Southern Spaghetti the Way We Grew Up Eating It

What's up, everybody? Hey, listen, I'm not finna over-talk it. I'mma just tell you this, if you wanna watch this video through its entirety, I'mma give up a couple of gems. You know, I'mma show you why this spaghetti here is gonna be better than even the last ones that I made. With that being said, let's get it. Okay, so look, just a quick fly over the ingredients. You see, I got some cans, you know, right here. Then right here, I got an assortment of, listen, these are the herbs. I got garlic clove, right? Now look, if you look back here, I got angel hair pasta, folks. That's what I like. You guys let me know down in the comment section below, do you guys do the thin spaghetti or do you just do the traditional kind? Then obviously you can see I got, you know, a bell pepper. And then when we get over here, when we look at our meats, listen, I got two pounds, right? 80-20 on my ground beef. And then I got a pound, which is a pound. And then I got a pound of my, you know, mild Italian sausage. To be honest with you, if you guys just go to my website, which is smokingandgrillingwithab.com, and that's W-I-T-A-B.com, you guys will find like some cool little tips that I write like in those articles. Like, you know, like here's one for you. Like I'm getting ready to boil, you know, and go ahead and get my pasta going, right? I got tips and tricks on that too. So if you guys want to infuse that with different type of, you know, flavors, I got four of them on there that'll give you, you know, just like the true level up. Okay, so my water's boiling. This is one of the ways we level up, right? So I'm gonna go ahead and take myself, just like a heaping tablespoon, right? Of this chicken bouillon. I don't know, some of you guys probably use this brand. What we doing is we cooking our pasta right to al dente. Now, when I say al dente, you guys got to read the instructions on the box for the old manufacturer, right? And that'll tell you whether it be eight minutes, some of you, 11 minutes, you know what I mean? So I'm gonna set mine like that, and then I'm finna drop this in here. I just need one pound. So we'll just put this in here like that, and we just leave it. Again, I want you guys to let me know, what type of pasta do you guys use? You know what I mean? I'm just curious. Remember, you want to do it with flavor. That's how you get that pasta right. All right, so then what you want to do is get yourself a colander. What you guys didn't see me just do is, I went ahead and put my Pyrex in here. I like to save a cup of my starchy water, right? So I'm getting ready to pour this out. You know, pour that in there. And what we want to do is stop, you know, cooking process, right? So cold water, and then I rinse. A lot of people I've seen on the internet, they say, hey, you washing all of the seasoning that you put in there? No, it doesn't. We got to stop it from cooking. Either we would have took this out way early, because it's going to continue to cook, or we could have just let this drip dry. But I like to do it this way. I don't see no, you know, no less of flavor. You know what I mean? It still tastes good. I can taste it in the pasta. So trust me, folks. And that's usually when I say, trust the process. Okay, so this is it right here. I just saved some of this. This plays a key, because if you cook down your sauce and it get a little bit too thick, we thin it with this, and this also helps, you know, the sauce, you know, coat your spaghetti sauce. Now, I'm going to ask a question, and you guys let me know this. We got a lot to talk about. This is the question for you. Do you guys put this pasta on your plate and then add your sauce to it, or do you like to put your pasta inside of your sauce? All right, let's move on. All right, I actually cut too close to it. You know what I mean? I can see seeds in there. You know, you can take this, put this in your garden, just cut that stem off. You know what I mean? Just stick it in there, bury it, water it, and then you'll start sprouting these. You know, bell peppers, enjoy it. Look, a lot of gems in this. All right, so what I'm going to do now is just cut these down. I don't want to call them slivers. I'll just cut these down into strips, right? I don't care. They don't have to be all uniform for me, because I'm going to dice these down to the size that I want to do. You know what I mean? So I used to say this. I'm getting ready to get back to it. Listen, when you dice, size makes a difference, right? So if you dice them small, that's a lot for the flavor. That helps everything, you know, like work yourself way. You know, work yourself down. It dissolves easier. You know, things of that nature. And then when you do it a little bit on the larger side, that'd be more so for like the texture. It depends on how you guys like it. I like to be able to taste it, have the texture. You know what I mean? But we're going to saute these anyway. We're going to get all of that flavor out of that. All right, so if you guys look, this is my hex clad frying pan. It's a little bit on the lower side, especially for the amount of spaghetti that I'm doing. But I just want you guys to be able to see everything clearly, right? So we using, you know, a mild Italian sausage, which has a lot of, you know, fat in there. But I still like to just put just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. And this is infused olive oil, folks. That's garlic infused. Since we're doing something a little bit on the, what does that be? A little bit on the Italian side, right? A little bit on there. If this ain't going to be true the way they make it. You know what I mean? I just make good food, folks. So let's go ahead and drop this in there. Peel this piece off the back, right? And then we do the same thing, you know, with my ground beef. In actuality, we'll just move that over here like this. This is 80-20. It's going to render a little bit of fat in there also. But this is the way I like to start this. And what we're going to do is we're going to brown that. Now, I'm looking right now, I have everything set up the way I want to, but I don't have my meat masher. That's going to be key, folks. All right, so this is a meat masher. What you want to do is get one of these. And now we