- 3 hours ago
Chef Angie Rito of Don Angie shares her ultimate Italian-American spaghetti and meatballs recipe in the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. From roasted garlic meatballs and San Marzano tomato sauce to restaurant-level pasta techniques, Angie breaks down every step behind tender, juicy meatballs and perfectly coated spaghetti.
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00:01Spaghetti and meatballs is a simple dish,
00:03but I think there's a real way to elevate it
00:06by a few simple steps.
00:07I'm Angie Rito, and today I'm making
00:09my perfect version of spaghetti and meatballs.
00:15So this is my son, a nice Italian-American boy.
00:18If you imagine the Italian-American grandma
00:20slaving over the stove all day.
00:22There's a reason why that food tastes so much better,
00:25because grandma was putting in the time.
00:27There are elements of this meatball recipe
00:28that are gonna take you more time
00:30than, say, like a 30-minute one
00:32that you would throw together,
00:32but I promise you that the end result
00:34is gonna be infinitely better tasting.
00:37First, we're gonna start with our meatballs.
00:43The first part of the meatball recipe,
00:45I'm gonna start by roasting garlic
00:47and making like a roasted garlic puree.
00:49I'm gonna take our garlic
00:50and basically cut the top part off here,
00:53and then just place them into a baking dish.
00:55The reason I do it this way
00:57is because when this is all said and done
00:58and I roast it in the oven,
01:00it's gonna be easier for me to kind of squeeze it out
01:02if I have the base intact.
01:04So once these are in my baking dish,
01:06I'm just gonna use a little bit of a neutral oil
01:08and basically fill the oil up
01:11about three quarters of the way.
01:12A common mistake that people make with meatballs
01:15is they just chop up raw garlic,
01:17throw it into their mix,
01:18and then in the brief time that the meatballs are cooking,
01:20oftentimes the garlic doesn't cook all the way,
01:23and you get some sort of like unpleasant chunks
01:25of uncooked garlic in there.
01:27This is gonna ensure that your garlic,
01:29not only is it cooked totally through,
01:31but it's cooked like low and slow
01:32to a point of like deep caramelization,
01:35and you're bringing out these qualities and flavors
01:37in the garlic that you wouldn't have otherwise.
01:40So I'm putting this in the oven
01:41and I'm gonna let it cruise in there at 275
01:43for one and a half to two hours.
01:45The garlic has this really nice caramelization on it,
01:49so I'm just squeezing out all of my perfectly roasted garlic here.
01:53It's gonna really impart this nice, oh my God.
01:57No, my glasses!
01:59I was trying to do the upward squeeze.
02:02You're inevitably gonna get a little bit of oil in here,
02:04that's fine, it's just gonna add some more flavor,
02:07it's actually gonna help puree it.
02:08And then if you have excess oil left in your dish here,
02:11you can use this for another purpose,
02:13you can use it for marinades, dressings,
02:15basically you've just infused the oil here
02:17with that garlic flavor.
02:18So there's a couple ways you can do this.
02:20You can take like a pastry scraper
02:22and push this through a fine mesh sieve,
02:24or you could put it in a blender.
02:26Just gonna go ahead and dump that in.
02:31So I pureed this now to like a pudding-like texture.
02:35You can see it's a nice golden brown.
02:37This is a time-consuming project,
02:39but you can make a big batch of it
02:41and you can store it in the freezer,
02:42you can use it for other recipes.
02:44It's really well worth it.
02:45Now I'm gonna move on to some of my other steps
02:48to put together the meatballs.
02:49I'm gonna start with some onions.
02:51We're gonna puree them,
02:52and then we're gonna wring them out
02:54to remove any excess liquid.
02:55If I didn't wring them out,
02:57that might yield a very mushy meatball.
02:59One of the important things about a good meatball
03:01is a texture.
03:03You want it to be like tender,
03:04but you don't want it to be mushy.
03:07So these are just Spanish onions.
03:09This is like a mild sweet onion.
