Rick Makes Adult SpaghettiOs

Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs.

We are making SpaghettiOs.

So. [chuckles]

[Man] But I don't see any cans.

Well, that's because-- How do you make SpaghettiOs

without cans?

I lost the can opener, sorry!

[pleasant music]

Today we're making adult SpaghettiOs.

A lot of people remember things that they ate as a kid,

and you taste them again

and they're just not as good as they used to be,

and so what we wanted to do with this dish

is make an adult version that tasted good.

Something that was crave-worthy for an adult,

easy to make, but it brought us back to being a kid

and reminded us of what it was like

to eat the canned version.

When I was given this assignment,

we actually had a big taste test.

We bought cans of SpaghettiOs,

opened 'em up, and had them

and they're not as good as we remember.

They're pretty sweet and pretty flat

and kind of gross.

Also, fake meat meatballs?

Bleh.

SpaghettiOs are actually

a pretty popular search term on the internet.

Let's be honest, people are looking for a good recipe.

People are really nostalgic.

They want the food of their childhood,

and there are not frankly a lot of good recipes out there.

You know, it all boils down to a good meatball,

a good sauce, and good pasta.

So to be honest, you can make the meatballs a little bigger

and change out the pasta

and you've got a really nice spaghetti and meatball dish.

So it's just taking those three basic components

and turning them into something

that's a little bit more nostalgic,

but you know, if you're a SpaghettiO hater, that's fine.

Buy spaghetti and make a bigger meatball, that's fine.

But this recipe, it's a really, really good meatball

because it's super flavorful,

the meatballs are really moist and tender.

There's a technique that I'm gonna show you

that will basically ensure that your meatballs

don't get packed and really hard and dense.

And also I like this cooking method.

We're going to brown the meatballs

and add them to the simmering sauce,

so you'll get a little bit of flavor

from the fond on the bottom of the pan,

from the browning meatballs

and then you finish the meatballs in the sauce

so they get all the flavor of the meatballs into the sauce.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is make a panade.

This combination exists a lot in Italian cooking,

so when you're making traditional meatballs,

but also people do it for things like meatloaf.

It's a way of ensuring that you're gonna get

a really, really tender juicy meat.

So it's used in ground beef preparations.

So I put panko bread crumbs,

I put some parmesan, some oregano,

this is red pepper flake,

this is some garlic powder.

I've got some kosher salt,

and you wanna mix this in.

I really like flavorful meatballs.

I figure if you're gonna do this,

you might as well do it right.

So there's quite a lot of flavor in there.

And then you want to add your wet

now that that's all incorporated.

So this is heavy cream and beaten egg.

I'm using heavy cream.

This is not traditional, usually it's just whole milk

but I wanted it rich.

I like flavorful everything, so.

The cream is gonna add a little bit of fat.

Sometimes ground beef can be a little lean.

This is 80/20 so that means that it's 20% fat,

which I normally like.

There's a lot of flavor in that.

Now I'm going to add the beef to this, ground chuck.

So, what I like to do,

and I do this for meatballs and for meatloaf.

What I find to be the best technique for this

is to take two forks

and just pull the meat apart.

It seems a little counterintuitive

because it seems lik you should be pushing it together,

but this actually separates the clumps of meat,

especially if you get this at your supermarket

and it's pre-packaged in a little container

and it's probably all squished together.

This way you're breaking it up,

so you're not compacting it.

Also, as you break it up,

all the panade is getting into the chuck.

The easiest way to do this

is with a really small ice cream scoop.

You want them to be about an inch in diameter.

We actually, a few years ago we did a nostalgia week

and it was you know, mac and cheese

and cream of mushroom soup

and all of these sort of old,

like sloppy joes, things like that.

Things that you had as a kid

that you might've actually liked

coming out of a can or a box,

but then when you taste it now

it's just really weird and synthetic and unpleasant.

I'm just giving them a little bit of shape

and making sure that they hold themselves together.

All right.

And we are ready to fry some meatballs.

They don't eat fat around here.

They don't eat sugar, they don't eat fat.

I leave, the place goes to shit.

[Woman] There's doughnuts right over here.

Yeah, but look.

That's like the thinnest glaze on earth!

[Man] You know what, that's [bleep] Andy's doing.

I know.

Also I'm using my hands, sorry.

Not sorry.

So we're actually using two skillets

because the sun's going down and we wanna go home, no.

We do this in batches, and someone dared me

that I couldn't do this, so here we are.

If you are at home doing this,

you don't want to crowd the pan.

Obviously there's a lot of meatballs here.

This is just gonna make this process

go a little bit faster.

You just wanna brown the meatballs on a couple of sides.

They're gonna get flat,

and that's fine.

We're not cooking them all the way through.

We're just getting a little color.

[meatballs sizzling]

So in real life, you would basically just

do your meatballs in two batches in the same skillet,

and then use the drippings to cook your onions and garlic.