start working this around, right? I do down and a little twist just to break up all of the ground meats. You know what I mean? And then we let them cook, let them blend together. And then the fat and the oil from each other, that's where we getting our flavor from, folks. So I'm going to keep doing this until I get it, all of the pieces, you know, like ground up even more. Then we just let them continue to cook. Now, I've got a medium flame underneath the bottom of here. You guys let me know what you guys use, but if you're asking me, especially if you're a beginner, I tell everybody low. Really, I would normally do this like on a medium high. You know what I mean? But just medium will get you where you need to be. You know what I mean? It's very forgiving. You know what I mean? It gives us time to, you know, achieve what we want to achieve. All right, you see where we at right here? I'm just about done with all of the pink. This would be a great time for us to go ahead and add, you know, our veggies to it. So let me grab these now, put those in there. Get some of these onions. May look like a lot folks, but listen, we want to extract all of that flavor out of there too. So follow the instructions that, you know, on the website, you know, with this recipe, and then you make your adjustments later. All right, so now what we're doing is infusing it with all of that goodness that was in the pot, especially from that Italian sausage. You can look at the white of the onion and look at it. You see how it's coated? Yes, sir. Even though I could put my veggies in here and I still get in here with my masher right here. Look, still break up the bigger chunks. Now everything groups together and cooks. We'll just do it like that. You can see it all coming together right now. Okay, so now I grab my press. Got my peeled garlic right here. Go ahead and put this over here on the top. Now we're going to come over this way and then we just put it. When you mince your garlic like this, or even when you're putting minced garlic in there, I like to put it on top of something, but since we got two pounds of ground meat in the inside, it's okay for it to be there. It allows me to continue to teach, you know, make these tutorials and not worry about it that I get my, you know, my minced garlic too hot and burn it, right? So get it like that. Get it on top. Now that it's all minced, put this over here. Now I'm going to take this, my spatula, and now we just move this around. You will know once that garlic hits any of that heat, you know what I mean? Because it'll kick back and let you know. It just says hello to everybody. Ooh, you can smell it right now, folks. I'm still working on it, y'all. Smell-O-Vision, it's coming. Okay, so at this point right here, this is when we add our herbs in, right? So this is right here where we're going to start infusing it with, you know, more of the, I guess this would be like when you put the herbs in there, especially like when you're using Italian seasoning, that combination of seasonings, that right there, start making it, you know, smell like something Italian and reminding you of, I'm going to say this, just reminding you of real spaghetti. Okay, so look at how you can see the green bell pepper. That's what I'm talking about. I see it sweating good. You know, they're getting soft. This is the way you want to do it, folks. Ground meat first, then add your, you know, your green. Now we come with our seasoning, right? Little chili flakes to give it just a little bit of, it's not even enough to, it's like a mild bite, like a nibble, right? A little balance right here with the sugar. Now we're going to give it a pinch of salt. We give it two pinches of salt, and that'll be enough, folks. Anybody want any more salt, they can, you know, handle it on their own in they bowl, right? And then right here, we get that fresh black, cracked black. Right, nothing like grinding your own. And then from here, we give it a mix. And you know what the next thing to do is to start, you know, putting our tomato ingredients in here, making that sauce, folks. But this is the great base. Even though we use 80-20, look at that down there. I don't see none, there's not enough in here for me to make me want to drain nothing. That's all of the flavor, folks. Oh yeah. Right, so now let me go ahead and clear my board, and we move on to the next. All right, so here's another little bit of a level up for you, right? You see right here, I got stewed tomatoes. When you go to the recipe, it's going to say tomato sauce. If you really want to like level it up, you can go ahead and get you some stewed tomatoes, put them in some type of a blender like what I'm doing right here, right? And then what we can do is we just go ahead and blend this, and this will take the place, which is a very, very flavorful option, taking the place of, you know, tomato sauce, right? But if you guys don't have one of these, you got tomato sauce, then use that. All right, so now I just, I don't know why I like to just keep stirring. You know what I mean? It just looks so good, and then the aromatic that come off of it, just the aroma. All right, so what you're going to do is you're going to pour this completely in there, right? So we just add that to it. I know it look like it's a little bit on the white side, but we just put a lot of air in there. You know what I mean? Just by, you know, emulsifying it or blending it. Whichever one you guys want to say. Then when it comes to the paste, I couldn't find a small one. You know what I mean? So this is 16 ounces, so I'm going to just put half of it in there. Oh, that's fine right there. Might be a little bit more than half, but that's good. It'll work. It will do. Now don't put this in your refrigerator if you ever get a big one. You know what I mean? I always got like small little Tupperwares. I take the remainder of this and put it in a Tupperware, right? Now for my diced tomatoes. I like for everything to be fire roasted. So we'll add that. I got a real level up. I've been quiet about it and all of that. Some of y'all might've seen it in the very beginning. You know what I mean? I got it over here heated and we're going to talk about it right now. All right. So now we just mix it all together. We got to get that tomato paste. It's got to