03:11With anything that you're putting in a food processor,
03:13you just want to chop it coarsely
03:15just to kind of get it going.
03:16I'm trying to puree these as finely as possible.
03:19I kind of want them to just melt into my meatball,
03:22and then I'm gonna go ahead and wring these out
03:24just using a clean towel.
03:27So you can see there's a ton of liquid
03:29coming off of these things.
03:30As you can imagine, if all this moisture made its way
03:32into our meatball mix,
03:34it would yield a much different textured meatball in the end.
03:39Really put all your strength into it.
03:41There you go.
03:42This isn't the most attractive thing.
03:43So you can see the onions are like basically dry.
03:46So now I'm gonna basically
03:49take the inside of a loaf of bread.
03:51So this is like an Italian-style crusty loaf of bread.
03:55In the restaurant, what we do is we use the inside of the bread
03:59for our meatball recipe,
04:00and then we kind of chop up the outer crust,
04:03and we dehydrate that,
04:04and we make that into toasted breadcrumbs
04:06that we put on top of our pasta.
04:08So if you want to be an overachiever,
04:09that's another thing you could do here.
04:11In this case, I'm just using the inside.
04:13Oftentimes people will use breadcrumbs
04:15in their meatball recipe.
04:16We choose to use this technique
04:18because we feel like it yields a more tender result.
04:21Breadcrumbs is going to make your meatball dense, ultimately.
04:24So the fancy term for what I'm doing here,
04:26this is called a panade.
04:28It's when you take bread and soak it with milk.
04:31I have like two and a half cups of bread here.
04:34I'm adding like a cup of milk.
04:35It's going to add some richness that you wouldn't get from just regular breadcrumbs as well.
04:39I'm just going to gently turn that over and make sure these are all coated really well.
04:43I'm going to let this bread soak for about 15 minutes.
04:45While that's happening,
04:47I'm going to go ahead and start mixing together my other ingredients.
04:49People use all different types of combinations of meat for their meatballs.
04:54Honestly, much like pasta, I appreciate any type of meatball.
04:57Like I never met a meatball I didn't like really,
04:59but I think the best combination here is 50% veal, 50% beef.
05:04In all beef meatball, I think the beef flavor can like overpower everything.
05:07The veal is going to add like a little bit more of a delicate texture as well as a delicate
05:12flavor.
05:13So it just kind of balances out the overall end result.
05:15So I'm going to go ahead and start mixing these things together.
05:18I have my onions here.
05:20I'm going to add in my veal as well as the beef.
05:23We're also going to use a couple of eggs.
05:25This is going to be a binder.
05:27It's also going to add some richness to your overall flavor profile.
05:31We have two types of cheese here.
05:33We have Pecorino Toscano.
05:34A lot of Italian Americans are big on Pecorino cheese, specifically Pecorino Romano.
05:39I like to use Pecorino Toscano because I feel like it has a little bit more depth of flavor.
05:43It's not as salty and it's a little tangy as well.
05:46The other type of cheese we're using here is Parmigiano Reggiano.
05:50I have some fresh parsley here.
05:51I'm removing all the stems and I'm just going to use the leaves.
05:55So this is just going to be like roughly chopped.
05:57I'm going to add the parsley.
05:58So now it's time to wring out this panade to ensure that our meatballs are not mushy.
06:04The bread is moist, but it's not soaking wet.
06:07I'm going to go ahead and add this to my meatball mix.
06:10And finally, I'm adding the roasted garlic puree.
06:12And as with anything else, you want to make sure that you're seasoning your mixture
06:16with a generous amount of salt and pepper.
06:18Freshly cracked pepper is the best.
06:21And now I'm going to just gently mix these ingredients together, kind of breaking it up
06:26a little bit with my hands as I go.
06:28The goal here is to do as little mixing as possible just to make sure all these ingredients
06:34are combined.
06:35If you over mix, you're going to end up with a tough meatball.
06:38It's okay if you have some little pockets of like a little of the bread and cheese.
06:42So my meatball mix is really light and airy.
