Developed flat pasta that transforms into shape when cooked

Flat-packed noodles create more durable packaging, transportation and storage.

People love pasta for its shapes – from tubes of penne and rigatoni to spirals of fusilli and rotini.

But what differentiates farfalle from conchiglie also makes the staple a bear to pack, requiring large bags and boxes to accommodate iconic shapes of pasta from around the world.

A research team led by the Morphing Matter Lab at Carnegie Mellon University is developing flat pasta that takes on familiar shapes when cooked. The team impresses tiny grooves in the flat pasta dough – made only of semolina flour and water – in patterns that turn it into tubes, spirals, twists and waves when baked.

Processed pasta looks, feels, and most importantly, tastes like traditional pasta, while opening up new possibilities for food design and enabling flat-packed pasta that would reduce packaging, save space. storage and transport, and would potentially reduce time and transport. the energy required for cooking.

“We were inspired by flat-packed furniture and how it saved space, facilitated storage and reduced the carbon footprint associated with transportation,” said Lining Yao, director of the Morphing Matter Lab at the CMU’s School of Computer Science, Human-Machine Interaction Institute. “We decided to examine how the processing material technology we were developing in the lab could create flat-packed pasta with similar sustainability results.”

The team published their understanding of the morphing mechanism and design principles in the article “Morphing Pasta and Beyond,” which is the cover of the May 2021 issue of Scientific progress. The authors include 17 researchers from CMU, Syracuse University, and Zhejiang University who specialize in areas such as materials science, mechanical engineering, computer fabrication, and design.

The grooves stamped into the flat pasta sheets increase the time it takes for the water to cook that area of ​​the pasta. By carefully planning where and how to place the grooves, researchers can control the shape of pasta as it is cooked.

“The grooved side expands less than the smooth side, which causes the pastes to metamorphose,” said Teng Zhang, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who led the modeling analysis in this project.

The grooves can be used to control the transformed shape of any inflatable material. The team demonstrated that they could transform silicon sheets using the same grooving technique.

“This could potentially be used in soft robotics and biomedical devices,” said Wen Wang, a former researcher affiliated with the Morphing Matter Lab.

The plastic material used in food packaging contributes greatly to landfills around the world and packaging litter the oceans of the world. Creating efficient food packaging is key to reducing waste and shaping a sustainable future. Flat packed pasta would reduce packaging required while saving space during shipping and storage.

The team also considered that their flat-packed pasta could reduce the carbon footprint of baking. In Italy, around 1% of greenhouse gas emissions come from cooking pasta. Flat pasta can cook faster than tubular pasta, which could reduce emissions during the cooking process.

Ye Tao, a former visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Morphing Matter Lab and lead author of the study, tested the flat-packed pasta in nature by packing it for a hike. Pasta took up less space in her bag, didn’t break during the hike, and cooked successfully on a portable camping stove.

“The processed pasta mimicked the mouth feel, taste and appearance of traditional pasta,” she said.

Traditional pasta already transforms when cooked, expands and softens when boiled. The team harnessed these natural properties to create their flat-packaged product.

Morphing pastes build on years of research by Yao and the Morphing Matter Lab on morphing mechanisms and applications with different materials ranging from plastic and rubber to fabric and food.

Reference: “Morphing pasta and Beyond” by Ye Tao, Yi-Chin Lee, Haolin Liu, Xiaoxiao Zhang, Jianxun Cui, Catherine Mondoa, Mahnoush Babaei, Jasio Santillan, Guanyun Wang, Danli Luo, Di Liu, Humphrey Yang, Youngwook Do, Lingyun Sun, Wen Wang, Teng Zhang and Lining Yao, May 5, 2021, Scientific progress.
DOI: 10.1126 / sciadv.abf4098

The research was funded by the US National Science Foundation, the CMU Manufacturing Futures Initiative, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.