The Original Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Dinner

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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @worldagainstjose

#tastinghistory #chefboyardee

Between my childhood and college I can’t tell you how many times I have burnt my tongue eating an over-microwaved bowl of Chef Boyardee pasta. But after years of only trying the stuff in the can today I am making the real Chef Boiardi’s recipe for spaghetti a la Boiardi.

So thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video as we explore the real yet rather mythical life of Chef Boiardi this time on Tasting History. Hello may I come in? I am Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. Perhaps you have seen my picture on Chef Boy-Ar-Dee products at your grocer.  

That is Chef Hector Boiardi, the real man behind the Chef Boyardee brand.   And before he got into the canned pasta game he was making spaghetti dinners for the good people of Cleveland Ohio, and it was these spaghetti dinners that really put him on the map.

And after he started his famous brand he put out a cookbook in the late 1930s ‘Famous Italian Dishes’ by Chef Hector Boiardi through courtesy of Stop and Shop. I think he’s playing a little fast and loose with the phrase Italian dishes as there are recipes for macaroni tamale loaf, chili con carne and Mexican pancakes,

But I suppose what made them Italian was that he incorporated his brand of Chef Boyardee Italian sauce in all of them.   Now figuring out exactly what his original spaghetti dinners tasted like is probably not really realistic at this point but we can get an idea using his recipe for spaghetti a la Boiardi

But while the recipe tells you how to make the spaghetti when it comes to the sauce the real essence of the dish  he points you to use one 7 ounce tin Chef Boyardee Italian Style Sauce, not super helpful because  you can’t actually get that sauce anymore  

But there is a light description of that sauce in the cookbook. “It says it’s “a combination of tomatoes, government-inspected beef, fresh vegetables and mushrooms.” Not really a recipe that we can follow but some years back his great niece Anna Boiardi put out a collection of recipes from her family  

And one of those recipes was called Uncle Ettore’s tomato sauce, so I think that that’s what we should probably use. So between the 1930s cookbook and her family’s recipe I think we are pretty much ready to make the famous Spaghetti a la Boiardi for which you will need: 2 pounds or 1 kilogram of peeled tomatoes.

Now you can use fresh tomatoes if they are in season, the thing is they’re not really in season right now where I live and they would have really not been in season most of the year where Chef Boiardi was cooking so he used canned tomatoes quite often so that’s what I’m using.

6 tablespoons or 90 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil, 1 cup of diced onion, 1/2 cup of diced carrot, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon fresh pepper, 5 medium basil leaves sliced into strips, 1 pound or a half kilogram of lean ground beef, and 1/2 cup of sliced mushrooms.  

Now you’ll notice that this recipe has no garlic  which I thought was kind of odd but it turns out   the area of Northern Italy where Chef Boiardi was  born, well they don’t use garlic in their tomato sauce so neither did he, at least at first.

That said if a clove of garlic happen to fall into your sauce I won’t tell anyone. So the first thing that we need to do is to make our sauce from the tomatoes, so chop them into small pieces and then put them with all the juice into either a food mill or a conical sieve.

The idea is to mash them up and get all of the pulp and juice to separate from from the seeds. If you do use a conical sieve you’ll want to get a pestle, a wooden pestle

Because one it’s a lot easier, and two if you don’t have yours laying around and you decide to use a spatula you might have to press so hard that you’ll break the spatula like I did… But once the tomatoes are sauced heat the oil  in a deep saucepan and add the chopped onion,  

And sprinkle with about half of the salt. Then let  them cook over a medium heat for about 3 minutes,   and make sure the heat isn’t so high that it burns  the onions. Then add in the carrots and let this all cook for another 5 or 6 minutes, or until the onions are soft and translucent. 

Then add in the meat breaking it up into small bits and sprinkle the rest of the salt and pepper over the meat,   and cook for 10 to 12 minutes or until it’s no longer pink.

Then comes the tomato sauce you made and the mushrooms, and stir it all together and then raise the heat a bit so it comes to a boil. Let it boil for just a few seconds and then reduce the heat to a simmer and then set the lid onto the pot leaving it slightly ajar

And let it simmer for about 40 minutes. It’ll start to thicken up and it’ll also just become wonderfully aromatic during that time. After 40 minutes add in your sliced basil, stir it in, return the lid and let it cook for another 5 minutes.

So that is what Chef Boiardi called his Italian style sauce and before we add it to some spaghetti let’s see just how that sauce made a young Chef Boiardi the most famous Italian in America. So I first learned that Chef Boyardee was not only a real person but was from Cleveland by watching 30 Rock.

See there was an episode where Liz Lemon was fed up with the work and stress of New York City so she decides to take an impromptu trip to Cleveland, or as Jack says flee to the cleave. And when she gets there there’s a whole song about how wonderful Cleveland is, and it includes the lyric

“Chef Boyardee was born here you know”, well it turns out I do know… that that is actually not true because Ettore Boiardi was actually born in Borgonovo Italy outside of Piacenza in 1897. He was the middle of three brothers all of whom would eventually work in the restaurant industry

But for Ettore that work started when he was around 11 at the local restaurant La Croce Bianca or the White Cross. Now at such a young age he was probably the one squashing tomatoes and cleaning up but it did help him get his foot into the door of the restaurant industry and according to his family

In the next few years he left Piacenza   and ended up working at some fancy restaurants  in Paris and London. And then at the age of 16 he boarded the ship La Lorraine from France on his way to America.

