Homemade SpaghettiOs

I admit I love the taste of SpaghettiOs. The sweet sugary sauce, those mini noodles... but I know it's full of crap. The sugar, the sodium, the preservatives. When I stumbled across a homemade recipe on Pinterest, I knew I had to try it. I originally made these about a year ago, but never blogged about it. (That I can find.) 

The great thing about these is you can control everything that goes into them. If you need gluten free pasta, or want to use a whole grain. You can use skim milk or low fat cheese, and can make it as spicy as you want! I added meatballs this time. It's also a fairly quick recipe, taking about 20-25 minutes from start to finish. 

This recipe is very forgiving too. You can add extra milk (on accident or on purpose), you could use a different small noodle, add more cheese, less cheese, more butter, no pepper, extra pepper, ect. Whatever you think will work. 

Homemade SpaghettiO’s

Ingredients

• 8 oz ditalini pasta (or other small pasta)
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, pressed
• Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
• 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 cup water
• 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Cook the pasta, to al dente (about 10 minutes).
2. Heat the olive oil in a  large saute' pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until just fragrant, about 30 seconds. 
3. Stir in the tomato sauce, water, tomato paste, salt, pepper, sugar and butter. Heat, while stirring, until the butter is melted. 
4. Slowly stir in the milk, then turn the heat to low. Simmer at low heat for 10 minutes.
5. Stir the shredded cheese into the soup until melted. 
6. Drain the pasta and add it to the soup. OR, you can transfer it to a serving bowl and add the "soup" to the pasta. Stir to combine. 

Notes:

I added meatballs to mine. The Sam's Club meatballs are delicious and I had some leftover and needed to use them up. 

I messed up and added 1 cup of milk instead of 1/4 cup. My finished product is a little runny, but the meatballs helped absorb some of that extra fluid. 

I added 3 pinches of red pepper flakes to make it a little more spicy. It goes a long way so don't add too much!
I had leftover crushed tomatoes in my fridge to use up, so I used that instead of Tomato Sauce. Not really a huge difference.
This freezes well. You can make a double batch and freeze for later.