I'm serious. Back in Grad School I used to cook on Sundays for a rental house of 6 graduate student men. 1 bottle of cheap Kentucky bourbon as an "apertif", or however it's called, then a stock pot of mushroom tomato hamburger spaghetti with garlic French bread, and I got 5 marriage proposals before dessert. It was so good I almost made an indecent proposal to myself in the bathroom mirror.
I'm sorry, I don't know how much the whole meal cost altogether, nor how much per man. But it was very cheap. 1990s.
Just making garlic bread to serve alongside goes a long way.
By coincidence I made spaghetti with a bolognese sauce last night and my wife gushed about the afterthought garlic bread which was honestly a way to use up a couple of brioche hamburger buns left over from an earlier meal. The same trick with a more appropriate bread is still dirt cheap and makes an impression that is way out of proportion with the effort it takes.
Oh yes. Actually I have cool friends. I never liked any brown liquor & someone said I needed to try theirs. It was the first I tried that didn't make me choke & in fact was very smooth. I've never bought it because I'm too poor. $100 is easily 2 months of utility bill for me.
Haha, I was the sole Midwesterner among them, and the only guy who knew his way around bourbon. Over the 2 years I lived with them and cooked for them I rotated them through all the garbage midwest dive-bar standards and they loved every drop. Good times.
Nah, nothing to see. Been there, done that, got the embroidered-logo ball caps. Personally I recommend learning how they all taste, at least the basic ones, until you can identify them blindfolded. Then expand into other USA whiskeys, then Canadians, Irish, international (e.g. Japanese), then dip you toes into scotches.
But going back to feeding six men for six dollars (1990s prices) ... people overthink food costs way too much.
I get the #10 can of san marzano tomatoes at Costco as it's around $6. You can make quite a bit of sauce with it. To speed up the process I use an immersion blender to chop the tomatoes.
Exactly, people need to taste their raw ingredients especially for simple dishes with few ingredients. Cheap store brand tomatoes canned or fresh are watery, acidic and slightly bitter. that's the base and bulk of your meal you can't hide it. A decent tomatoe will be fresh, savory and have slight sweeteness to it. If you taste them side by side you'll see why your Walmart tomato pasta always comes out bad no matter what recipe you follow
Make it from scratch. Homemade marinara, meatballs, and pasta can be done very inexpensively. They are very basic recipes that are pretty easy to make well. Pasta might be difficult, but it can be done with a rolling pin and knife. If that’s not possible, just buy a box of pasta and focus on the sauce, etc.
Putting extra effort into the meal also makes it more special, and it tastes better imho.
Use hot Italian sausage meat in the meat sauce, a sauteed onion, garlic, and lots of oregano and basil. Toss in small frozen Italian meatballs and simmer for 30 minutes. Use spaghetti squash so it’s not junk carbs. Real Parmigiana Reggiano fresh grated at the table.
You can find value priced Tuscan reds. It’s the wine that highlights the meal.
Aglio olio is incredibly simple and an amazing dish. Very few ingredients and most are very cheap. Spend the money you need on a small piece of real parmigiano.
An Americanized (in this case, the major difference being bacon instead of guanciale) carbonara, gricia, or Amatriciana is probably the best answer. Other good options are pasta alla norma (eggplant), norcina (sausage), or if you really want to go all out on a budget, zozzona (the lovechild of a carbonara and a sausage ragu).
If meat is a budget breaker in OP's case in itself, I'd suggest something like cacio e pepe or Stephen Cusato's Italian-American weekday sauce.
If you can get a wedge of Pecorino ( or Parmesan) at your local grocery store or a Trader Joe’s you can make carbonara. Pasta, a couple of eggs, bacon and cheese. With a salad .
Ok. Here me out. Cook a pound of bacon. Take crispy bacon out ( chop). Cook onions and garlic ( sometimes I do shredded carrot or a mirepoix) till soft. Add tomato’s sauce and spice ( or even canned sauce). Cook noodles al dente and finish in the sauce. It’s not overly greasy. My kuds call it bacon spaghetti and it is Devine. My Portuguese roommate with Italian parents taught me to do it this way.
Sounds a bit like a poor man's Amatriciana. Personally, I'd go all in on that angle, skip the onions and garlic, use good tomatoes, a bit of pecorino romano, some dry white wine (just a splash, and you can serve the rest of the bottle with dinner), and a lot less than a pound of bacon.
Slice your bacon (maybe a quarter pound) into lardon, brown it, remove from the pan. Deglaze with a splash of white wine, add a can of good crushed tomatoes (hand crushed san marzanos would be best -- just the tomatoes, not the packing juice), a pinch of crushed red chili and salt, simmer for a few minutes while your pasta finishes, and toss it together with the pasta, half the bacon, and a handful of finely grated pecorino. Add a little pasta water to thin it out as necessary. Top with the remainder of the bacon and a sprinkle more of pecorino romano.
Maybe ten years ago. I was at the grocer yesterday and it was $38/kg (about $19/lb). Stewing beef wasn't much better (and is quite a different thing, cut wise).
You can make a damn good ragu with it for sure, but if I'm working on a budget I can get almost all the ingredients for an Americanized pasta al'Amatriciana for almost the same price as just a pound of chuck.
The only thing is that the proportions he uses makes an enormous amount of sauce. I'd cut the butter and cheese amounts to half and keep everything else the same. You could still feed 4-6 people with that. It may look like a nothing sauce, but it is incredibly rich and filling.
2 lg cans crushed tomatoes, 5 cloves fresh garlic, 1/2 cup chopped onion, 5 Tablespoons Italian seasoning, 2 teaspoons fennel seed, 1/2-1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, salt to taste. If you have it, add 1/2 cup red wine. Simmer 1 1/2-2 hours. Don’t need meat, but do need good cheese. Parmesan Romano! It you must have meat, brown Italian sausage links on all sides, add 1/2 cup water, and cover and reduce heat to low.cook 1/2 hour.
If you boil the pasta in just enough salted water, that when the pasta is cooked how you want it, there is only a small amount of very thick starchy water left, you have a very creamy ‘sauce’. Combine that with some fried bacon bits, fried onion and garlic, black pepper, Parmesan and parsley and you can have the most luxurious feeling dish for $2-$3 a plate.
Use whole canned tomatoes, a lot of garlic and olive oil, MSG, and simmer low and slowwww to let the flavors develop. If you can afford ground beef or Italian sausage, add it. Spaghetti can be amazing with just the basics. Usually the places to splurge to make it more special would be the pasta (avoid the basic store brands) and Parmesan. Cook the pasta to shy of al dente, then finish in the sauce with a ladle of pasta water. Grate your own Parmesan to finish. If you can afford to top with fresh basil, that would make it that much more decadent.
A homemade Caesar salad and crusty French garlic bread are excellent accompaniments and are usually pretty budget friendly.
Saute onions, carrots, celery, bell pepper, all super finely minced, with chopped tomatoes in some butter with a healthy pinch of salt. Add garlic, a little broth, and a whole package of pepperoni. Simmer for an hour or two on low heat. Take out the pepperonis, add a meatball or chicken if you've got it and some fresh basil. Serve over pasta.