And according to records at Ellis Island he arrived on May 9th 1914 and he was going to New York City to join his brother Paulo. Now usually I don’t look up ships manifests to corroborate details like when young Ettore would arrive in New York

But I did for this one because basically for the next 10 years of his life everything is kind of suspect. There are a lot of versions of what goes on. Now I’m not saying that anything was made up, but I’m not saying that anything wasn’t either.

Even his family’s own account of his life has a lot of holes in it and so it’s  kind of difficult to tell what actually happened,   and I’ll explain as we go. So young Ettore arrives in New York in 1914 to meet up with his brother Paulo  

Who had changed his name to Paul by that time who was working in restaurants he’d come over some years before. He was working as a waiter at the Persian  Room at the Plaza Hotel Hotel, very swanky,   and according to most versions he was able to then get young Ettore, who started to go by Hector,  

He was able to get him a job in the kitchens and some years later when Mario came over from Italy, the youngest brother,   he got him a job there as well. So all three Boiardi boys are working at The Plaza and this is where the story starts to show its cracks.

Some versions of the story say that after just a year or so young Hector Boiardi became the head chef at The Plaza Hotel,   and is it impossible for a young teenager from  Italy to become the head chef at one of the most prestigious hotels in the world?

No it’s not impossible but there’s no reason to think that this actually happened. There are no records that I could find that corroborate this so who knows.   His family actually tells a different story saying  that he left The Plaza fairly early on to become the head chef  

At an Italian restaurant called Barbetta which was then and still is on 46th street. So maybe that’s true. Again I couldn’t find any records to confirm or deny it but it makes a little bit more sense. Where things really start to fall apart is when he cooked for the president.  

See according to most stories that you’ll find  online at the age of just 17 he was head hunted from The Plaza to go to work at the exclusive Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, and there they put him in charge of catering their top events, and one of those events was the wedding reception for then President Woodrow Wilson,

And this is the story that you find most everywhere including on the official Chef Boyardee website. The only issue is that the president didn’t get married there. See Woodrow Wilson’s first wife Ellen died while he was in office in 1914,   and the following December 1915 he remarried this time to Edith Galt.

So there was a wedding at that time,   but it was in Washington DC about 6 hours away  from the hotel, and they kept it very small and very quiet partially because it had only been  a year since his first wife had died,  

And partially because there were rumors floating  around that she and the president had the first wife murdered. t’s not true but still they didn’t want any extra publicity so very, very small affair but regardless of the size of the wedding it did not take place at the Greenborugh Resort in West Virginia.

Though the president and his first wife who was not murdered,   wink wink, had actually visited that resort a  year earlier but it was at Easter of 1914 which was before Boiardi even got to the country.

Slightly more plausible is the idea that Chef Boiardi organized a meal that the president held honoring troops returning from World War I   but again the timeline doesn’t really add up, that  would have been some years later, and there doesn’t seem to be any record of this happening so maybe we just

Chalk it up to the chef’s colorful origin story and leave it there. What is for certain is that at some point Hector did leave The Plaza and around 1917 arrived in Cleveland Ohio to work as the head chef at the Hotel Winton.

Then in 1924 he and his wife Helen who he had met in Cleveland decided to lean into the chef’s Italian roots,  and open their own restaurant Il Giardino d’Italia,  The Garden of Italy,

And he opened it in an area called, not Little Italy, but Big Italy, and very quickly their restaurant attracted not only other Italian immigrants    but those for whom Italian cuisine was something wholly new.   See things like pizza and lasagna were fairly new in the US and were found mostly in big cities that had

Little or Big Italy’s and spaghetti with meat  sauce well that was that was a bonafide treat in Cleveland, and that is what made Chef Boiardi famous. People would come into the restaurant,   try it, enjoy it so much that they would ask for  an extra portion to take home.

So he would wash out old milk bottles and fill it with his sauce. Then send that and some uncooked spaghetti home with the people along with instructions on how to make the meal, and those instructions are basically the instructions that you find in the 1930s cookbook that we’re cooking from today.

Well the story goes that one night in 1927 Maurice and Ava Winer who are a couple who own some local grocery stores   come in and enjoy it so much that they ask Chef  Hector if they can sell it in their store. The  

Chef agreed but very quickly realized that just he  and his wife making this sauce in their restaurant   it wasn’t enough to keep up with demand. So the next year in 1928 with the help of his brother Mario they established the Chef Boyardee the Food Company,

And they opened up a little factory in Cleveland to make the sauce. They sold three sauces: Italian style spaghetti sauce with meat,   a meatless mushroom sauce, and a Naples style  spaghetti sauce that had a bit of spice. And they marketed them as “three delightful flavors, use them alternately for a varied menu”.

