NEVER Boil Your Spaghetti Again — Try This Old Italian Trick Instead

📖 A hundred recipes my mother never wrote down, finally measured for your kitchen: Link In Comments! Every night the same thing. Boil the water, cook the spaghetti, drain it, pour the sauce on top. It tastes fine. Now imagine spaghetti soaked with tomato and garlic all the way through, with crispy, dark, caramelized edges that crunch like the corner of a lasagna pan. Same box of pasta, same tomatoes, and it never goes near a pot of boiling water. In Bari they call it spaghetti all'assassina, the assassin's spaghetti, and a neighbor from Bari taught it to my mother Filomena on Eighteenth Avenue in Brooklyn more than forty years ago. In this one I count down the ten rules, and every one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. The right spaghetti, the right pan, the hot tomato broth, garlic and chili in cold oil, the jammy tomato base, dry pasta straight into the pan, one ladle at a time, tongs instead of a spoon, the dry pan at the end, and at number one, the moment that scares everybody and is the whole secret. I also settle whether burnt pasta is a mistake, and cheese or no cheese. One pan, no pot. Crispy, spicy, full of tomato. So tell me where you are cooking from, and settle it: cheese, or no cheese? 00:00 Spaghetti that never sees a pot 00:48 Who I am 02:13 What you need 02:52 Why it works 03:36 10. Thick spaghetti 04:13 9. A pan that can stick 04:51 8. The hot tomato broth 05:33 7. Garlic and chili in cold oil 06:16 6. The jammy tomato base 06:50 Halfway 07:14 5. Dry pasta straight in 07:49 4. One ladle at a time 08:35 3. Tongs, not a spoon 09:11 2. The dry pan at the end 09:53 1. Let it stick 11:06 Burnt or caramelized? Cheese or not? 11:47 Why nobody tells you this 12:16 One idea underneath all ten 12:50 Crispier the next day 13:29 Your job this week 13:55 Next time