It Took Me 15 Years To Perfect This Spaghetti Recipe

Today we are back in the kitchen for another Then vs Now series episode. I will be showing you how I used to make Baked Spaghetti during the early days of my culinary journey vs how I would make it now. Let’s #makeithappen

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Today we’re back in the kitchen for another episode of our then versus now series where I show you guys how I used to make some of my most popular recipes back in the day versus how I would make it now. Today we got baked spaghetti on the menu. Meet me in the kitchen. Let’s make it happen. All right, guys. Back in the day when I was about 18 years old, I had my very first apartment and I lived off of baked spaghetti. We used to do two in a foil pan. I’ll make two foil pans worth and I would eat it all week. Wouldn’t recommend that now. All right. All right, the original recipe is super simple. We’re using what I used to use, which is Ragu spaghetti sauce. Not the best spaghetti sauce on the market. If you want to use something that’s a little bit more complex, a little bit more flavorful, I would go with something like Ryos. I also did a whole episode on all of the different pasta sauces at the grocery store. You can check that out if you want to. Today, we’re keeping it tried and true, though. OG Ragu is going to get the job done. We got Italian sausage. We got ground beef. We have cheddar, which is not at all authentic to spaghetti, but that’s what I used to use. Mozzarella, onion, bell pepper, and of course, the spaghetti pasta. You won’t buy the peppers pre-diced. Um, I I think no, because they’re more expensive pre-diced. All right, guys. So, after all the prep work is done, dicing the peppers, dicing the onions, grating your own cheese, it’s time to go ahead and actually start cooking. Now, back in the day, I never grated my own cheese. We did that today. Typically, that would have been pre-shredded from the store. We’re using 80/20 ground beef and some mild Italian sausage. This is optional. If you don’t eat pork, guys, you can go ahead and uh, you know, use turkey or just all ground beef is cool, too. Going to add a little bit of oil to our pan. One pound each of sausage and ground beef. I think back in the day I used to use the links more often, but this is what they had at the store today. This is what we’re going with. Going to get this in here, cook it, add in the peppers and the onions, and then basically build our pasta sauce, courtesy of [Music] ragu. All right, as the uh meat is cooking, we’re going to go ahead and season it up some. We got about a tablespoon or so of Italian seasoning. Use my allpurpose, which was still in the R&D phase back then. Salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder, things of that nature. Back in the day, I kind of just used whatever we had. A lot of onion powder, a lot of garlic, salt, pepper, you know, the basics. Little extra salt cuz my AP is low sodium. And then we’re going to get in there and just give this a good mix. Break it up. I don’t think I really was dicing much fresh garlic back in the day. And this was before they had the garlic paste that I use now. So, garlic powder was my go-to. Going to give this a mix. And we’re going to add in our rag goo. [Music] good to the last drop. And then you can clean this out. Use it as a cup. Never did that. That’s good cup size for back in the day right there. Give it a mix. Let this simmer. Add a little sugar. Season to taste. Good to go. All right, guys. So, we’re going to add a little sugar, which in hindsight is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to ragu cuz it’s already sweet. Uh, but we’re going to add some cuz that’s what I used to do. And then you guys know what this is. Green top parmesan. Going to add a little bit of that to our sauce and then save the rest to add to our plate of pasta. Turn the heat down a bit. Mix in that parm. Going to add a little saltiness from the parmesan. It’s going to be good. Don’t get your blood work done after this, but it’s going to be good. All right, so once the pasta sauce is done, we’re going to add the spaghetti, mix it together, put it in the foil pan, top it with cheese, pop it in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes until that cheese melts and everything comes together, and you got lunch for a week. All right, so one of the techniques that I’ve learned along the way is when you’re browning ground meat in particular, you want to develop some crust. It’s going to add color, flavor, texture, all that good stuff to your recipe. So, it’s very important to get a good sear on your meat. I’m going to add a pinch of salt in here just to get the party started with the seasonings. We got some Italian seasoning. I got my buttery garlic pepper seasoning, that AP seasoning. Going to add a little garlic. Got plenty of flavor coming in our bors and garlic and herb cheese blend that we’re going to put together. This is going to be a much more elevated version of the original. There’s still hints of, you know, what I learned when I very first started making this that are made it in into this recipe, but for the most