Cowboy Spaghetti (Easy Recipe) (2024)

FAQs

How to make simple spaghetti better? ›

Olive oil or butter and herbs. Adding a fat to the pasta makes it taste better if you're poor and need something. I also add oregano and/or basil. Butter, eggs, and cheese.

Spaghetti made from the flour of hard durum wheat semolina, with water and salt added and cooked by boiling, has existed since the Roman Empire, but the history of its invention is not entirely clear.

Italians use a big pot of boiling water, and drop the spaghetti into it. In the first 30 seconds the spaghetti softens enough so that it's all under water. Add 1 TB salt for every 3 quarts of water, cook for 8 minutes, then fish it out with a pasta fork or tongs and drop straight into your pan of simmering sauce.

Olives and capers add a punch of briny goodness and give tomato sauce some real personality. Toss in some chopped or whole, pitted olives and/or a handful of drained capers after heating the sauce for several minutes. Or, if you're adding garlic or sautéed vegetables, add to the sauté just before you pour in the sauce.

Whether you can pronounce it or not, Worcestershire sauce is an easy, effective way to load up spaghetti sauce with umami flavor. It is salty, tangy, and has lots of potent vinegar, all of which cut through tomatoes to create a soothing, savory flavor.

Toss in Olives or Capers

Briny ingredients like olives or capers are another way to brighten up your pasta sauce while also introducing texture and depth of flavor. Roughly chop a handful and stir them into your sauce while it's heating up on the stove.

The chef's pro-tip is simple: Stir an egg yolk into any dish that begs for an element of thickness or creaminess. That's it. To Skurnick, this flavorful, enriching trick is obvious.

Why do you put baking soda in spaghetti? ›

So here's a really quick way to transform. spaghetti into ramen. You cook it in water that has baking soda in it. What that does is helps the proteins, the gluten, connect in the pasta, which gives it a toothier, more springy texture.

Tossing in strips of basil, a sprig of thyme or some oregano can take your sauce to the next level. Although fresh herbs might pop a bit more, dried herbs and spices can work just as well. Sprinkling in some red pepper flakes, a pinch of parsley and a dash of salt and pepper can liven up your jarred pasta sauce.

Adding the pasta to water that isn't boiling will actually increase your overall cook time and cause your pasta to sit in the water longer. You will end up with pasta that has absorbed too much water with a mushy texture. Be patient and wait for a rapid boil; it'll pay off.

In commercial pasta production the semolina is mixed with warm water and then is kneaded into a smooth, stiff dough. The dough is then compacted and mixed while it is forced through perforated plates, called dies. The sizes and shapes of the perforations on the die determine the shape of the pasta.

First, in authentic Italian cuisine, the sauce is always tossed with the pasta before it ever hits the plate. Just before the sauce is done cooking, the hot pasta is added to the saucepan. Generally speaking, we recommend cooking the pasta in the sauce together for about 1-2 minutes.