06:45So now I can form the meatballs.
06:46I'm just going to add a little layer of oil to make sure they don't stick.
06:51I highly recommend using like a release scoop, like an ice cream scoop.
06:54First off, it's just more efficient.
06:56You're going to move along much faster.
06:58Second off, it's going to ensure that all of your meatballs are the exact same size.
07:02So therefore they will cook evenly.
07:04It's more efficient actually first to just kind of scoop them out.
07:07And then you can go back and form them.
07:09I'm spacing them out a bit just so when they bake in the oven, there's going to be more
07:12surface area available for browning.
07:14If you have time to pop the meatball mixture in the refrigerator before you form your meatballs,
07:19that's ideal.
07:20Just the colder it is, the easier it's going to be to form like a nice sphere shape and
07:25they'll hold their shape better when they bake.
07:28I'm just gently forming these into like little balls and they're kind of rustic.
07:32I don't want to overly manipulate these because I want them to stay nice and light in texture.
07:38This meatball recipe is very special to me.
07:40My husband and I developed it.
07:42It's basically an amalgamation of both of our grandma's recipes combined.
07:46For like a rustic spaghetti and meatballs dish, I think a size like this works best.
07:51It's going to taste like meaty and hearty and substantial, which I think is an important
07:54part of the Italian American dish that is spaghetti and meatballs.
07:58I'm ready to put these in the oven.
08:00I have my oven preheated to 425 degrees.
08:03If I want to cook these entirely, I'll leave them in there for closer to 15 minutes.
08:08For the sake of this recipe, I might go a little less, maybe 12 or 13 minutes, just to slightly
08:14under bake them so that when they simmer in the sauce, they can kind of finish baking and
08:18kind of take in a little bit of that tomato flavor.
08:23I'm going to go ahead and make what we call our 10-minute San Marzano tomato sauce.
08:28It's a very quick and easy recipe.
08:30We intentionally like barely cook the tomatoes.
08:33We love to use San Marzano DOP tomatoes specifically.
08:37They're grown in San Marzano in this tiny little area that's at the base of Mount Vesuvius.
08:44And the way that the soil is there, it's like a combination of the sand from the neighboring
08:49sea and like the volcanic ash, whatever.
08:52Supposedly it creates the best conditions for growing tomatoes.
08:55I'm sold on it.
08:57We've done a ton of blind taste tests and we feel like these are just like so superior to
09:01other tomatoes.
09:01But these always will come whole and you can process them in a food processor.
09:06That's a quick and easy way to break them up.
09:08Or you can break them by hand in sort of a more rustic way.
09:12So I'm just going to carefully dump these in.
09:14This is the telltale sign of the San Marzano style tomato.
09:17It's got this little like, I don't know, someone referred to it as a nipple one time
09:21and I like almost said that.
09:22I'm like, I can't say that.
09:23So I'm just going to pulse these.
09:27So we just want kind of this slightly chunky consistency.
09:30It's not like a perfect puree.
09:32And the reason that we keep this sauce like fairly simple is because we're just really
09:36trying to highlight the quality of these tomatoes.
09:39So now I'm going to go ahead and prepare some garlic.
09:42I'm just looking for like eight cloves.
09:43And I'm just going to gently smash them while they're in their like jackets here.
09:47This will kind of protect them as they cook.
09:49We're not looking to add a lot of heavy garlic flavor here.
09:52We're not adding chopped garlic.
09:53And after we let it simmer briefly, we're going to actually remove that from the final result.
09:57So these are all set.
09:58And I'm going to go ahead and move over to the stove.
10:02So now I'm ready to cook my sauce.
10:04I just need like a heavy bottom sauce pot here or a Dutch oven.
10:08I've heated up my oil.
10:09I just added in my garlic.
10:11I'm letting that kind of fry gently in there.
10:13I add a little salt now just to kind of help draw the moisture out of the garlic.
10:17It kind of helps the garlic cook a little faster.
10:19And then I'm going to add in a little bit of crushed red pepper for a little tiny bit of
10:23gentle heat.