part, this is just a more refined version uh of me making baked spaghetti for years and years. So, this is what you want to see here. You got some nice color and crust developing. Again, that’s going to add texture, color, flavor. Very important. All right, guys. So, the difference between store-bought sauce, something like ragu especially, and making your own tomato sauce is pretty significant. Like, for example, in the ragu sauce, there’s no real tomato in the actual sauce. If you read the ingredients list, it’s tomato puree and water, which kind of makes the sauce. For us, we’re going to use actual San Marzano tomatoes, which they’re naturally sweet. They’re better for you from a health perspective, and they’re more flavorful. They’re more robust. Again, naturally sweet, a little bit acidic. It’s going to be a lot better in a as far as the flavor profile goes. You want to add All right. So, we’re going in with a tablespoon or two of good quality tomato paste. That’s going to add some concentrated tomato flavor. And if you’re using ragu, they would just add water to to the tomato paste, a tomato puree, not even really tomato paste. And that’s kind of how they make their sauce. We’re going to mix this tomato paste in. Kind of allow it to caramelize a little bit. It’s going to add some of that concentrated flavor. And then we’re going to add in our crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce. You could also delaze with a little red wine here, something dry like a cabernet or a merllo, uh if you want to, you know, really take it to the next level. We’re not going to do that today cuz we’re trying to keep it relatively simple and uh you know, a lot of folks don’t want to cook with wine and things of that nature. So, we’re going to leave that out today. We’re going to go ahead and mix in the tomato paste. Then go in with some good quality tomato sauce. And then our San Marzano crushed tomatoes that have a little basil in there. Going to give this a mix. Allow that to simmer for a good 45 minutes or so. Let the flavors really build and develop. Season to taste. The better quality tomato products you use, the less sugar you should have to add, if you use any at all. because the the cheaper products tend to be a little bit too acidic or bitter. And that’s why people tend to, you know, add things like sugar, carrots, or honey, things like that to sweeten up the [Music] sauce. Going to add a little pinch of sugar. Give that a good mix. Let it cook down a little bit longer. Then we’re going to move on to our cheese mixture that I add similar to like a lasagna concept. Really, most baked pastas have something like that, like a ziti still typically would have like a ricotta layer to it. All right, folks. If you want to keep this a little bit more on the traditional side of things, you can omit the bors and garlic and herb and the sour cream and you can just use traditional ricotta. I like this blend a little bit better. It’s more flavorful in my opinion. So, this is what we’re going with. We’re going in with one block or 5.2 oz of borsen garlic and herb cheese. If you haven’t used this stuff yet, it’s absolutely delicious. Great with a shakuderie board if you got some extra. Good as a little snack with some crackers. Going in with that. Then about a/2 cup of sour cream. Going to begin to give that a mix. The only other ingredients we’re going to add is some Parmesan cheese, a little bit of mozzarella, some basil, parsley, and then season to taste. [Music] All right. So, once we get our first layer of pasta in, it’s time to go ahead and add our creamy cheesy layer, adding tons of flavor. The creaminess really plays nicely with the the pasta sauce, too. And if you want to really widen your back, you could add a little cheese layer right here. Little mozzarella, something to give you a little cheese pull. But there’s plenty of cheese in this recipe already, so no need to overkill, unless you want to. All right, for the OG method, Wonderbread, butter, garlic salt. That was the original garlic bread right there before I started getting Texas toast. Just how we used to do it. Little butter bread for the razzledazzle. Little garlic salt. And that, my friends, and eat that with your spaghetti. Take a regular bite first. Can’t forget the green top. Here we go. Tastes about right. Only thing missing is like a a country croc butter. Eat it out of one of those. It’s good. It’s never not going to be good. Just like that. I did this with a hot dog roll bun before, too. 10 out of 10. All right, for the new method. Smells much better. More layers of flavor. I like the bors in adds a nice touch. Not as sweet as the the ragu version. I haven’t been eating carbs lately, so this is really hitting the spot. Let’s see what the guys think. We should go dinner now. Hm. What you going to dinner now? This is better spaghetti. This is uh sweeter and kind of like hits the hits the nostalgic notes. But this is better for sure. [Music] Yeah, this one tastes completely different. You can tell I like both though. But which one you taking home with you? Only pick one. I can only pick one. I’m have to go this one. That one got like a lot more flavor.