- You know, even if a recipe
seems like it has a lot of
steps or that it might be hard,
if you just take your
time, enjoy the process,
in the end, you'll come out
with a great plate of food.
I'm gonna show you how to make something
that I know you love and I grew up on,
spaghetti and meatballs.
I like to add fresh onion and garlic to
my meatballs and marinara
because you're already doing
all this work to make dinner,
you might as well go just the extra step
to make it really special.
So the goal is to soften
these onions and garlic
and get a little bit of color.
After your onions are cooked,
scoop out about one third of a cup
and put it on the side
to save it for later
for the meatballs.
To the cooked onion, add
in your tomato paste.
Caramelizing the tomato paste
until it's dark brown
in the pan and aromatic
is called pincage.
It's a very important
step to making sure that
your marinara sauce
tastes like it's homemade
and not store bought.
I love to use crushed
tomatoes in my marinara sauce
because it will allow it to
be a nice, smooth texture
and really coat all your pasta.
But really, any type of
canned tomato will work.
I like to use dried herbs
when I start my sauce
so that they flavor the marinara
as it cooks for a long time.
If you want to use fresh herbs,
save them til the end
of the cooking process
so that their flavor stays intact.
Put a lid on it and let it
simmer for at least 30 minutes.
You can go for as long as you want.
There are thousands of
ways to make meatballs,
but for me, what makes mine so special
is that I have a secret
ingredient, ricotta cheese.
Ricotta is just the perfect
mixture of moisture,
protein, and fat that will help
hold the meatballs together
and make the meatballs tender and juicy.
Use your fingers, you
know, nature's tools.
They work the best.
You can make large
meatballs, tiny meatballs.
I like mine to be golf ball sized.
Don't feel bad if one
meatball isn't perfect.
As long as they're majority
the same size and shape,
you're good to go.
And I put them in the
oven at a high temperature
for a short period of time.
That way, your meatballs
have a tender inside
and brown all the way around
while you're cooking them.
The last step you want to
do is cooking your pasta.
Use a generous pinch of salt
to make sure that your water
is salty, briny, like the ocean.
You don't want bland pasta.
Shimmy it around so it
gets loosey and goosey.
Let it cook for about 7 to 10 minutes
until the pasta is al dente.
Now, al dente is just another Italian word
that means to the tooth,
just undercooked enough
where it has a slight chew
but is still tender.
The best way to tell that
your pasta is perfectly cooked
is just to taste it.
Yeah, see, perfect.
When draining your pasta,
put it immediately into your pasta sauce.
Stir it around so that the
wonderfully simmered sauce
covers every single piece of pasta.
It's a perfect marriage of flavors.
Spaghetti and meatballs is just
a classic Italian-American dish.
It's a recipe that I come
back to time and time again.
Try it at home, make it
your own, have fun with it,
and you'll become a master
at spaghetti in no time.
