I don't eat italian made by anyone who calls the gravy sauce. That is all.

Spaghetti (what we typically think of as spaghetti anyway) isn't Italian. It's distinctly American.

What?

Not sure who you think "we" is but there are plenty who like their italian foods the italian way. Though yeah, spaghetti is an American thing too.
Anyway, great thread and I don't want to derail.

So mangiare everyone, mangiare.

My dad used to cut his spaghetti sauce with a noticeable amount of sugar to help prevent reflux. It always seemed to work.

wait im confused you're supposed to call it gravy?

I guess I have never even heard of baked spaghetti. I'm kinda weird in the fact I don't really care for spaghetti, but lasagna done correctly might be my favorite food. l love a correctly made lasagna!! Every time I tell folks that they just say dude, they are the same thing. No, they are not, and I guess I really don't know why. When the wife makes spaghetti, I just make a ham and cheese sandwich and some chips. Her and the kids love it, so I just let them have at it :thumb:

However, if I am drunk and I put about a half a container of Parmesan cheese on it, I can stomach spaghetti. I may need to look into this baked spaghetti, if it is more similar to lasagna, maybe we can all eat it :thumb:

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=313384

For someone who seems to value cooking, this entire post should make you feel so much shame it overwhelms you.

No. People are ****ing clueless about Italian food. It's also not called "marinara." There's no such thing as "marinara sauce."

It's called "sugo di pomodoro." Which literally means "sauce of tomato."

This is how you cook tomato sauce.

Cut white onion.
Put them in low heat olive oil
add tomatoes
add fresh basil
season with salt

That's it. That's the whole sauce. There's no meat. No meat balls. No sausage or peppers or oregano or shrimp or breaded chicken or anything else that makes it disgusting.

Additionally, "spaghetti" is a type of pasta, thicker than linguine. When you say you don't think spaghetti has to have... well... spaghetti noodles, it makes no sense. It is not synonymous with pasta.

But the biggest thing you likely do wrong - that almost every "italian" restaurant not run by an actual Italian chef does wrong - is that YOU DON'T SALT THE WATER. YOU HAVE TO PUT SALT IN THE PASTA WATER.

How much salt? Two handfuls. The water pasta cooks in should taste like the ocean. Pasta - even spaghetti - has actual flavor to it. When you just cook it in plain water, it's bland and gross. So, you add a bunch of shit to it to make it marginally interesting. The entire concept of italian food is based on simple recipes using few ingredients. If you add 20 things to the sauce, you're missing the entire point of why the food is good, inexpensive, and delicious.

There are other recipes for spaghetti noodles, like clam sauce (red or white), mussels, carbonara (the best), or Spaghetti alla Norma (southern recipe using eggplant).

throw away your jars of sauce.
Keep your polpette (meatballs) separate from your pasta.
Salt your water.

Open your world.

I can see the Kraft, but **** off on the rest. Victoria's for a jarred sauce is excellent, and that dried pasta is outstanding, too. And sorry if you disagree, but rigatoni is exponentially better than spaghetti for use with meat sauce.

What Americans typically think of as "spaghetti" isn't Italian.

That would be affirmative.

That being said, I've never had Italian food that knocked my socks off.

I was in Chicago for an audit one time and the gals I traveled with found this ****ing high dollar Italian outfit everyone raved about. The pasta was meh and the Italian Sausage I bought was really ****ing undercooked. I mean make me dead undercooked. It took like an hour and half to get the undercooked one so I just didn't eat it and left.

So while I do know very little about Italian food, I've had a decent shot of it and even when I go spend big money I'm not impressed. So you'll just have to forgive my ignorance in this instance.

I can't remember the name of that place, but I went to a place in DC once that blew me away. Very pricey, but they had "pasta mamas" on the first floor making the pastas - was pretty fascinating to sit there and watch someone with a ton of experience making pasta from scratch.

Nice. I'm sure that's far better than the place I went. I'm trying to wrack my brain and hell if I can remember the name. I can see place inside and out and of course the raw ****ing sausage is burned into my memory, but it was damn expensive. Like better than $50 for me and I didn't have wine.

There is supposed to be a decent Italian outfit in Garden that I've tried to go to a few times, but the line is always long. Maybe I'll get down there again sometime.