1 med yellow onion, 1 or 2 carrots, 1 or 2 stalks of celery, 1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper, and like 5 or 6 firm tomatoes (8 or 9 of you use Roma) is all you need to make a decent amount of sauce. I like to use an obscene amount of basil but one of those little plastic things of it would be plenty if you're normal, lol. Sometimes I'll add a fuckton of cheese and just have mac and 'ghetti. Very tasty business.
Cook the onions for a LONG time. Plenty of them. And garlic (don’t burn it). And splash in decent red wine. Pulverize whole canned tomatoes. Add tomato paste and a little Worcestershire sauce if you have it for deeper flavor. Don’t stint on the salt.
Carbonara still tastes great with cheap bacon and cheap Parmesan. Look up the NYT recipe and just use cheap products. Made from scratch it’s very decadent
Use one can of San Marizano's ($4-6) and stretch the rest with cheaper canned tomatoes. Chopped onions and add a carrot (to be discarded later) for additional sweetness and to pull some acidity. Spring for a small block of parmesan. Sauté the pasta with the sauce, add a little cheese, and then emulsify with pasta water.
If you have any $$$ left over, some parsley for color doesn't hurt.
Edit: I also forgot, get either canned anchovies and mash or anchovy paste, whichever is cheaper. It deepens the umami flavoring of the tomatoes.
I would be sure to know how to cook pasta. Sorry to sound like a dick but not everyone gets it right! Boiling, salted water, lots of it, spaghetti in, stir, lid on, light boil, cook til al dente. Toss in olive oil once drained. The sauce I’ll leave up to you but stir it through the pasta over a low heat.
Chuck roasts are usually (here) 3+ pounds. Use 1 lb of it for this. Use the rest to do beef stew or braised "short ribs". Lots of uses for chuck.
Brown (your preference to color) the 1" chuck chunks. Dutch oven makes this a one pot option. Little bit of olive oil in a hot pan and brown them. You are not cooking though, just browning the meat. The darker the color on the meat the heavier beef flavor the sauce will have. Remove from Dutch oven when browned to your preference.
Tomato sauce -
Equal amounts of carrots, onions, celery (all cheap, don't get organic). Half an onion 1 and 1/2 carrot and 2 sticks of celery should be close.
Cut the vegetables to roughly even squares, tons of videos on YouTube for mise en place.
Sauté the onion in olive oil first.
The water released from the onion will allow you to scrape the fond from the beef cooking into the sauce- make sure to do this. 1. Sauce will taste better and 2. Cleaning will be way easier.
Give it 5 mins then add the celery and carrot. Give it another 5 mins and if you are using tomato paste add now. Stir to add the paste to the vegetables. Cook the paste for a few minutes stirring to not burn it. Add tomato puree after 3-5 minutes. The add the beef back.
Cooking the tomato paste changes it from acidic to sweet. Do not skip this.
If not using tomato paste add tomato puree after cooking the vegetables. Add the beef back to the pot. Add water as necessary to keep the meat submerged- this is important. A bit of beef sticking out won't matter don't over add the water as you need to cook it out later. You can also use beef broth instead of water.
After 2-3 hours you should have a pot of thickish sauce (sticks to pasta) and tender meat the falls apart when pressed by a fork.
It doesn't take a ton of oversight but does require a stir once in a while to prevent anything sticking in the bottom.
This is my wife recipe, who is from Naples, Italy. There they DO NOT mix garlic and Onion, feel free to add garlic if you want. Add crushed garlic at the end of the vegetable stage, only needs to cook for 1 minute or so to add its flavor.
Crushed red pepper adds a kick if you want a little spice. A teaspoon to start with. Taste and add more depending on your spice level.
(Walmart prices) great value rigatoni pasta (<$2), ground hot Italian sausage (<$5), Rao’s marinara (~$6.50), goat cheese (<$3). Boil noodles, brown sausage, add sauce. Plate. Cut goat cheese into medallions and serve atop pasta. Mix in cheese before eating. Serves 4.
Sauce: 1/2 lb ground beef ($3.50), 1/2 lb ground pork ($3.00), 1/2 pound baby bella mushrooms ($2.50), 1 can San Marzano Peeled tomatoes (4.50), 1 can San Marzano crushed tomatoes ($4.00) 2 medium shallots fine diced ($1.00), 1/2 head of garlic minced (.35), 1/2 cup good of olive oil ($1.80) 1/2 cup of garlic ($1.25), 2 sprigs rosemary (.50) 2 sprigs thyme (.50)
Pasta: 1 lb penne ($2.00)
Garlic bread: 1/2 loaf of Italian bread (.60), full bulb of garlic roasted (.75), 1 cup melted stick of butter ($2.50), sprig of rosemary (.25)
8 oz fresh grated parmesan for garnish ($5.50)
Cook the beef & pork in a big pot, season with coarse salt & pepper, drain fat, set aside. Rinse mushrooms. Deglaze the pan with the shallots & mushrooms, add a pinch of salt, add garlic when those begin to get soft. Blend peeled tomatoes til smooth. Add meat back in, then peeled & crushed tomatoes, olive oil & rosemary & thyme that's been picked from their stems. Season with salt & pepper. Bring to a gentle boil stirring often then turn down to a very low simmer, stirring occasionally & let cook/reduce for 1-4 hours. Mount butter at the end
Peheat oven to 400. When you're about 30 minutes from starting your pasta cut the top of an entire bulb of garlic & roast in the oven until golden and spreadable. Have butter set out in bowl to room temp, mix garlic, rosemary & a couple pinches of salt & pepper into melted butter, spread onto bread, cook for ~10 min
When sauce is close to ready, cook the pasta to just under al dente. When ready use a slotted spoon to transfer to sauce pan, not being afraid to add some pasta water in there, cook for a few minutes on medium until sauce and pasta are combined
Plate with fresh grated parmesan on top
~ 35 bucks, simple as hell, gonna taste fucking delicious & you'll have leftovers for prob 2 days for 2 people. ~$6 a serving
Make your own sauce. Buy a can of plain tomato sauce or diced tomatos (if you want it chunky). Sauté a half of an onion in about a tablespoon of oil oil until soft, add a few cloves of minced garlic and sauté another minute over medium or medium low heat, add the can (15oz) of tomato sauce and add Italian seasoning, fennel seed, black pepper, salt , oregano and red chili flakes to it and cook until hot.
Cook your favorite paste and mix in some sauce for serving. Grate a little fresh Parmesan over the top.
If you are going really fancy and want a meat sauce, I like to add some cooked Iserneo's mild chicken Italian sausage to it. That sausage has excellent flavor.
At its core, beef and onions. All the rest amplifies it a little but a they are both all you really need. Cheap cut of meat, twice that weight in onions, and a lot of time.
A few cups frozen Broccoli, 1 onion, couple cloves of garlic and if you can chicken broth but water works also. Some mint and parsley to be fancy.
Sautéed off the onion and garlic, add broccoli pour in liquid simmer season and while warm add the mint and parsley, blend. Be sure liquid has cooled a bit so it doesn't explode in the blender. Season again if needed. Cook pasta and add this sauce to desired amount.
