how but I was not able to when I attempted it. The dried flour is what helped the texture vs the root. Where do you live? As I understand it, Otto’s Cassava Flour is now shipping internationally via different online stores!
Hello,
First these look fantastic. Well done on getting so creative with the cassava. I’m curious though, I’m AIP so I can’t have eggs. Do you think a gelatin egg might work for this purpose? Or perhaps any other suggestions?
Thanks
That is a great question. It might work! I haven’t tried without eggs but please let me know what happens if you do, I’d love to know!
Hi,
So I finally gave these a try with two gelatin eggs. The dough had to be rolled out really quick cause once the gelatin started setting it lost the stretch without breaking and it didn’t stick back together. Boiled them very quickly and the end result was not half bad. They were a little on the soft side but they still had a bit of chew to them and I did notice they firmed up a little bit more the more they cooled. Only down side though is the majority of the noodles were pretty sticky, so once you drained them they kind of stayed in a mass, although I think because they cook so quickly that the stickiness might have been from some of them overcooking.
Anyways, had them with a lovely beet, carrot and lime salsa and they were delicious.
I am so glad you reported back! Interestingly cassava has a sticky texture by nature as well so it could be the combination of the cassava and gelatin. Not bad for having an AIP friendly pasta recipe I guess!
Looks fantastic! How many servings does the recipe make?
I’d say 2-3 depending on who you’re feeding and how hungry they are!
Can I use fresh yuca root for the recipe because I have made a dough out of it from just the yuca root and oil?
I tried making the pasta with yuca root first and it did not work for me. It could possibly work if you added more eggs and another starch but I didn’t have any luck unfortunately.
Would these work in a pasta maker? I tried them today, and they came out too thick. I was wondering if they could be rolled out in a machine instead?
You could try, sometimes it breaks off but I have used a hand cranked pasta maker and had some luck!
I used this dough in my Kitchenaid pasta extruder mixer attachment. I tried all but one of the pasta shapes–spaghetti, bucatini (cut short to make macaroni similar to what’s in those boxes of mac-n-cheese “dinner”), small macaroni, rigatoni, and fusili. Let me tell you, I had all kinds of fun cleaning up that mess!
Anyway, the dough, as made per the recipe, extruded just fine into each shape, but was a little difficult for me to separate. I made a 2nd batch and added 1 tsp. of xanthan gum. It extruded more efficiently (didn’t gum up in the auger as much), made somewhat sturdier shapes, and was a bit easier to separate. All the pasta shapes from both batches cooked up just great in just a couple of minutes of boiling. The pasta tasted wonderful, and had a good texture. I put my leftover uncooked pasta into some freezer bags and stuck them into the deep freeze. I’ll be excited to see how they work after freezing.
My husband (who is the one transitioning to grain-free) said he could not tell it wasn’t “real” pasta. For now, I’ll probably keep adding the xanthan gum when extruding, simply because it makes the process a little easier for me, and as far as I know, my husband isn’t sensitive to it.
Thank you!!!!
I was just going to ask if it would work for extruded pasta❤️
I love this idea! I was wanting to make Paleo chicken and noodles this weekend. My question is, would this make a good egg noodle? Rolling them out a little flatter and cutting wider would give the shape probably, but how would they hold up and cook in the broth like traditional soup? Thanks!
You might be able to make an egg noodle, cassava flour is a little trickier but you might try mimicking a regular egg noodle recipe to see!
Hi Jennifer – This looks amazing! Thank you for sharing such simple yet awesome recipe! I plan to try it this weekend. Do you think this would work for raviolis? I think I’m going to give it a shot 🙂 Thanks again ~Kylie
Yes definitely! I have a ravioli recipe (fill with whatever you like and top with desired sauce). http://predominantlypaleo.com/paleo-mushroom-ravioli-cream-sauce-crispy-sage/
This dough for raviolis turned out beautifully! I filled them with a tomato basil cashew cheese. You can see how they turned out at this link if you’d like: http://asliceofky.com/recipes/tomato-basil-paleo-raviolis/ This pasta recipe is going to be one I come back to time and time again. I’m thinking lasagna next! Thanks again!
Awesome!!!!!
Hi Jennifer, I love your bread recipe!
I can’t have maple and honey, would rice malt syrup work?
What does the maple and honey do for the bread, is it to help it come together?
As for potato starch, can you substitute kudzu (japanese arrowroot) for that?
Again, what role does potato starch play in the bread making?
I also can’t have coconut flour, what do you suggest?
Your recipe says 7 eggs, would egg whites work on this recipe?
Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks!
Hi Sara, I have to be honest and say that I’ve never worked with rice malt syrup but I would imagine that substitute would work fine. The potato starch helps with the texture of the bread. I spent quite a few weeks and lots of ingredients creating this recipe to be what I consider to be optimal in texture, taste, and versatility. So I must be honest and say that while many substitutions COULD work, if you change 3 ingredients you may see a different end result. I’ve provided some substitutions based on my experimentation in the kitchen but beyond those I cannot make any promises. Please let me know how your experiment goes! I’d love to know!
Hi Jennifer,
There’s a fair bit of honey in the bread. Won’t that make the bread sweet? Is the purpose of it to make me bind together? Any reason why it’s whole eggs and not egg whites as I thought whole eggs can make it smell horrible or cakey. Look forward to your thoughts. Thank you 🙂
I respond more quickly to emails jennifer@predominantlypaleo.com. The bread is slightly sweet, yes. The whole eggs are my preference and it is not cakey nor does it smell bad. The bread should smell like bread when it bakes. Hope that helps
HI Jen, haven’t heard back from you.
I am really interested in your opinion
Please share 🙂
One more thing, does it smell like regular bread when it comes out the oven? Thanks Jen! 🙂
Hi…love yr cassava noodles receipt…I’ve tried it and ait came out wonderfully. my problem is I couldnt get the strong scent of dried cassava dough out of the noodles, any suggestions?…
Let me know how my suggestion turned out!
This looks so good! Has anyone tried making lasagna noodles with it? I’m wondering if I should boil the pasta before layering and baking it or just layer the raw pasta sheets, making sure there is enough extra moisture from the sauce, and bake it like that. Any ideas???
It should totally work!
Could you clarify whether cassava lasagna noodles should be boiled first before layering in the lasagna? You didn’t make that clear in your reply regarding this question. Thanks.
I would think they could be layered before boiling. I haven’t tried.
Has anyone tried ravioli? I’m a big fan of squash or pumpkin ravioli; I will make this pasta as soon as I get cassava flour and try a couple raviolis to see how it works, so if someone has already tried, please respond. Otherwise, I will try thin noodles with squash sauce if ravioli doesn’t succeed. Really excited about this recipe from all the great reviews. Thanks for all your time and energy to inform a newbie like me.
Yes! Check out this recipe I made with the dough…fill with anything you want!
http://predominantlypaleo.com/paleo-mushroom-ravioli-cream-sauce-crispy-sage/
If one gets enough energy to take a stab at making Cassava pasta and I can make it correctly, is there a way to make a batch of it to save for later? In other words, can you store it somehow? Otto’s needs to come up with a pre-made version that doesn’t cost $160 for 8 lasagna sheets. 🙂
I haven’t made it ahead and stored it yet. let me know if you try and how it works!