Always Skip This 'Horrible' Kroger Pasta, According To Some Shopper Reviews

Plain jane pasta is a pretty simple affair. A bit of flour, some eggs and oil ... baby, you've got noodles. While it's true that making fresh pasta can be a bit of work and therefore maybe not realistic for every weeknight dinner, it's reasonable to expect that store-bought pasta is pretty uniformly high quality. However, that doesn't seem to be the case with Kroger brand spaghetti.

Kroger's spaghetti noodles have quite a lot of bad reviews for such a no-frills pantry staple. "Horrible," stated one buyer on the product page. "I don't care how long you let it cook, it's still hard." "Has a weird taste and smell," another dissatisfied customer complained. A third reviewer damned it with faint praise: "It's cheap spaghetti. It fills this broke college student's belly up. Only problem is that there's a slight accent of grass or hay. Even when I cook or overcook it." Yet another commenter mentioned feeling like the 16-ounce box was short of product, and alleges that they only received 12 ounces.

The spaghetti at Kroger is enriched, meaning that nutrients like niacin, ferrous sulfate (for iron), and thiamine are added to the flour. This isn't an uncommon occurrence in the grocery store, which leaves us scratching our heads as to why, exactly, Kroger's pasta tastes strange to some. To make the matter even more interesting, it's not just the spaghetti that's come under fire.

If Kroger's spaghetti pasta was maligned, but other types got praised, we might shrug and chalk the matter up to an irregularity. Interestingly, however, Kroger's penne rigate also has a splattering of bad reviews among its ratings. Several customers complained about the texture, saying that it was hard to achieve al dente pasta without the noodles breaking or going straight to the mushy stage. Again, there was a customer arguing that there weren't exactly 16 ounces of pasta in the box. More condemnation spilled over in the reviews of Kroger's oven-ready lasagna, which was dubbed plasticky, impossible to actually cook, and not worth the small savings you enjoy with the private label. 

It's worth noting, on the other hand, that the few comments on Kroger's whole-grain pasta were largely complimentary. This leads us to wonder if, like some commenters suggested, there's something inferior about the flour in the standard pasta offerings.

Whatever the cause, we think we might steer clear of Kroger's boxed pasta. At its best, pasta is a comfort food with endless saucing possibilities (here's where we ranked store-bought pasta sauces)  that fills our bellies, warms our hearts, and offers an inexpensive, versatile dinner after a busy day. Despite its best efforts, perhaps it's best to stick to a brand name you trust when shopping for noodles at this particular grocer. And make sure you skip the watery mess that is the worst store-bought pasta sauce brand we ranked.