To be extra fancy you can cook some bacon or ham cubes before adding sauce and pasta
"Decadence" may be subjective but the most romantic spaghetti dinner was with my husband a few years back.
Fresh pasta from the fridge section - long fettuccine. Sauce from scratch (ish), simmered with olive oil and all the whistles; a little light on the garlic but added a bit of crushed red pepper. Cut in a spot of cream cheese for a little creamy flair.
Italian sausage - two each. Then served the whole thing on a single platter we shared.
We had to sit close to each other, and there was a lot of quiet conversation and politely-measured bites. The food was exquisite but it was the intimacy of the meal that made it decadent.
I know this wouldn't work for a party of more than two but for a couple, it was a remarkable evening.
I saw a video where half the mince was replaced with mushroom that had been through the blender.
Aglio e olio is another good one and cheap if you can get reasonable Parmesan gran pardano which actually melts better and you grow the parsley. Cheaper still is black pepper version or lemon rind.
The secret ingredients in the best bolognese I ever had was Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Add a generous amount of it in before the 3 hour simmer and it'll give an unctuous depth.
Make your own sauce. The jarred stuff is gross and makes my stomach turn with all the preservatives and additives. Finish the pasta in the sauce. Buy the best cheese you can afford and drizzle a little bit of a quality olive oil as you finish plating it. Don't forget to add some pasta water to emulsify the sauce and cheese.
Crisp off some bacon . A lemon, rind and juice, butter, grana padano (or any hard cheese) basil...lift the cooked wet pasta into the butter, half the lemon rind and juice and basil leaves, padano, and add a little more pasta water to make it creamy, add the rest of the rind and juice and bacon broken up, leaves, more cheese.
Celery, carrots, and an onion are all under $2. I’d finely mince them (I don’t like super chunky sauces) and sautee this mirepoix. Add seasonings that you already have (red pepper flakes) Add a can of tomato paste ($1) and a can of crushed San marzano tomatoes. (Just a few dollars). When that’s done, add in your noodles and a knob of butter.
It’ll feel decadent, makes a TON, and should cost well under $10
Ground Italian sausage or minced pork for like $5-$6
Parmesan is like $2-$3
Bag of Salad kit is like $5-$6
Baguette for like $2-$3
Butter & Garlic Salt hopefully in the house already.
Boil water, salt water, add pasta, start cooking sausage, add sauce to cooked meat, strain pasta toss with sauce, add cheese to serve, serve buttery garlic bread with pasta and salad as post-pasta
Meal for $20-$25.
For $5 you could add some Cannoli from your grocery store, for $5 you could add some sparkling grape juices
Marcella hazans recipe. San marzanos, butter, onion, and salt. Cook until reduced to your liking. Absolutely delicious. Make some homemade meatballs and throw them in the sauce for an hour before serving.
Pull out all the stops for an amazing marinara sauce - caramelized onions, golden-brown garlic, fresh thyme and oregano, decent red wine for de-glazing, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh bay leaves, Italian parsley. It goes with any form of protein you like. Add a dollop of pesto when you serve for extra fanciness. Sear up some garlicky green beans to have with it.
I would buy a pack of sausage links, pan fry them, then chop them into bite-size pieces and add into a sauce. The browning and pork fat will add very good flavors, plus make the whole thing meaty.
Gnocchi from scratch. And a light tomato cream sauce.
If you get it right it's an elevated restaurant quality dish. And it's egg, potato, flour, salt for the dough, and a tin of tomatoes, splash of cream, and seasoning for the sauce.
Pasta puttanesca is fairly inexpensive and to me the flavors taste more exotic than the plain spaghetti I grew up eating. Plus I like it spicy so I add a ton more chili flakes
Spaghetti with shrimp and clams (or just clams if the budget does not allow, or one shrimp per bowl right on top like a garnish)
It sounds fancy, it looks fancy it tastes expensive, it's decadent, but it's dirt cheap to make.
Finely chopped onion or shallot and garlic.
Cheap white wine, or some of what you would serve with.
Cherry tomatoes.
Bottle of clam juice.
Par boiled Spaghetti (or linguini or fettuccine), and a little pasta water
Shrimp (you can also pan fry them separately or patch them in butter and garlic).
Cans of clams, and some fresh chopped parsley.
A little pasta water if required.
Recipe is adding everything listed to the pan in the order listed cooking each step by step. The clams just need to be warmed a minute.
It all comes together in ten minutes after chopping the onion and garlic. You finish cooking the pasta in the pan with the wine and clam juice so it absorbs the flavors.
Honestly this is one of my "I'm too tired to cook" meals.
Large can of crushed or diced tomatoes
1 can coconut milk
Ground meat or lentils
Tomato paste
Corn starch & herbs.
Very inexpensive.
Any kind of bread can be turned into garlic bread
Sofrito, pork and beef, garlic, herbs, cheap wine is fine, don’t overdo the tomato sauce; spaghetti sauce (unless you’re actually going for a pomodoro sauce), doesn’t need to be drowned in tomato. Alternatively you can do meatballs instead and then use plenty of tomato sauce . If it tastes too acidic, put in a dash of baking soda in the sauce, it will reduce acidity.
Bolognese (Ragu properly) is meat sauce, not a tomato sauce, so cut down the amount of tomatoes you normally add (a lot) and enrich it with chicken livers.
Use Italian sausage like this instead of beef. Take it out of the casing and smoosh into small pieces and cook in a pan until brown through, then add to sauce. Immediately elevates any spaghetti. Fresh Parmesan and fresh basil also go along way. I also highly reccomend Michael’s of Brooklyn jarred sauce.
I really like this episode of sorted food. The budget chef really gives lots of good tricks that I think could be used for Spaghetti. Here are some highlights :
using canned or very cheap industrial style meat products and mixing it with lentils
making his own cheese to make a béchamel with wey and use the fresh cheese
Add cream cheese to make the sauce rich, use real garlic to make garlic butter for bread, slice lettuce in thin ribbons for salad, use roma tomatoes, make your own itallian dressing using olive oil.
ok, I'm totally going to get booed here but here goes anyway. Use good quality pasta cooked al-dente. In a baking dish, combine the pasta and sauce (I confess I have used Rao's basil - gasp!). I like to add diagonally sliced sausage.
Now to elevate it, incorporate some dollops of ricotta throughout the dish such that each serving will have at least 2. Heavily sprinkle shredded mozzarella. Bake at 350 about a half hour to melt the cheese.
I’m sorry but good ol jarred sauce with my mom’s/grandma’s meatballs on cheap boxed noodles will always slap the hardest. I don’t want fancy sgetti I want down home sgetti
There is this Belgian restaurant very beloved by students that makes their own "Kastartsaus', which can translate to 'Daredevil sauce' or 'Little rascal sauce' depending which meaning of 'Kastaar' you take (Belgian dialects are weird)
This being said, the sauce is very luscious, but what also helps is that it's very easily adjustable too taste, leaving out or replacing bits and pieces where you want. As long as you keep like 3/4ths of the original ingredients, the sauce will be tasty and will slap, especially if you replace the other ingredients instead of just leaving them out.