get hot. Then it loosens up and then it just dissolves in the liquid, right? So I raised my fire up underneath the bottom over there. Now I'm on a medium high flame. Well, look at this here. We on our way folks. And by the way, I probably should have said something in the very beginning. Look how meaty this is. I love a meaty spaghetti. You guys let me know down in that comment section below. How do you like yours? I know a lot of people like it to be a little saucy, but I want to say that the majority of y'all like to have a little meat. All right. So this right here is my level up. This right here is some, this right here is a pepperoni, right? I'm going to go ahead and cut this down like this. Whew. Nice and thick. Look at that right there. You know, if you guys ever had a pepperoni, you know how flavorful that is, right? So look, I'm going to go ahead and just cut this down like this. Now I went to my local deli and got this, right? That's what you guys might have to do. I mean, I guess you could put pepperoni slices in here, but I like to do it this way. Now you see this right here? You see how that's all boiling and all of that? We nice and hot, right? We're going to stick this in here. We're going to let that get hot. We're going to let this release its flavor in here too. Now, after me telling you that and you seeing this, don't just make sense, right? We just infusing it with some flavor. Now this right here is a true level up, folks, right? So then we just cook this sauce for about, I don't know, I'm going to let it cook for at least 20 minutes, right? Look at that. Oh yeah. Actually, I think I'm going to add some more to it. I'm going to cut one more slice like I just did. You guys can eyeball it. Then when you taste it, you let me know, should I have put more in there or do you want to put more in yours or less? Or don't even put it at all. You know what I mean? But if you be making spaghetti the same way like everybody else been making it, you know what I mean? You want to put these, you know, chunks of this pepperoni in there. And then after this, this going to make you run back and say, AB, watch how many people on the internet are going to be doing this now. I've been issuing out things, you know, in small increments, but this one right here is going to be hard to top, folks. Woo, look at that right there. That's going to be the level up. Now I'm going to take my Parmesan and I'm just going to go ahead and shred this down. Remember folks, whenever you can, buy yourself the block of any type of cheese so you can avoid that little waxy film that they put on there and it helps it melt even better, folks. Okay, so it's been 20 minutes. I could have put a lid on the top of this. You know what I mean? So I don't get no evaporation, but you look at the thickness. This is what I meant earlier about saving. Let me bring this back into play. A little bit of that pasta water, right? This is going to help it, you know, loosen up just a little bit. So I'm going to add just a little bit of that to it. All right, look how loose that is now. All right. And I told you what it's going to do is it's going to help the pasta stick, you know, this sauce stick to it. Now I'm going to move the Parmesan that I, you know, shredded. You guys can shred with Parmesan. You can use cheddar, anything that you would like, right? So let me just go ahead and make sure this is still loose. Oh yeah. And this is how you feed an army for cheap folks. And it's good. All right, so we'll take this, bring this over here like this, add this in here, and then we just go to work. I'll tell you, I like my pasta, my spaghetti. I'm going to be honest with you. It does taste better the next day, but I'm going to also cook this on here so that it would, you know, adhere and help infuse in the pasta noodles also. You know what I mean? Angel hair, folks. That's the way to go. You guys let me know, angel hair, thin spaghetti, or regular. All right, and so there you can see it's nice and meaty, right? Look at that. Now I can tell you this, it's going to be much, much better tomorrow. There's something about when it gets a chance to like bloom, right? That's what we're going to call it. It just blooms together. You know what I mean? The pasta, the sauce, you know what I mean? Everything that we use to infuse our sauce to get it right. You can still see those bell peppers. You know what I mean? But I'm going to be honest with y'all. I'm going to be eating a bowl of this right now, folks. Let me go ahead and put it in there. All right, folks. So just like that, you know what I mean? We leveled it up. We did a few things. You guys have already known from prior videos. I talked about, you know, leveling up your pasta water by, you know, like infusing it with whatever flavor profile that you were looking for. We talked about that. And then we talked about today, about putting these chunks, that is, you know, pepperoni in here. Now listen, I'm going to go ahead and eat some of this right now. I'd have been eating it. I ain't going to lie to you. You know, it's chef's choice. I get a chance to eat it. This is a big fork spoon. I mean, a fork full. You know what I mean? But I'm going to go ahead and hit this, folks. Hey, with that being said, cheers, y'all. I can see it's still steaming. Now listen, I just told my camera person, hey, you ain't got to cut it. I shouldn't have been lazy. You know what I mean? Because I stuck the fork in there twirled it around and that's what everything that wound up on the fork. That was way too much, but you know, like one bite. But I'm going to say this, it was good, folks. Now let me know what else do you guys do? You know what I mean? Or, you know, that you think that we could have did to this to make this a little bit more, you know, like more flavorful. And again, I want to say this ain't authentic, but it's good, folks. Now, with that being said, talk to me down in that comment section below. Let me know what you would do. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and tell everybody out there. There's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. I'm thinking right now, if you want to know why I was moving my head like that, I'm thinking about what am I going to drink to wash this down? But whatever it is, I'm out y'all. Peace.