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 I originally made these about a year ago, but never blogged about it.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.
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
- Cook the pasta, to al dente (about 10 minutes).
- 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.
- Stir in the tomato sauce, water, tomato paste, salt, pepper, sugar and butter. Heat, while stirring, until the butter is melted.
- Slowly stir in the milk, then turn the heat to low. Simmer at low heat for 10 minutes.
- Stir the shredded cheese into the soup until melted.
- 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.
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.
Totally making this! Thanks for posting the recipe! :)
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