The recipe is a secret and people have been trying to emulate it for a while. After many attempts, this is my current approximation (Warning, I used AI to help translate and format my scribblings, and to convert from metric to imperial for you American savages):
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 yellow bell pepper
1/2 green bell pepper
2 celery stalks
3 slices sweet & sour pickles
1 carrot
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp spaghetti seasoning
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp sambal oelek (or spicy kick of choice)
14 oz ground pork/veal
1 beef bouillon cube
1 cup heavy cream
Salted butter
1/2 cup water
1 1/4 cups passata
Bay leaf (optional – doesn’t add a ton of flavor)
Emmental cheese, grated
Thin spaghetti (capellini)
How to make it
Pro tip: This sauce is even better if you make it the day before.
Brown the ground meat in a pan with a knob of butter. Don’t overdo it — you want it cooked but not deeply browned. Take the meat out and set it aside.
In the same pan, sauté all the finely chopped veggies and pickles. Add the spaghetti seasoning and let everything cook down for about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic, sriracha (or sambal), ketchup, and tomato paste. Cook for about 1 minute, then add the passata, bouillon cube, and water. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes, then blend the sauce until smooth.
Add the meat back into the sauce along with the cream. Let everything gently simmer for another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with capellini and plenty of Emmental cheese
For me this really is a dish where the whole is much more than the sum of it's parts, and is luxurious.
The cream, the cheese, the proteins can all be left out and it will still be delicious. You can play with the colors and amount of bell peppers. You can swap out the bouillon cube for fresh stock to make it even better. This recipe is your playground.
Spring for a nicer jar of sauce or add some extra to a seasoning to a cheaper jar like Italian seasoning, garlic and a sprinkle of sugar (cuts the acidity of the tomatoes). Making some fresh homemade French bread for a side is always a hit. It’s easy and inexpensive to make. If you have the fixings you can make it into garlic bread. I also make turkey meatballs because 1 pound of ground turkey is typically less expensive than beef and my kids love it.
Cook the pasta, then smoke them over a wood fire until dry, then hydrate them again. Toast as many different varieties of pepper you can find/afford, make cacio e Pepe.
i put two cans of campbells tomato soup in my spaghetti, along with higher end pasta sauce, over al dante noodles and SEASONED ground beef. finely diced carrots and celery to really top it off but my girlfriend doesn’t like that part so i usually skip it
Get 'em drunk first.
Go donate blood then get drunk. It’s cheaper.
My last gift to humanity would be a mild buzz. Love it.
👍👍
A good Malbec
😂😂😂
I'm serious. Back in Grad School I used to cook on Sundays for a rental house of 6 graduate student men. 1 bottle of cheap Kentucky bourbon as an "apertif", or however it's called, then a stock pot of mushroom tomato hamburger spaghetti with garlic French bread, and I got 5 marriage proposals before dessert. It was so good I almost made an indecent proposal to myself in the bathroom mirror.
I'm sorry, I don't know how much the whole meal cost altogether, nor how much per man. But it was very cheap. 1990s.
In addition. Add a large garlic bread ahead of the pasta. You can serve less pasta and sauce and go for higher ingredients bc everyone’s all full.
Just making garlic bread to serve alongside goes a long way.
By coincidence I made spaghetti with a bolognese sauce last night and my wife gushed about the afterthought garlic bread which was honestly a way to use up a couple of brioche hamburger buns left over from an earlier meal. The same trick with a more appropriate bread is still dirt cheap and makes an impression that is way out of proportion with the effort it takes.
The bottle of whiskey probably cost as much as the ingredients tbh
If it's decent whiskey it costs way more. The Scotch I like is $90-100 a bottle (on sale)
Well aren’t you cool
Oh yes. Actually I have cool friends. I never liked any brown liquor & someone said I needed to try theirs. It was the first I tried that didn't make me choke & in fact was very smooth. I've never bought it because I'm too poor. $100 is easily 2 months of utility bill for me.
This is hilarious😂
Haha, I was the sole Midwesterner among them, and the only guy who knew his way around bourbon. Over the 2 years I lived with them and cooked for them I rotated them through all the garbage midwest dive-bar standards and they loved every drop. Good times.
I should have visited a bourbon distillery when I was in KY!
Nah, nothing to see. Been there, done that, got the embroidered-logo ball caps. Personally I recommend learning how they all taste, at least the basic ones, until you can identify them blindfolded. Then expand into other USA whiskeys, then Canadians, Irish, international (e.g. Japanese), then dip you toes into scotches.
But going back to feeding six men for six dollars (1990s prices) ... people overthink food costs way too much.
I want to be like you when I grow up
Like me? Why?😂😂😂
Well, most Bourbons are crap, try (good) Scotch.
Get San marzano tomatoes. When the sauce hits your mouth you’re gonna know exactly where that extra $2 went and it’ll be worth it
I use them for tomato basil soup and they really make a difference.
I get the #10 can of san marzano tomatoes at Costco as it's around $6. You can make quite a bit of sauce with it. To speed up the process I use an immersion blender to chop the tomatoes.
Exactly, people need to taste their raw ingredients especially for simple dishes with few ingredients. Cheap store brand tomatoes canned or fresh are watery, acidic and slightly bitter. that's the base and bulk of your meal you can't hide it. A decent tomatoe will be fresh, savory and have slight sweeteness to it. If you taste them side by side you'll see why your Walmart tomato pasta always comes out bad no matter what recipe you follow
👆🏻👆🏻 this is the answer
Make it from scratch. Homemade marinara, meatballs, and pasta can be done very inexpensively. They are very basic recipes that are pretty easy to make well. Pasta might be difficult, but it can be done with a rolling pin and knife. If that’s not possible, just buy a box of pasta and focus on the sauce, etc.
Putting extra effort into the meal also makes it more special, and it tastes better imho.
Use ground pork instead of beef.
Or half beef half pork if you prefer a little more chew. Straight pork can be mushy if you haven’t cooked with it before.
Add anchovy paste
Or a slosh of Asian fish sauce—does the same thing.
Absolutely
Slosh is such a good descriptor. I can picture it exactly. A skotch less than a bissel.
shhh ancient Chinese secret
Spaghetti a la puttanesca. It’s an amazing sauce. Anchovies, black olives, capers, diced tomatoes. Takes 10-15 to prep, and 20 to cook.
Make a ragu instead of bolognese. The meat is similarly affordable, but the time invested makes the result luxurious.
https://www.recipetineats.com/slow-cooked-shredded-beef-ragu-pasta/
Isn't Bolognese a ragu?
Yes. In italy, spaghetti bolognese is not a thing, they call it ragu
I was under the impression it was a subset - I.e. all bolognese is a ragu, but not all ragu is a bolognese
Ragu is just meat sauce. Bolognese is one regional variant.
I've made this, it's delectable!
Big fan of Nagi!
I'm going to try this weekend!
Can't you just buy Ragu for like 2 bucks a jar?
I think you're talking about a brand of pasta sauce available in the US.
Ragu is a traditional recipe for a slow-cooked meat sauce from northern Italy.
Li mortacci tua
no. US version is not not at all part of anything Ragu. Pretty much just fake mush. not even a good starter for a sauce you're about to half azz
no. not worth the time. Italian ground pork regularly goes on sale. by far trumps time and effort into a beef ragu.
