Hand-held pasta holds cheesy secret

Wisconsin students who won a product development contest by developing a hand-held pasta recently shared their secret to success: More cheese.

Handicotti, a hand-held pasta product filled with ricotta cheese and a tomato sauce chunked with sausage and vegetables, recently took top prize in a competition sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists, a 28,000-member professional group. The nine team members are students in food science or food engineering in UW–Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

“Initially the sauce and ricotta was mixed together,” explains Achyuth Hassan, a food science graduate student and team leader. “But our focus group said they wanted more cheese. So we changed the whole process, going to a co-extrusion process where we could have a layer of cheese and a layer of sauce.”

Contest judges were impressed not just by Handicotti’s taste, texture and eye appeal, but also by the team’s account of how they went about refining the product until they got it right. “Other teams presented their products as if there were no problems along the way,” Hassan explains. “We made it clear, in our presentation and on our posters, that we had to solve a lot of problems. The judges liked hearing about our learning process.”

Brainstorming, research and reformulation helped students evaluate the cost, shelf life, safety, nutrition, manufacturing strategies, packaging, marketing, and, of course, consumer acceptance for their product idea. Based on the focus group’s suggestions, the team also put more spice, sausage and vegetables in the sauce, and reformulated the pasta to eliminate doughiness.

Such contests are a good learning experience — and also generate job offers. Says graduate student Laura Lebak: “People come up to our poster session and ask, ‘What are you doing after college?'”