Aside from garlic bread and parmesan cheese what else do you do to make spaghetti taste better?
A trick I learned is to let all the water evaporate or be absorbed into the spaghetti instead of draining it. it takes longer to cook it (maybe 20 minutes) but the spaghetti is alot more full and has more flavor to it.
Meatballs made out of ground beef by hand are alot better than the mini-meatballs put in spaghetti sauces. So thats another way to improve spaghetti.
What else can a person do to spice up spaghetti? Are there some other spices, some other toppings, some other bread-esqe material to spread it on?
If you like hotness you could add pepper, black or red, to the sauce. Maybe some fresh basil leaves, or oregano.
Your description of letting it absorb all the water sounds like it would be way too soggy for me…have you tried cooking it al dente?
If the pasta, you can prepare it carbonara style, with a bacon, olive oil and parmesan topping. Or putanesca style, with a spicy tomato-anchovy-caper-pepper bite to it, or with a nice pesto sauce on it. The ways of topping your pasta are myriad.
If the sauce, then you’ve also millions of options.
We need a smaller target in order to advise you properly.
My mom made her sauce with garlic, basil, and FENNEL. You have to cook it all day to work the fennel in unless you want to grind it up. Saute the garlic in a little olive oil and remove cloves, add 2 small cans of tomato paste, a large can of tomato puree (28 oz), 42 oz of water, 2 tbss basil, 2 teaspoons fennel. Cook the hell out of it.
when you make your meatballs with bread crumbs add some Parmesan cheese and cook it in the sauce.
Chop up some onion, bell pepper, and celery, and put it in the sauce. If you don’t have time to let it simmer for a while, then saute those things in olive oil before you add the sauce. Get some oregano, basil, thyme, and chopped garlic, and add them to the sauce. I often add a few dashes of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, too.
This year, my little garden is blessed with rosemary, thyme, oregano, and chives, so all that goes, fresh, into the sauce, along with any fresh tomatoes. Canned diced tomatoes will do when there are no fresh ones. If there’s chicken in the dish, I add tarragon.
I would never let my pasta cook for 20 minutes. In my universe, it’s al dente or nothing at all.
You can always add an olive/caper/anchovy tapinade & some red pepper flakes to plain tomato sauce to make a quick pasta putanesca.
Generally, the only things I add to my tomato sauce are fresh basil, dried red pepper flakes, and freshly grated parmesan or similar aged hard cheese. The stuff in the green container is not an acceptible substitute, unless you like cheesy flavored sawdust. Also fennel seed, as has been suggested, is very good.
I always make my sauce from scratch, with good quality olive oil (I like Frantoia), , freshly chopped garlic, fresh or canned Roma/plum tomatoes, and freshly chopped basil thrown in at the end. Note the key word: fresh. You really don’t need to get fancier than this if you use high quality ingredients to start. If I want a slight meaty taste to it, I may also add some chopped slab bacon to the pan.
Have you tried sauce made with clams? We make a butter sauce using a couple of cans of clams, a stick of butter, a can of crab meat, some fresh, chopped garlic and black pepper. Mix it together and cook it slowly for half an hour or so and then pour it over the pasta. Tastes good and is easy to cook.
If you are making spaghetti and meatballs you can add some ground pork to the beef. Some white wine in the sauce is also good.
Sauces containing minced or ground meats willl typically be much tastier if they are simmered for a looooong time (several hours) - if you want to have semi-crisp pieces of vegetable, this is still possible - make the sauce with just the onions, garlic, meat, tomatoes and herbs, then add the finely diced vegetables half an hour before the end of cooking.
I have a spaghetti question and I apologise for the hijack. Is tinned spaghetti available in America?
Everytime I see spaghetti mentioned my first thought is of the tinned variety. It is widely available in Australia, Britain and NZ (and possibly other places?). It is over cooked, red sludge best served on toast, maybe with a bit of cheese or with eggs or bacon or …well fried stuff really. It is the comfort food of childhood and in no way resembles anything vaguely Italian.
What Americans seem to call spaghetti is what I would call spag bog/bol. Meat sauce with spaghetti noodles…is that right?
Is my assumption is right? Have Americans been robbed of spaghetti on toast? Sure it is no delicacy but it is yum in it’s own weird way.
Oh! One more question (I wanted to ask this after a recent lasagne thread) when you say “sausage” is that an actual sausage sliced or is it sausage meat not in a casing?
Sorrrrrrrrry I won’t hijack anymore but they were burning Q’s and I really want to try some of the lasagne recipies.
There are common varieties of spaghetti (in various forms) available in a can here, yes. Probably the most well-known is Spaghetti-O’s, small rings of pasta in a bright red-orange sweetish sauce. You can get varieties of it with small slices of hot dog or (if I recall correctly) small meatballs. This is a popular “comfort food” with little kids, college students, and bachelors everywhere. There are also other pasta-and-sauce types available in cans - (regular long-strand) spaghetti with meatballs, ravioli, and so on.
Thank you Mangetout and Ferret Herder. Nice to see we all have the same ‘bright red-orange sweetish sauce’ with mush pasta-like stuff.
That’s the first thing that pops into my mind when I see the word spaghetti and my mum is an awesome cook! The other kind will always be spag bog to me (or spag whatever).
If you want a nice, tangy sauce, you can always add a dash of balsamic vinegar. It sounds kinda gross, but it actually makes the sauce really good. Add some cracked red pepper flakes to that, along with the onions, garlic, and whatever else you want, and you’re set.
And, calm kiwi, in answer to your question, I think a lot of people use sausage crumbles out of the casing rather than the sliced variety (at least that’s what I use if I’m using sausage). But, anybody feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
In addition to the great ideas already listed, you can go to the heavier extreme of cheese sauces. A bechamel sauce made with fresh Parmesan and a little ground nutmeg, with smoked salmon and dill mixed in is a heavenly artery-clogger.
One of my favorites is a simple variation on a putanesca-style sauce, and man is it good:
Chopped fresh tomatoes
Thinly sliced onion
Bacon, sliced julienne and browned in olive oil
Red pepper flakes to taste
A bit of salt
Basil
Ground pepper
Brown the bacon, add the tomatoes and onion, the red pepper flakes and salt. Simmer covered for one hour. Add minced basil and ground pepper as garnish.
There are also other pasta-and-sauce types available in cans - (regular long-strand) spaghetti with meatballs, ravioli, and so on.