I would Omit the beef to save money and spend it on better tomatoes and fresh basil
I'd make a light pure marinara with bucatini or penne or something
I'd focus more on the plating and ambience
I can find Italian sausage links for cheaper than beef and I think they plate better. But I agree, definitely ditch the beef.
This is a cheat code.
Just buy nice Italian sausages, remove the casings and make meatballs.
Chef Roy Choi’s $4 spaghetti
https://www.seriouseats.com/roy-choi-la-son-spaghetti-junction
Roast a head of garlic in the oven and let it caramelize. Add it to your sauce and simmer. Always use fresh basil!
Naw, if you're making a sauce with it anyway poach it in olive oil and make garlic confit instead of roasting it.
I would make Marcella Hazan's bolognese. I can make a whole meal with that for under $20.
Came here to say this
Haha, make that three
Add some mustard or cream.
tablespoon or a little more of butter and cream. Makes a huge difference.
Agreed!
Use hot Italian sausage meat in the meat sauce, a sauteed onion, garlic, and lots of oregano and basil. Toss in small frozen Italian meatballs and simmer for 30 minutes. Use spaghetti squash so it’s not junk carbs. Real Parmigiana Reggiano fresh grated at the table.
You can find value priced Tuscan reds. It’s the wine that highlights the meal.
Use 50% ground pork 50% ground beef.
Cacio e Pepe! Done!
Utterly perfect in its simplicity. Heavenly
Add a couple pats of butter to the sauce.
Make a cream sauce with a little sun-dried tomato It’s heavenly.
Aglio olio is incredibly simple and an amazing dish. Very few ingredients and most are very cheap. Spend the money you need on a small piece of real parmigiano.
Carbonara.
An Americanized (in this case, the major difference being bacon instead of guanciale) carbonara, gricia, or Amatriciana is probably the best answer. Other good options are pasta alla norma (eggplant), norcina (sausage), or if you really want to go all out on a budget, zozzona (the lovechild of a carbonara and a sausage ragu).
If meat is a budget breaker in OP's case in itself, I'd suggest something like cacio e pepe or Stephen Cusato's Italian-American weekday sauce.
Add veggies:carrots, celery bell peppers and use store brand Italian sausage. I used to make this for the stage crew after matinee when I interned.
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio / Spaghetti with garlic and olive oil
https://pinchandswirl.com/pasta-aglio-e-olio-pasta-with-garlic-and-oil/
https://youtube.com/shorts/A61vneZJQDE?si=n8K5g2AckuBNjyEH
Bolognese. Takes a lot of time but boy it is worth it!
If you can get a wedge of Pecorino ( or Parmesan) at your local grocery store or a Trader Joe’s you can make carbonara. Pasta, a couple of eggs, bacon and cheese. With a salad .
Ok. Here me out. Cook a pound of bacon. Take crispy bacon out ( chop). Cook onions and garlic ( sometimes I do shredded carrot or a mirepoix) till soft. Add tomato’s sauce and spice ( or even canned sauce). Cook noodles al dente and finish in the sauce. It’s not overly greasy. My kuds call it bacon spaghetti and it is Devine. My Portuguese roommate with Italian parents taught me to do it this way.
Sounds a bit like a poor man's Amatriciana. Personally, I'd go all in on that angle, skip the onions and garlic, use good tomatoes, a bit of pecorino romano, some dry white wine (just a splash, and you can serve the rest of the bottle with dinner), and a lot less than a pound of bacon.
Slice your bacon (maybe a quarter pound) into lardon, brown it, remove from the pan. Deglaze with a splash of white wine, add a can of good crushed tomatoes (hand crushed san marzanos would be best -- just the tomatoes, not the packing juice), a pinch of crushed red chili and salt, simmer for a few minutes while your pasta finishes, and toss it together with the pasta, half the bacon, and a handful of finely grated pecorino. Add a little pasta water to thin it out as necessary. Top with the remainder of the bacon and a sprinkle more of pecorino romano.
I know it’s not traditional, but I enjoy adding garlic to my Amatriciana.
I always use my crockpot - would you like to use canned tomatoes or jar sauce? I have suggestions for both
Chuck roast bolognese, homemade noodles, fresh parmesan, homemade garlic bread with butter, caesar salad, glass of red wine.
A chuck roast near me is $20 plus. That's a lot for spaghetti.
Should only be around $6-$8/lb. Also look for stew beef they usually sell those in 1-2lb packages and it's pretty much the same thing.
$8.77/lb at Walmart and $9.99 at Kroger near me. Beef prices are ridiculous.
Maybe ten years ago. I was at the grocer yesterday and it was $38/kg (about $19/lb). Stewing beef wasn't much better (and is quite a different thing, cut wise).
You can make a damn good ragu with it for sure, but if I'm working on a budget I can get almost all the ingredients for an Americanized pasta al'Amatriciana for almost the same price as just a pound of chuck.
And gelato!
I just made this fettuccine and it was AMAZING!! My husband and I were having good culinary aftershocks for hours afterward.
https://youtu.be/qda5mMOIlqc?si=vNnvxd7IY1q9RPpN
The only thing is that the proportions he uses makes an enormous amount of sauce. I'd cut the butter and cheese amounts to half and keep everything else the same. You could still feed 4-6 people with that. It may look like a nothing sauce, but it is incredibly rich and filling.
2 lg cans crushed tomatoes, 5 cloves fresh garlic, 1/2 cup chopped onion, 5 Tablespoons Italian seasoning, 2 teaspoons fennel seed, 1/2-1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, salt to taste. If you have it, add 1/2 cup red wine. Simmer 1 1/2-2 hours. Don’t need meat, but do need good cheese. Parmesan Romano! It you must have meat, brown Italian sausage links on all sides, add 1/2 cup water, and cover and reduce heat to low.cook 1/2 hour.
If you boil the pasta in just enough salted water, that when the pasta is cooked how you want it, there is only a small amount of very thick starchy water left, you have a very creamy ‘sauce’. Combine that with some fried bacon bits, fried onion and garlic, black pepper, Parmesan and parsley and you can have the most luxurious feeling dish for $2-$3 a plate.
Use whole canned tomatoes, a lot of garlic and olive oil, MSG, and simmer low and slowwww to let the flavors develop. If you can afford ground beef or Italian sausage, add it. Spaghetti can be amazing with just the basics. Usually the places to splurge to make it more special would be the pasta (avoid the basic store brands) and Parmesan. Cook the pasta to shy of al dente, then finish in the sauce with a ladle of pasta water. Grate your own Parmesan to finish. If you can afford to top with fresh basil, that would make it that much more decadent.
A homemade Caesar salad and crusty French garlic bread are excellent accompaniments and are usually pretty budget friendly.
I don't think meat is important or romantic, I'd go with the classic lighter vegetarian version
Not hard. Dry pasta, canned tomatoes, garlic, olive oil. Should get a cheese to grate but don't know you're budget
Beef/pork blend, fresh carrots, celery, only and a barely simmer long cook my friend. Get quality pasta.
Bottle of red wine in it.
