Q&A for How to Make Spaghetti

Try adding less water that you usually use. You could start with half the amount and see if that helps. You can always add more if it becomes too thick.

At minimum, you’ll need spaghetti noodles, a big pot, some water, and a little salt. You’ll also need a topping for the noodles, which can be as simple as butter or olive oil. You can also buy pre-made sauce in jars for a quick and easy topping.

Try adding vegetables to the sauce to make it more nutritious and interesting. For example, you could cut up some mushrooms, zucchini, and eggplant, sauté them with garlic or onion in a little olive oil, then stir them into the sauce and let it simmer until the veggies are nice and tender. Throw in some browned meat or homemade meatballs too, if you like!

Add a splash of olive oil to the water while you’re cooking the noodles. The olive oil will coat the noodles and prevent them from sticking together after you strain them!

Garlic bread, meatballs, or you can have a salad (or whatever you like, really) on the side.

If you are using store-bought sauce and boxed noodles, probably around 25 minutes.

This depends on the size of the pot and how much spaghetti you are making. The pot should be about two-thirds of the way full.

Yes, if you like onion. Cut the onion into pieces and toss the pieces in with the sauce, either cooking until translucent with a little oil or butter, or just simmering in the sauce. Or, you can just warm the onion pieces and put them on the spaghetti when it's cooked.

Make sure to boil the pasta for the time specified on the package, no more. If no time is specified, then just boil and keep testing them until the center of the spaghetti is soft. Also, make sure you have enough water in the pot and keep stirring from time to time.

You should not do any serious cooking in a microwave. If you want to reheat spaghetti you've already made, a minute or so should be fine. If you don't have a stove, you can buy a small countertop range or something similar. Or buy a premade, microwaveable frozen spaghetti meal or canned spaghetti.

Until it starts to bubble and steam.

They add interesting ingredients to the sauces or put emphasis on toppings. They also might hand-make pasta.

A tomato-based sauce like marinara is common, although cream-based sauces such as alfredo are good, too.

You can check out our how-to on making meatballs .

It translates to "with a bite," so it is pasta that is boiled 20% less than it says on the package so that it is a bit crunchier to eat.

It depends on your preference and how much pasta you're making. If you're feeding a family or other small group, you can probably just use a whole jar.

If you're using a jar of sauce, you don't necessarily have to "cook" it, but if you don't warm it up, your spaghetti will be cold.

Cubed chicken breast should be added on top of the spaghetti once it's on a plate as they are both cooked independently.

It is not necessary to rinse the pasta after cooking it.

Sparkling water is good. You could also have juice that is not too sweet.

Preheat already-made sauce and boil the spaghetti using the soak method (put the raw spaghetti into a long metal container and put boiled water on it). The spaghetti will be good in 60 seconds.

You can use garlic and/or onion powder, basil, oregano, parsley, salt and pepper. Try different ways to see what you like.

Do 2 pounds of ground beef and 2 boxes of spaghetti noodles and it is fine but if you don't want leftovers do 1 and 1/2 boxes. That is enough for my family of five. It would be 1 box per pound.