If your beef rendered too much fat,

or you're not really into all the fat,

you can take some of it out.

You need a little bit just to keep the onion

from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

So this is gonna go about five minutes.

We just wanna soften.

We don't really want a lot of color.

But there's so much flavor at the bottom of this.

All of that beef fat and the cream,

garlic and the oregano, all of those flavors are here

and they're gonna meld with the onions.

I'm going to hit it with a little kosher salt.

And pepper.

This will help pull some of the sugar out of the onion.

That'll give us a light caramel,

which will add to the flavor, and yeah.

Just gonna let this go for about five minutes.

All right, it's been about five minutes.

I'm gonna add the tomato paste.

What I usually do whenever I add tomato paste to things,

usually there's other vegetables in the pan.

I'm gonna push them to the side.

I'm gonna add the tomato paste on the empty side

and I'm just gonna kind of smear it into the pan.

This way you get a little more surface area,

and what I wanna do is kind of

cook and brown the tomato paste.

You can see it's bright red.

I wanna cook it for about a minute

until it goes a nice brick red color.

If the onion looks like it's getting a little too brown,

then you can go ahead and give it a little stir.

And at this point, just mix it in.

Now I like my tomato sauce

to be a little bit on the spicy side,

and so I'm gonna add a little bit of red pepper flake.

I also like using paprika.

I feel like it adds a really nice little back note

and it kind of takes it from the kid space

to more of an adult space.

Okay, so that's ready to go.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add some tomatoes.

These are actually whole canned tomatoes

that I pureed in a food processor.

I'm also gonna add a little bit of sugar.

I don't normally like sugar in my tomato sauce,

but because it's the SpaghettiOs

it is a part of the dish.

I'm gonna bring this to a boil,

and I'm gonna nestle in some basil.

Just a few sprigs of basil.

Again, just giving it a nicer, little depth of flavor.

Once this comes to a boil,

I'll reduce it to a simmer and then we'll just let that cook

for about 20 to 30 minutes

to reduce down, and then we'll add the meatballs

to finish cooking in the last 10 minutes.

So while the sauce is cooking, let's talk pasta.

So this is anelli.

So in the recipe, we call for anelletti, or ditalini.

Basically what you want is an O-shaped pasta.

The differences are gonna be in the length of the pasta,

so you want a short, tubular O-shaped pasta.

I have some boiling water over here.

It needs to be salted.

I am adding quite a bit of salt.

It should definitely taste like the sea.

I have 12 ounces of my anelli pasta.

I'm going to give it a little bit of a stir,

just to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom.

And our sauce is simmering nicely over here.

I'm going to

add the meatballs in.

These are almost completely cooked all the way through.

They only need about five to 10 minutes,

depending on the thickness and size.

You just want to nestle them in,

make sure they're nice and covered in the sauce.

Smells really good.

So, if we've timed this correctly,

our meatballs will be done

at the same time as our SpaghettiOs

and we can put everything together.

All right, I believe this pasta is done.

We're gonna take this over to the sink and drain it.

We actually had a long debate

about this a long time ago

whether it's better to use tongs or a spider

to pull pasta out of water.

I'm a big fan of doing this.

All right, now we're just going to add this to that.

If you see more basil, just pull it out as you stir.

And just be careful,

because the meatballs are a little bit delicate.

Yeah, all right.

I've made dinner!

Who's hungry?

[Gaby] What are we eating?

So we just eat it right out of there.

It's the SpaghettiOs.

Oh I remember your SpaghettiOs.

You do?

[Gaby] You did this when I started working

in the test kitchen.

Oh wow.

I shouldn't be eating this--

I know. But thank you.

What do you mean I know? I'm gonna have one bite.

Who said?

Oh my god, come yeah.

There's a lot.

Here.

For you, darling. Ooh party.

Thank you.

When you said SpaghettiOs, I honestly thought for a second

that you were like doing a Claire's take on Gourmet Makes,

and making like SpaghettiOs?

Right, right, right.

The brand from scratch.

Not quite that adventurous.

This is, tastes way better than that.

A lot better.

Like tenfold.

Like actual, recognizable chunks of tomato?

Wild. Plenty of that, yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much.

Sure! Thank you.

Thank you. Wait, do you need this?

No, it's all yours. Good, okay.

If you need more, there's like a good pot left.

Thank you! Yeah.

And that is adult SpaghettiOs.

[Man] What if we couldn't get the rights to SpaghettiOs

and we just had to bleep that out every time in this video?

Uh-oh.

Today we're making beep.

Spaghetti. Uh-oh.

Uh-oh, beep! [laughing]

Here are spaghetti zeroes.

[Rick laughs]

[Man] Or spaghetti Oz.

[laughing]

Spaghetti ounces. Spaghetti ounces.