Saute onions, carrots, celery, bell pepper, all super finely minced, with chopped tomatoes in some butter with a healthy pinch of salt. Add garlic, a little broth, and a whole package of pepperoni. Simmer for an hour or two on low heat. Take out the pepperonis, add a meatball or chicken if you've got it and some fresh basil. Serve over pasta.
1 med yellow onion, 1 or 2 carrots, 1 or 2 stalks of celery, 1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper, and like 5 or 6 firm tomatoes (8 or 9 of you use Roma) is all you need to make a decent amount of sauce. I like to use an obscene amount of basil but one of those little plastic things of it would be plenty if you're normal, lol. Sometimes I'll add a fuckton of cheese and just have mac and 'ghetti. Very tasty business.
Cook the onions for a LONG time. Plenty of them. And garlic (don’t burn it). And splash in decent red wine. Pulverize whole canned tomatoes. Add tomato paste and a little Worcestershire sauce if you have it for deeper flavor. Don’t stint on the salt.
Carbonara still tastes great with cheap bacon and cheap Parmesan. Look up the NYT recipe and just use cheap products. Made from scratch it’s very decadent
Cream
Carbonara is decadent but fairly cheap.
Use one can of San Marizano's ($4-6) and stretch the rest with cheaper canned tomatoes. Chopped onions and add a carrot (to be discarded later) for additional sweetness and to pull some acidity. Spring for a small block of parmesan. Sauté the pasta with the sauce, add a little cheese, and then emulsify with pasta water.
If you have any $$$ left over, some parsley for color doesn't hurt.
Edit: I also forgot, get either canned anchovies and mash or anchovy paste, whichever is cheaper. It deepens the umami flavoring of the tomatoes.
I would be sure to know how to cook pasta. Sorry to sound like a dick but not everyone gets it right! Boiling, salted water, lots of it, spaghetti in, stir, lid on, light boil, cook til al dente. Toss in olive oil once drained. The sauce I’ll leave up to you but stir it through the pasta over a low heat.
Gonna give you a real answer lol.
Make ragu. Get a chuck roast, cut into 1 inch chunks and braise in tomato sauce.
Ingredients: Carrots Onions Celery Tomato paste (optional) Tomato puree Chuck roast Salt Pepper
Chuck roasts are usually (here) 3+ pounds. Use 1 lb of it for this. Use the rest to do beef stew or braised "short ribs". Lots of uses for chuck.
Brown (your preference to color) the 1" chuck chunks. Dutch oven makes this a one pot option. Little bit of olive oil in a hot pan and brown them. You are not cooking though, just browning the meat. The darker the color on the meat the heavier beef flavor the sauce will have. Remove from Dutch oven when browned to your preference.
Tomato sauce -
Equal amounts of carrots, onions, celery (all cheap, don't get organic). Half an onion 1 and 1/2 carrot and 2 sticks of celery should be close.
Cut the vegetables to roughly even squares, tons of videos on YouTube for mise en place.
Sauté the onion in olive oil first.
The water released from the onion will allow you to scrape the fond from the beef cooking into the sauce- make sure to do this. 1. Sauce will taste better and 2. Cleaning will be way easier.
Give it 5 mins then add the celery and carrot. Give it another 5 mins and if you are using tomato paste add now. Stir to add the paste to the vegetables. Cook the paste for a few minutes stirring to not burn it. Add tomato puree after 3-5 minutes. The add the beef back.
Cooking the tomato paste changes it from acidic to sweet. Do not skip this.
If not using tomato paste add tomato puree after cooking the vegetables. Add the beef back to the pot. Add water as necessary to keep the meat submerged- this is important. A bit of beef sticking out won't matter don't over add the water as you need to cook it out later. You can also use beef broth instead of water.
After 2-3 hours you should have a pot of thickish sauce (sticks to pasta) and tender meat the falls apart when pressed by a fork.
It doesn't take a ton of oversight but does require a stir once in a while to prevent anything sticking in the bottom.
This is my wife recipe, who is from Naples, Italy. There they DO NOT mix garlic and Onion, feel free to add garlic if you want. Add crushed garlic at the end of the vegetable stage, only needs to cook for 1 minute or so to add its flavor.
Crushed red pepper adds a kick if you want a little spice. A teaspoon to start with. Taste and add more depending on your spice level.
Buy it from a really good hole in the wall restaurant and say you made it from scratch
(Walmart prices) great value rigatoni pasta (<$2), ground hot Italian sausage (<$5), Rao’s marinara (~$6.50), goat cheese (<$3). Boil noodles, brown sausage, add sauce. Plate. Cut goat cheese into medallions and serve atop pasta. Mix in cheese before eating. Serves 4.
You can use a cheaper marinara, but I wouldn’t.
Sauce: 1/2 lb ground beef ($3.50), 1/2 lb ground pork ($3.00), 1/2 pound baby bella mushrooms ($2.50), 1 can San Marzano Peeled tomatoes (4.50), 1 can San Marzano crushed tomatoes ($4.00) 2 medium shallots fine diced ($1.00), 1/2 head of garlic minced (.35), 1/2 cup good of olive oil ($1.80) 1/2 cup of garlic ($1.25), 2 sprigs rosemary (.50) 2 sprigs thyme (.50)
Pasta: 1 lb penne ($2.00)
Garlic bread: 1/2 loaf of Italian bread (.60), full bulb of garlic roasted (.75), 1 cup melted stick of butter ($2.50), sprig of rosemary (.25)
8 oz fresh grated parmesan for garnish ($5.50)
Cook the beef & pork in a big pot, season with coarse salt & pepper, drain fat, set aside. Rinse mushrooms. Deglaze the pan with the shallots & mushrooms, add a pinch of salt, add garlic when those begin to get soft. Blend peeled tomatoes til smooth. Add meat back in, then peeled & crushed tomatoes, olive oil & rosemary & thyme that's been picked from their stems. Season with salt & pepper. Bring to a gentle boil stirring often then turn down to a very low simmer, stirring occasionally & let cook/reduce for 1-4 hours. Mount butter at the end
Peheat oven to 400. When you're about 30 minutes from starting your pasta cut the top of an entire bulb of garlic & roast in the oven until golden and spreadable. Have butter set out in bowl to room temp, mix garlic, rosemary & a couple pinches of salt & pepper into melted butter, spread onto bread, cook for ~10 min
When sauce is close to ready, cook the pasta to just under al dente. When ready use a slotted spoon to transfer to sauce pan, not being afraid to add some pasta water in there, cook for a few minutes on medium until sauce and pasta are combined
Plate with fresh grated parmesan on top
~ 35 bucks, simple as hell, gonna taste fucking delicious & you'll have leftovers for prob 2 days for 2 people. ~$6 a serving
What they all said here. And make it early in the day or the night before, if possible!
I'd say cook it as you always do and present it better/upscaled. People eat with their eyes first.
Make your own sauce. Buy a can of plain tomato sauce or diced tomatos (if you want it chunky). Sauté a half of an onion in about a tablespoon of oil oil until soft, add a few cloves of minced garlic and sauté another minute over medium or medium low heat, add the can (15oz) of tomato sauce and add Italian seasoning, fennel seed, black pepper, salt , oregano and red chili flakes to it and cook until hot. Cook your favorite paste and mix in some sauce for serving. Grate a little fresh Parmesan over the top.