10:24Let that fry just very briefly.
10:26And now I'm going to carefully add my tomato puree.
10:29So there's all different styles of tomato sauce.
10:33People have the misconception that tomatoes should always cook for hours on end.
10:37There is a time and a place for that.
10:38I think like a Sunday style gravy where you're like simmering a bunch of meat in there.
10:42Like that makes sense.
10:43But in the case of this sauce, we want to preserve the freshness of the tomato flavor.
10:47So I already brought it up to a simmer.
10:49I turned it off, cut off the heat.
10:51And now I'm just going to add in some basil while it's still hot and let that just kind of
10:56steep in there.
10:57This basil is just going to add this really lovely aroma.
11:02The tomatoes are natural products that are always going to kind of vary in terms of their natural salinity, their
11:08natural acidity.
11:09For that reason, I always taste and adjust.
11:11So I'm going to add a little bit of salt here as well, just like a tiny bit of sugar.
11:16The sugar is just kind of balancing out the acidity of the tomatoes.
11:20I think home cooks are often afraid to over season things and I get it.
11:24Obviously, it's like better to kind of start with less.
11:27You can always add more.
11:29You can't take it away.
11:30I get that philosophy.
11:31But in time, tasting things, kind of tasting the difference between what one bite with this much salt versus the
11:37second bite with a little more salt means.
11:39And kind of training your palate is helpful.
11:41Because at the end of the day, sometimes like things take more salt than you would imagine.
11:45Especially something that's like inherently savory, like tomato, you just tend to take more salt to be at that peak
11:51seasoning level, in my opinion.
11:53So we let this kind of steep 10-15 minutes.
11:56I'm going to go ahead and remove the basil, the chunks of garlic.
12:01They've kind of done their job here.
12:02So our tomato sauce is ready to go.
12:04These meatballs are ready.
12:06We have a little bit of a golden crust here and they're almost fully cooked.
12:10They're very kind of delicate.
12:12So I'm just going to gently drop them into my sauce.
12:15These are beautiful though.
12:16They're nice and rustic.
12:17Also got some nice like caramelization on the bottom there too, which is really nice.
12:20I'm going to bring this up just to like a gentle simmer and make sure this sauce is nice and
12:25hot.
12:25These are going to finish cooking in the sauce.
12:27Kind of drink in a little bit of that tomato flavor there.
12:30They're going to be great.
12:35So we already have prepared our meatballs and our sauce.
12:38We made a very like simple pared down version of tomato sauce.
12:42If you want to like go crazy and take it to the next level, kind of like restaurant quality,
12:47I add a little more shallot and garlic, but in a different format.
12:51I'm going to go ahead and grate some garlic on a microplane.
12:54So this is a microplane.
12:56It's kind of the equivalent of using like a garlic press,
12:58but you're not crushing and destroying the garlic so much when you do it.
13:01You're basically just finely shaving these little like strands of garlic.
13:05Some shallot. You don't have to do all this extra stuff, but it adds just some complexity and depth.
13:11I'm also going to prepare a little bit of basil.
13:15So we're making spaghetti and meatballs today, but technically we're using spaghettini,
13:19which is a slightly skinnier version of spaghetti.
13:22It just feels like a little more refined.
13:24When it comes to dried pasta, I highly recommend buying an Italian made product.
13:29These are companies that have been making dried pasta for hundreds of years,
13:32using really high quality grains from Italy.
13:35And I think it really makes a big difference.
13:37This is like extruded through a bronze dye.
13:39So you can tell it kind of has that rough texture on the outside.
13:42And that is going to help the sauce cling to the noodles when it's all done.
13:47One important note about cooking pasta is that you really want to use a generous amount of salt in the
13:53water.
13:53Any of these extruded dried pastas you're going to buy, they're not seasoned with salt.
13:57So you basically want to impart seasoning from your pasta water.
14:01If you don't do that, you're just going to end up with an under seasoned dish at the end there.
