Jovial Brown Rice Penne Review: Closest to Real Pasta?

Most gluten-free pasta asks you to lower your expectations. This Jovial brown rice penne review is about the one that mostly doesn’t. Jovial’s organic brown rice penne is the gluten-free pasta that reviewers, and America’s Test Kitchen, keep naming the closest to real wheat pasta in the category.

The catch is that “closest to wheat” is a texture claim, not a nutrition one. Jovial is two ingredients: organic brown rice flour and water. That makes it clean and celiac-safe, but it also makes it a plain refined carbohydrate, with far less protein and fiber than a chickpea or lentil pasta. It costs more than most, and it goes from perfect to mushy fast if you walk away from the pot.

This review draws on Jovial’s published specs, independent rankings from America’s Test Kitchen and Tasting Table, and the consistent pattern across celiac-community and buyer reviews. The short version: if texture is what you miss most about wheat pasta, this is the one to buy. If you’re buying pasta to add protein to dinner, it isn’t.

First Impressions

The standard box is 12 ounces and made in Italy, which is unusual in a category dominated by American brands. The front of the box is busy with seals, and most of them actually mean something: USDA Organic, certified gluten-free by GFCO, Non-GMO Project Verified, and kosher. The ingredient list is two words long.

This is penne rigate, the ridged version, which matters more for gluten-free pasta than for wheat: the ridges give thin sauces something to hold onto. Jovial’s brown rice line runs well beyond penne, including spaghetti, capellini, fusilli, caserecce, farfalle, and elbows. The recipe is the same across shapes, so everything here about taste, cooking, and reheating applies whether you buy the penne or the fusilli.

Against the certified gluten-free competition, Jovial sits at the premium end on price. It’s noticeably costlier than Barilla’s gluten-free line and priced above most rice-based boxes on the shelf.

Taste & Texture

This is where Jovial earns its reputation. Cooked correctly, the penne has a clean, wheat-like chew with none of the grit or slime you get in most brown rice pasta. America’s Test Kitchen named it their best gluten-free pasta; Tasting Table ranked it second out of twelve. The recurring line in buyer reviews is that guests don’t realize it’s gluten-free. That claim shows up too often, across too many sources, to dismiss.

Credit goes to how it’s made: bronze-cut and slow-dried the traditional Italian way, which gives the surface enough texture to grab sauce and the body enough structure to stay intact. It holds its shape in a baked dish and survives reheating better than almost any gluten-free pasta, a durability point most roundups miss because they only taste it fresh.

Here’s the honest comparison by name:

• vs. Barilla Gluten-Free (corn and rice): Barilla is cheaper and easier to find, and it holds up fine for most meals. Jovial has the edge on texture and tastes a bit more like wheat, so it’s the one to reach for when texture matters most.
• vs. Banza (chickpea): This is the real decision. Banza has roughly four times the protein and far more fiber, so it’s the better nutrition buy. Jovial has the more convincing pasta texture and a milder, more neutral flavor with no legume undertone. Choose Jovial for texture, Banza for protein.
• One thing to watch: Banza now makes a brown rice pasta of its own that reviewers say is very close to wheat too. So Jovial doesn’t have the texture lead all to itself anymore.

The one real weakness is flavor depth. Brown rice pasta is blander than wheat, so Jovial leans harder on your sauce and your salt than a semolina pasta would. Under-season it and it tastes flat.

Nutrition & Ingredients

Per 2-ounce dry serving: 210 calories, 44 g total carbohydrate, 2 g fiber, 5 g protein, 2 g fat, and no sodium or sugar. The ingredient list is organic brown rice flour and water, with nothing else: no xanthan gum, no corn, no egg.

That short label is the best and the most limiting thing about this pasta. Best, because it’s genuinely clean, certified organic, and free of the top eight allergens, made in a dedicated gluten-free facility that tests to under 10 ppm through GFCO (stricter than the FDA’s 20 ppm floor). Most limiting, because two ingredients of milled rice is, nutritionally, a refined carbohydrate. The 5 grams of protein and 2 grams of fiber are close to conventional white pasta and well under a legume-based pasta. This is about taste and safety, not protein or fiber.

On arsenic, a fair question for any brown rice product: Jovial says it sources rice from Italian farms chosen for historically low arsenic and tests every batch of rice, flour, and finished pasta, reporting under 5 ppb per serving. That’s more transparency than most brown rice brands offer. Independent lab confirmation exists through Gluten Free Watchdog but sits behind a paywall, so treat the specific number as the brand’s tested claim rather than a figure we verified ourselves.

How to Cook It

Jovial’s biggest problem isn’t the pasta, it’s the pot. The doneness window is short: it can go from firm to mush in under a minute. The consensus that runs through nearly every positive review is the same fix.

Start tasting about two minutes before the box time and pull it at al dente, when there’s still a firm core. Brown rice pasta keeps softening off the heat, so pull it a little early.

Salt the water generously, more than you think, because the pasta itself is bland. A rolling boil and an immediate stir after you add the pasta keep it from clumping.

Don’t rinse it for hot, sauced dishes. The surface starch is what makes sauce cling; rinse it away and the sauce slides off. The one exception is cold pasta salad, where a quick cold rinse stops the cooking and keeps the pieces separate.

For baked dishes like ziti, undercook by a couple of minutes before it goes in the oven so it doesn’t overcook during baking. This is also where Jovial’s structure pays off: it holds up baked and reheats the next day better than most of its competitors, so leftovers are worth keeping.

Who It’s For (and Who Might Pass)

Good for: anyone who misses the texture of wheat pasta more than they care about protein. Celiacs who want organic, top-eight-allergen-free, and a dedicated gluten-free facility with real certification. Cooks who bake pasta or want leftovers that survive reheating. Anyone serving gluten-free pasta to gluten-eating guests who’ll notice a bad one.

Might want to pass if: you’re buying pasta mainly to add protein and fiber to dinner (choose Banza or another legume pasta). You want the cheapest certified box or the one that’s easiest to find (Barilla). You tend to multitask at the stove and won’t watch the pot, because this pasta doesn’t forgive an extra two minutes.

The Verdict

4.1 out of 5. Jovial brown rice penne is the most convincing wheat-pasta substitute in the gluten-free aisle, with a genuinely clean two-ingredient label and certification a celiac can trust. It loses points for refined-carb nutrition, a premium price, and a narrow cooking window that turns an unwatched pot to mush. It comes in just below a protein pasta like Banza on overall value, but if texture is what you’re after, nothing rice-based does it better. Buy it for the pasta that tastes like pasta, watch the clock, and salt the water.