If you are going really fancy and want a meat sauce, I like to add some cooked Iserneo's mild chicken Italian sausage to it. That sausage has excellent flavor.
Ragu alla Geneovese
At its core, beef and onions. All the rest amplifies it a little but a they are both all you really need. Cheap cut of meat, twice that weight in onions, and a lot of time.
A few cups frozen Broccoli, 1 onion, couple cloves of garlic and if you can chicken broth but water works also. Some mint and parsley to be fancy.
Sautéed off the onion and garlic, add broccoli pour in liquid simmer season and while warm add the mint and parsley, blend. Be sure liquid has cooled a bit so it doesn't explode in the blender. Season again if needed. Cook pasta and add this sauce to desired amount.
To be extra fancy you can cook some bacon or ham cubes before adding sauce and pasta
Ok I’ll let you in on a little spaghetti secret: caramelized onions in the sauce. It balances the acidity of the tomatoes
Pasta alio olie
"Decadence" may be subjective but the most romantic spaghetti dinner was with my husband a few years back.
Fresh pasta from the fridge section - long fettuccine. Sauce from scratch (ish), simmered with olive oil and all the whistles; a little light on the garlic but added a bit of crushed red pepper. Cut in a spot of cream cheese for a little creamy flair.
Italian sausage - two each. Then served the whole thing on a single platter we shared.
We had to sit close to each other, and there was a lot of quiet conversation and politely-measured bites. The food was exquisite but it was the intimacy of the meal that made it decadent.
I know this wouldn't work for a party of more than two but for a couple, it was a remarkable evening.
Use Italian sausage for the meat. It's cheaper than any other meat and brings tons of flavor
Make your pasta from scratch. It’s actually very easy to do, and it takes your pasta dish to the next level.
I saw a video where half the mince was replaced with mushroom that had been through the blender.
Aglio e olio is another good one and cheap if you can get reasonable Parmesan gran pardano which actually melts better and you grow the parsley. Cheaper still is black pepper version or lemon rind.
Butter. Lots
The secret ingredients in the best bolognese I ever had was Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Add a generous amount of it in before the 3 hour simmer and it'll give an unctuous depth.
And make it the day before. Tastes so much better day after
Make your own sauce. The jarred stuff is gross and makes my stomach turn with all the preservatives and additives. Finish the pasta in the sauce. Buy the best cheese you can afford and drizzle a little bit of a quality olive oil as you finish plating it. Don't forget to add some pasta water to emulsify the sauce and cheese.
Crisp off some bacon . A lemon, rind and juice, butter, grana padano (or any hard cheese) basil...lift the cooked wet pasta into the butter, half the lemon rind and juice and basil leaves, padano, and add a little more pasta water to make it creamy, add the rest of the rind and juice and bacon broken up, leaves, more cheese.
Serve
Butter and Parmesan.
Make puttanesca
Stick a candle in the middle of it, sprinkle it with green things. Bon Appetite
Carbonara. Good pancetta or even just bacon, egg, parm - done right it is inexpensive and tastes far more decadent than the price!
Spaghetti carbonara. If the guanciale is unavailable ot too expensive, I would substitute bacon.
Grate a load of cheese on top.
Celery, carrots, and an onion are all under $2. I’d finely mince them (I don’t like super chunky sauces) and sautee this mirepoix. Add seasonings that you already have (red pepper flakes) Add a can of tomato paste ($1) and a can of crushed San marzano tomatoes. (Just a few dollars). When that’s done, add in your noodles and a knob of butter.
It’ll feel decadent, makes a TON, and should cost well under $10
Italian sausage. Canned crushed tomatoes. Fresh herbs and garlic. That corkscrew pasta.
Marcella Hazan’s bolognese recipe takes hours but is well worth it.
Box of pasta is like $1-$2
Cheap sauce is like $3
Ground Italian sausage or minced pork for like $5-$6
Parmesan is like $2-$3
Bag of Salad kit is like $5-$6
Baguette for like $2-$3
Butter & Garlic Salt hopefully in the house already.
Boil water, salt water, add pasta, start cooking sausage, add sauce to cooked meat, strain pasta toss with sauce, add cheese to serve, serve buttery garlic bread with pasta and salad as post-pasta
Meal for $20-$25.
For $5 you could add some Cannoli from your grocery store, for $5 you could add some sparkling grape juices
San Marzano tomatoes are the key to a good sauce.
Garnish at the end. Fresh Italian parsley and Parmesan. Maybe some chili flakes. Adds color and layers that you can’t achieve with just noodle/sauce.
Low and slow, season everything
Add a sautéed onion and cooked crumbled sausage. Season with garlic powder or minced garlic, salt and pepper. My kids love it
Carbonara.
Pasta. Egg. Cheese. You can omit the guanciale or meat of choice, but those three ingredients done right with some pepper will really class it up
Marcella hazans recipe. San marzanos, butter, onion, and salt. Cook until reduced to your liking. Absolutely delicious. Make some homemade meatballs and throw them in the sauce for an hour before serving.
Yess to this! So simple and so good
Pull out all the stops for an amazing marinara sauce - caramelized onions, golden-brown garlic, fresh thyme and oregano, decent red wine for de-glazing, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh bay leaves, Italian parsley. It goes with any form of protein you like. Add a dollop of pesto when you serve for extra fanciness. Sear up some garlicky green beans to have with it.
I would buy a pack of sausage links, pan fry them, then chop them into bite-size pieces and add into a sauce. The browning and pork fat will add very good flavors, plus make the whole thing meaty.
Gnocchi from scratch. And a light tomato cream sauce.
If you get it right it's an elevated restaurant quality dish. And it's egg, potato, flour, salt for the dough, and a tin of tomatoes, splash of cream, and seasoning for the sauce.
Pasta puttanesca is fairly inexpensive and to me the flavors taste more exotic than the plain spaghetti I grew up eating. Plus I like it spicy so I add a ton more chili flakes
TIME
Original ragu is pretty inexpensive, just a base of caramelized low and slow root veg (or mirepoix to be exact), mince, tomatoes.
Clue is the time you let it cook.
You can also easily use pork in place of beef, or mix of the two.
Spaghetti with shrimp and clams (or just clams if the budget does not allow, or one shrimp per bowl right on top like a garnish)
It sounds fancy, it looks fancy it tastes expensive, it's decadent, but it's dirt cheap to make.
Finely chopped onion or shallot and garlic.
Cheap white wine, or some of what you would serve with.
Cherry tomatoes.
Bottle of clam juice.
Par boiled Spaghetti (or linguini or fettuccine), and a little pasta water Shrimp (you can also pan fry them separately or patch them in butter and garlic).
Cans of clams, and some fresh chopped parsley.
A little pasta water if required.
Recipe is adding everything listed to the pan in the order listed cooking each step by step. The clams just need to be warmed a minute.
It all comes together in ten minutes after chopping the onion and garlic. You finish cooking the pasta in the pan with the wine and clam juice so it absorbs the flavors.
Honestly this is one of my "I'm too tired to cook" meals.