They were an absolute hit and before long they were being sold in stores all over the Midwest. The only issue was that the customers and the people who were  actually selling the sauce who worked for the chef   none of them could pronounce his name right so  he started spelling it out phonetically  Boy-ar-dee, 

And unfortunately they didn’t specify where the  accent was so Chef Boyardee quickly became Chef Boyardee. Now it wasn’t just sauce that they were selling but an entire meal. Along with the can of tomato sauce you got a box of dried spaghetti, and a little canister of grated Parmesan cheese.  

It could be prepared in only 12 minutes and feed a family of three or four for only 29 cents, a perfect meal for a country which had just been plunged into the Great Depression.  The product sold like gangbusters and by the late 1930s they had outgrown the Cleveland Factory and so

All three brothers got together and moved to Milton Pennsylvania where they opened a new factory where they could grow their own mushrooms, and they even put out ads for local farmers to switch to tomato production. The only ingredient that they did  still import was the Parmesan cheese

Which they had imported from Italy, and for much of the mid 20th century they were the number one importer of Parmesan to the US.   Now business was going swell and they sold nationwide but everything changed when the US entered World War II. See the government was not equipped to provide rations to all of the soldiers going overseas

So much of the work was contracted out to companies like Hershey, Heinz, General Mills, and Pillsbury, and of course any company who was making canned foods.   That meant Chef Boyardee was going to war. Almost  overnight production shifted to make rations  

And they quickly became one of the top suppliers  of product for C and K rations with dishes like   meatballs and spaghetti, Vienna sausage, beef stew and chili con carne. They even provided rations for the Soviets fighting on the Eastern front,

And to meet demand they had to hire a lot more employees so they became the number one employer in the area, and supposedly they were given medals from both the US and the Soviet government for their work in in supplying the troops with food. 

Of course all of the stories have different medals  being won so I’m not entirely sure what it is   but suffice to say their efforts were appreciated. Unfortunately with the end of World War II also came the end of that military contract, and so all those new employees would have to be laid off,  

But what’s cool is instead of doing this the Boiardi brothers decided to sell to a much larger company   in order to keep everyone employed. American Home Products Corp took over production but   Chef Hector Boiardi himself did stay on as a consultant and the face of the brand

Which was great because in 1953 he got on TV. Hello may I come in? Chef Boyardee’s products are at best grocers. Ask for Chef Boyardee’s spaghetti dinner only about 15 cents a serving. Over the next decades Boyardee’s face was everywhere and his meals became the number one selling Italian food in the country, 

Meals like his famous spaghetti, but also ravioli  and pizza. Though I’m curious exactly how it tasted because it didn’t have melted mozzarella, and it was really just his sauce on crust with some Parmesan cheese grated on top. It was the 50s and food was kind of weird so they were lucky to have any pizza at all.

Now soon after this they added what I think is the best addition to the brand and that is Beefaroni, it was always my favorite  growing up. Now eventually in 1978 Chef Hector Boiardi stepped away from the company and he did pass away in 1985.

Since his passing the brand has changed hands a few times and in doing so they’ve changed the recipe of the sauce so it doesn’t taste the same as when I was a kid, and it’s not just because my palette has matured it really does not taste the same.

In fact some years back they released cans of what they called throwback recipes which went back to the older recipe but  unfortunately I haven’t seen that around in years   so without being able to get my hands on some  of Chef Hector’s original Chef Boyardee sauce  

I guess I’m going to just have to put the whole  spaghetti dinner together myself. So the chef’s 1930s recipe says to bring a gallon of water to a boil, then add 2 tablespoons of salt and 8 ounces of dried spaghetti and he says to cook the spaghetti for 12 minutes stirring frequently.  

Once cooked strain it, return it to the pot, then add 2 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. Dish the spaghetti up with the sauce on top and sprinkle with more of his grated cheese and here we are spaghetti a la Boiardi the original spaghetti dinner. Give it a taste. Hm.

It’s phenomenal. I knew it would be because it’s made the whole house just smell wonderful,   but it’s even better. The creaminess that you  get from like the butter and cheese actually on the spaghetti, really, really like that, it is a relatively simple sauce. There is so much flavor coming out. What I really like-

So you get a lot of the herbs like the basil but you also get a sweetness and there’s no sugar added into this, and a lot of tomato sauces now add sugar,   but if you cook it long enough with good tomatoes even if they’re canned the sweet comes from that  

So you don’t need to add sugar. This is really, really fantastic. I will be eating this entire thing and I’m going to be making this again. This is something I would- this is actually something I would make like just ‘cus it’s a Thursday night so go ahead make this.

It’s not difficult. I’ll make sure to put the recipe up on the Tasting History website tastinghistory.com,   a website that I made with help from today’s  sponsor Squarespace. Squarespace makes building a website so easy with their Dynamic Tools like their drag and drop technology for both desktop and mobile,   

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So go there, then go make some wonderful, wonderful spaghetti sauce and I will see you next time on Tasting History.