The BEST Spaghetti You'll Ever Make (The Southern Way)

📖 Get all 305 of Grandma's secrets here: https://earlenetatum.com Tuesday my grandson had a bowl of spaghetti in front of him and he was eating it with a spoon. The noodles were sitting there bare and white, the sauce was sitting up on top of them in a pile, and down in the bottom of the bowl there was a puddle of orange water. That is not the noodle's fault and it is not my daughter's fault. It is the jar. A jar of sauce was made to pour and to keep, and a noodle is a smooth thing that water will not hold onto. I have never opened a jar of spaghetti sauce in my life. This is the pot the way it sat on Callie Mae's stove every Friday in Leflore County, Mississippi, out of the tomatoes she put up every July: plain ground beef browned flat in a spoon of grease, one onion and one green pepper, two cans of whole tomatoes crushed in your hand, a can of paste and one spoon of sugar, a low fire and half a lid and two hours you leave it alone. And one thing she did at the very end that goes against every box of noodles you have ever read. She never owned a colander. You will see why. It is saved for the end. One pound of meat and two cans of tomatoes: Friday supper for six with bread on the side. Here is the afternoon, in order: 0:00 A bowl of spaghetti eaten with a spoon 2:33 The jar: what it was built to do, and what it does to a noodle 4:29 What a sauce needs: fat, tomato with the water cooked out, and time 6:21 The meat: the plainest package in the case, browned flat 8:21 July: the shelf under the stairs and canning week 10:31 The tomatoes: crushed in your hand, never the blender 12:40 The afternoon: low fire, half a lid, four stirs in two hours 14:24 Seasoning: five things you already own 15:57 How you know it is ready: the spoon, the color, the track 17:26 The three ways I have ruined this pot 19:16 The thing I kept back: the noodle and the colander 22:17 The table: white bread, and Saturday 23:21 The whole pot in one breath There is a new recipe here every single day. Come back and cook with me. Next time I am doing catfish. Not the kind that comes frozen in a bag. The way she fried it so the crust stayed on, and it was one thing in the cornmeal that did it.