Large can of crushed or diced tomatoes 1 can coconut milk Ground meat or lentils Tomato paste Corn starch & herbs. Very inexpensive. Any kind of bread can be turned into garlic bread
2 options: Spagheti & Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, or Cacio e Pepe. Both are decadent, rich, and easy/cheap to make:
https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/tomato-sauce-onion-and-butter
https://www.recipesfromitaly.com/spaghetti-cacio-e-pepe-recipe/
Marcella hazan’s bolognese or tomato and butter sauce
Best can of tomatoes you can buy
An onion cut in half.
A stick of butter.
Throw that all in a pot and simmer for a while with salt and pepper. Throw it together with the best noodles you can find.
Not dirt cheap but not expensive either even with current prices.
Sofrito, pork and beef, garlic, herbs, cheap wine is fine, don’t overdo the tomato sauce; spaghetti sauce (unless you’re actually going for a pomodoro sauce), doesn’t need to be drowned in tomato. Alternatively you can do meatballs instead and then use plenty of tomato sauce . If it tastes too acidic, put in a dash of baking soda in the sauce, it will reduce acidity.
Bolognese (Ragu properly) is meat sauce, not a tomato sauce, so cut down the amount of tomatoes you normally add (a lot) and enrich it with chicken livers.
Time.
Knob of butter at the end before serving.
But mostly time simmering in the oven at 250F and just add more water if it gets too thick.
Sometimes you can buy the rinds of parm and drop a small piece in to infuse the tomato sauce with flavour.
The knob of butter at the end does make a noticeable difference!
Make the sauce the day before so the flavours can mellow
Use Italian sausage like this instead of beef. Take it out of the casing and smoosh into small pieces and cook in a pan until brown through, then add to sauce. Immediately elevates any spaghetti. Fresh Parmesan and fresh basil also go along way. I also highly reccomend Michael’s of Brooklyn jarred sauce.
https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.188550054.html?productId=188550054&CMPID=organic_swy_all_surf_goo_20220629&psrc=g
Can we get married? Lol
Add some bechemel and mushrooms maybe?
Lasagna on a budget vs unlimited budget
I really like this episode of sorted food. The budget chef really gives lots of good tricks that I think could be used for Spaghetti. Here are some highlights :
using canned or very cheap industrial style meat products and mixing it with lentils
making his own cheese to make a béchamel with wey and use the fresh cheese
Beef and pork meatballs.
Roast 2-3 heads of garlic. Make the sauce with it. Make garlic bread with it. Use a good fan of tomatoes and the rest of the gadget on good parm.
Add cream cheese to make the sauce rich, use real garlic to make garlic butter for bread, slice lettuce in thin ribbons for salad, use roma tomatoes, make your own itallian dressing using olive oil.
ok, I'm totally going to get booed here but here goes anyway. Use good quality pasta cooked al-dente. In a baking dish, combine the pasta and sauce (I confess I have used Rao's basil - gasp!). I like to add diagonally sliced sausage.
Now to elevate it, incorporate some dollops of ricotta throughout the dish such that each serving will have at least 2. Heavily sprinkle shredded mozzarella. Bake at 350 about a half hour to melt the cheese.
It ends up tasting similar to lasagna.
The details: capers, anchovies, maybe shrimp instead of ground beef. Cacio de Pepe if your really short on cash.
Creamy miso pasta 🤤 so easy to make.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020979-five-ingredient-creamy-miso-pasta
I’m sorry but good ol jarred sauce with my mom’s/grandma’s meatballs on cheap boxed noodles will always slap the hardest. I don’t want fancy sgetti I want down home sgetti
I’ve tried to make homemade sauce so many times and I never like it as much as the jarred stuff with some added seasonings.
I’ve found the same. Shamefully even with my own garden grown tomatoes. I just want my familiar jar flavor.
Ok hear me out. This might sound crazy.
There is this Belgian restaurant very beloved by students that makes their own "Kastartsaus', which can translate to 'Daredevil sauce' or 'Little rascal sauce' depending which meaning of 'Kastaar' you take (Belgian dialects are weird)
This being said, the sauce is very luscious, but what also helps is that it's very easily adjustable too taste, leaving out or replacing bits and pieces where you want. As long as you keep like 3/4ths of the original ingredients, the sauce will be tasty and will slap, especially if you replace the other ingredients instead of just leaving them out.
The recipe is a secret and people have been trying to emulate it for a while. After many attempts, this is my current approximation (Warning, I used AI to help translate and format my scribblings, and to convert from metric to imperial for you American savages):
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 yellow bell pepper
1/2 green bell pepper
2 celery stalks
3 slices sweet & sour pickles
1 carrot
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp spaghetti seasoning
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp sambal oelek (or spicy kick of choice)
14 oz ground pork/veal
1 beef bouillon cube
1 cup heavy cream
Salted butter
1/2 cup water
1 1/4 cups passata
Bay leaf (optional – doesn’t add a ton of flavor)
Emmental cheese, grated
Thin spaghetti (capellini)
How to make it
Pro tip: This sauce is even better if you make it the day before.
Brown the ground meat in a pan with a knob of butter. Don’t overdo it — you want it cooked but not deeply browned. Take the meat out and set it aside.
In the same pan, sauté all the finely chopped veggies and pickles. Add the spaghetti seasoning and let everything cook down for about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic, sriracha (or sambal), ketchup, and tomato paste. Cook for about 1 minute, then add the passata, bouillon cube, and water. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes, then blend the sauce until smooth.
Add the meat back into the sauce along with the cream. Let everything gently simmer for another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with capellini and plenty of Emmental cheese
For me this really is a dish where the whole is much more than the sum of it's parts, and is luxurious.
The cream, the cheese, the proteins can all be left out and it will still be delicious. You can play with the colors and amount of bell peppers. You can swap out the bouillon cube for fresh stock to make it even better. This recipe is your playground.
Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes in a 2 qt saucepan:
1 24-26oz jar of pasta sauce (whatever tickles your fancy)
12oz (1/2 bag) frozen meatballs (or as many as you can cook in the pot you have)
1 tub white mushrooms, quartered
2 tablespoons grape jelly
1 tablespoon chili powder
What does the grape jelly do? Im curious and want to try it.
Adds a little sweetness and a little tartness. From my mother’s recipe.
Ohh I will have to try this
Yep my mom also made her crockpot meatballs with grape jelly.
It also cuts the acidity of the tomatoes. So I was told.
This is the way for cheap, tastes better and more expensive than it really is, snap eligible, food.
Spring for a nicer jar of sauce or add some extra to a seasoning to a cheaper jar like Italian seasoning, garlic and a sprinkle of sugar (cuts the acidity of the tomatoes). Making some fresh homemade French bread for a side is always a hit. It’s easy and inexpensive to make. If you have the fixings you can make it into garlic bread. I also make turkey meatballs because 1 pound of ground turkey is typically less expensive than beef and my kids love it.
Fermented fennel. Cheap and easy if you have a jar and time
Cook the pasta, then smoke them over a wood fire until dry, then hydrate them again. Toast as many different varieties of pepper you can find/afford, make cacio e Pepe.
i put two cans of campbells tomato soup in my spaghetti, along with higher end pasta sauce, over al dante noodles and SEASONED ground beef. finely diced carrots and celery to really top it off but my girlfriend doesn’t like that part so i usually skip it