cleaning the pantry & ran across pasta with expired dates on the boxes. can it still be used? does pasta really expire?

What goes bad in the pasta are the oils from the grains. Rancid oil is bad for your health and tastes bad, but I suspect there is not too much contained in white pasta to make a huge difference. Whole grain pasta would probably be more noticeable when it goes bad.

I'm sure the pasta would be safe to eat, but maybe not delicious. I've cooked expired pasta a few times and it can taste stale. Open the box and smell it -- if it doesn't smell right, toss it.

Like Pierino, I love buying different shapes and I do use them a lot, but sometimes not fast enough. I'm trying to learn to not stock up so much when my favorite brand (DeCecco) goes on sale : )

These are all good suggestions. I had a box of something different, soybean pasta or something like that. You could tell by the texture (fuzz) that it had gone bad. I think the key word here was cardboard BOX. If its not packaged in celaphane-totally sealed, then toss.

I agree with the smell taste. It's conceivable that whole grain pasta might get rancid, but I've never encountered that. Just keep it dry!

i think it would smell stale if it was bad. If it doesn't and it's sealed, I'd agree that you can still use it.

It can be stored on the shelf in an airtight container in a dry area that is not exposed to extreme temperatures. Dried pasta can be stored indefinitely and still be safe to eat but the USDA recommends storing dried pasta for no more than two years to obtain the best quality.

Best use by dates are not throw-away dates. With sauce and such I doubt a taster would know that the pasta was slightly past its prime.

On the other hand I have so many different pasta shapes on hand that I could never use them all up in a year and I've never had a problem. None of them are egg pastas mostly just sturdy semolina varieties. There are more than 2,000 recognized pasta shapes in Italy and there are times when I think I've owned all of them.

It's edible but I'd toss it. It's cheap and old pasta tastes dull and the texture can get strange. Egg pasta more so.

If there are no weavils and has been stored correctly, it will be fine. Three years past expiration would be too long and in my view I wouldn't go past 1 year.