If You Like SpaghettiOs, You’ll Love This DIY Version

Give the childhood classic a makeover with ring-shaped anelletti pasta and a simple, sweet tomato sauce.

Serves
4
Time
40 minutes

PHOTO: HEAMI LEE • FOOD STYLING: JESSIE YUCHEN

Updated on October 11, 2024

People sometimes ask me what my guilty pleasure is. Well, I have quite a few, and I really don’t feel terribly guilty about any of them, except for this one: my love for SpaghettiOs.

It started at my babysitter’s house when I was around 3 or 4 years old. She would make simple things—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, turkey sandwiches (which I was also obsessed with)—but the one thing that I really loved? SpaghettiOs.

My parents never bought stuff like that for us. Don’t get me wrong, we still ate our fair share of processed foods growing up, but maybe it was the fact that my mom is Italian, she just didn’t see the merit in spaghetti in a can. I did. Actually, I hated “real” spaghetti; it was too long, and I was terrible at twirling. It was embarrassing to eat it around people because I usually ended up with most of it on my face, chin, and shirt. (I swear, you can’t take me anywhere.)

But those little Os! What a delight. I could fit loads of those little overcooked shapes onto my spoon, cradled in a bed of slightly sweet sauce. And the meatballs! They were so little and perfectly bite-size. What’s not to love about them? My obsession never really left, so I decided to develop a real life, grown-up, homemade version.

It begins with the Os, which are actually the easy part. Look for ring-shaped anelletti pasta that you can boil to make your very own SpaghettiOs. You can overcook them like the canned kind if you want, or boil them al dente for something a little more texturally interesting.

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The sauce is trickier—homemade sauces don’t usually have that sweet, tomato paste-y consistency that the canned stuff has. So to start, I make a sauce with a good amount of tomato paste and add subtle sweetness with onion cooked down in butter. But I finish it with some parmesan because I’m an adult now. Sort of.

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Ingredients

8 Tbsp. unsalted butter, divided
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
One 24-oz. can tomato purée
3 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. kosher salt, plus more
Freshly ground black pepper
¾ lb. ground beef
¾ lb. anelletti pasta
¾ cup finely grated parmesan, plus more for serving

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Instructions

Step 1

In a medium pot over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter. When the foam subsides, add the garlic and onion and cook until soft, 3–4 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes more. Add the tomato purée, sugar, the remaining butter, and ¼ cup of water, season to taste with salt and black pepper, and cook until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes.

Step 2

Meanwhile, make the meatballs: In a large bowl, stir together the beef and 2 teaspoons of salt. Roll the mixture into ¾-inch balls.

Step 3

Add the meatballs to the sauce, turn the heat to medium, and cook until the meatballs are cooked through, 6–8 minutes.

Step 4

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions until al dente. Drain, then add to the sauce along with the parmesan. Divide among bowls and serve with more parmesan.