14:06You want to ensure that your pasta water is at a rolling boil before you add the pasta.
14:10If it's not, the minute you add it, you're adding something that's basically cold.
14:14It's going to drop the temperature.
14:15It's going to take that much longer for you to get back up to a boil.
14:18That could yield like a very gummy end result.
14:21The last thing is you want to make sure you have a lot of water for the pasta to swim
14:25in,
14:25so it can move around freely.
14:27If you don't, you can end up with your pasta sticking together.
14:30So while the pasta is boiling, I'm going to go ahead and start my pan sauce.
14:34I'm adding some olive oil.
14:36I can tell that my olive oil is kind of heating up just by the way it's moving in the
14:40pan.
14:40I'm going to go ahead and add some shallots.
14:43I'm going to add a little bit of salt.
14:45Again, this is going to start drawing some moisture out of my shallots
14:50and ensure that they cook a little more evenly.
14:52I'm just going to add a little pepper.
14:55These shallots are almost cooked all the way.
14:57I'm going to go ahead and add my grated garlic.
15:00So this garlic is grated so finely that it's going to basically just kind of melt.
15:05It cooks very quickly.
15:06It's ready to go.
15:07And now I'm going to just go ahead and add in my tomato sauce.
15:11So I'm just kind of shaking the pan to mix everything together.
15:14At this point, my spaghetti should be cooked.
15:17I cooked the pasta to like al dente.
15:19I mean, you're kind of best off sort of following the instructions on the box.
15:23So the spaghettini is going to cook a little faster than spaghetti just because it's thinner.
15:28I kind of tossed it in the sauce here.
15:30At this point, if you so choose, this is not the most Italian ingredient, but
15:33you can add a little butter just to kind of add a little creaminess.
15:38It's going to help emulsify the sauce to help it coat the pasta really nicely,
15:41as well as a little bit of cheese.
15:43And then finally, some basil.
15:44I'm really flipping this pasta around a lot, but you can achieve the same thing
15:48if you just vigorously mix.
15:50With a wooden spoon, you could do it with a pair of tweezers like these.
15:53You're basically just trying to ensure that your butter and cheese are kind of melted in there.
15:58And then we're good to go.
16:01You can see that the sauce is really clinging to the spaghetti.
16:04Now we're ready to add this to our plate and top it with some meatballs.
16:12I'm just going to kind of twirl these with my tongs here.
16:14You don't have to do it, but I think it makes for a nice, polished, finished result.
16:18And then I'm just going to go ahead and add my meatballs on top.
16:22You know, I'm a more is more kind of gal here.
16:24Maybe we'll do like three.
16:26Add a little more cheese because why not?
16:28Love cheese.
16:29I like to use a microplane again for grating cheese.
16:31It's just like a very delicate dusting and it's going to kind of melt into the pasta there.
16:35And then just a little more cracked pepper.
16:38And that's it.
16:39We have spaghetti with meatballs.
16:40I think to get a perfect bite, you got to get a little bit of everything here.
16:45Yeah, it's perfect.
16:46The tomatoes are really bright and acidic, but then you kind of have the contrast of rich meatballs.
16:51But they complement each other perfectly.
16:53The meatballs are so delicate and they kind of just gently fall apart right into the rest of the dish.
16:58The sauce is clinging perfectly to every bite of this pasta.
17:02I just love this pasta shape.
17:03The texture is like really fun and it just like works really well with the rest of the dish.
17:09This is inherently a simple dish, but the way that we've executed it,
17:13we've just added layers of flavor and complexity that just yielded this very refined end result.
17:18I really encourage you to take the extra time and effort,
17:21as well as to seek out some of these high quality Italian ingredients.
17:25All of that, I think, humilatively is going to yield the best result.
17:29And I think it's really well worth it to create the best version of spaghetti and meatballs.
17:33I think that's actually something that would actually be made of escri Bunler mr CC.
17:33incorporation of spaghetti and meatballs and meatballs.
17:38This is a pre-안� anci summoning exercise based in Chief Ali Boxman.
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