(not your) Mom’s Spaghetti (sandwich)
The Wikipedia page on Spaghetti Sandwiches doesn’t give a whole lot of guidelines. That is to say, it is not very specific on what constitutes a spaghetti sandwich, other than that it contains 1) spaghetti, and 2) bread.
Cooked spaghetti with sauce and bread are used to prepare the spaghetti sandwich. It is sometimes prepared using leftover spaghetti, and the spaghetti can be chopped or left whole. Butter or margarine is sometimes used as an ingredient, spread on the bread. A bread roll, sliced bread and garlic bread can be used to prepare the sandwich. Additional ingredients used in its preparation can include cheeses such as grated parmesan cheese and spices such as garlic powder and oregano. It can be served cold or hot, and can be cooked using a sandwich maker.
Spaghetti Sandwich – Wikipedia
That said, it identifies 3 main sources of the spaghetti sandwich
Japan
Look, this is essentially Yakisoba-pan, right? We’re covering that next year. Let’s avoid spoilers, eh?
Australia
Apparently, the spaghetti jaffle is a big thing in Australia. Jaffles, as we’ve discussed previously, are enclosed sandwiches cooked in an iron that seals the edges, severing the crusts, toasting the outer shell, and rendering the insides volcanically hot. They are apparently called “pudgy pies” here in the US, though I’ve never personally heard anyone say that.
Customarily, they are prepared using tinned spaghetti. No thanks. Sorry, my antipodean friends, I’d rather use leftover homemade spaghetti Bolognese, with some Parmesan and Romano cheeses to give it a little kick.
Spaghetti Bolognese jaffle with Parmesan and Romano Spaghetti Bolognese jaffle with Parmesan and Romano Spaghetti Bolognese jaffle with Parmesan and Romano Spaghetti Bolognese jaffle with Parmesan and Romano
So, it’s tasty, yeah? Jaffles are great, the crisp buttery outer crust, the hot melty interior. But this is a carb-on-carb thing, and Bolognese sauce, at least the meat-centric Bolognese sauce we make at home, isn’t a very strong flavor. A deep flavor, yes, quite savory, with a mild nutmeg aroma and an satisfying mineraly liver flavor underneath the other minced meats. But it lacks the intensity of a tomato-based sauce, whose acidity could could cut through the overwhelming carbiness of the sandwich. To be fair, though, I’m not sure that spaghetti-in-a-can would qualify either.
United States
This should be a gimme. I mean, I live here, this is my home turf, finding the American Spaghetti Sandwich should be the easiest thing in the world. However, I can’t say that I’ve ever encountered one in the wild. The Wikipedia article mentions one that was served at Twins games back in 2013, and a kind of spaghetti patty made at an undisclosed restaurant in NYC, but those are the sole American examples it cites.
I scoured the menus of restaurants in Chicagoland and only found one example, a defunct soul food restaurant in far north Rogers Park called Ms. Vett’s Way. Mindy had a little more luck, finding some older mentions of spaghetti sandwiches from a takeout pizza place on Harlem called Sorrento’s. We stopped by after work one day only to find that they had discontinued the sandwich. They were nice enough to make me one anyway.
I’m not sure this is exactly what they served while it was still on the menu, but it consisted of cooked spaghetti with a brightly-flavored marinara sauce on a toasted French roll, with more marinara on the side for dipping. I appreciated them for helping me out, and I’d stop by again to try their pizza if I’m ever in the area, but I can’t say this sandwich was worth the trip.
As it happens, while I was researching spaghetti sandwiches, I came across this meme on Facebook. I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be hood. However, it occurred to me that this was exactly the type of spaghetti sandwich that simply would not end up on a menu–the sandwich of scarcity, which so often is the basis of these carb-on-carb sandwiches. Simple enough to make. Simply butter some bread, add some spaghetti, and fold over.
This wasn’t bad–the butter keeps the sauce from soaking into the bread too much, and the tomato-based sauce was assertive enough to be tasted amongst all the carbs. It even had a little protein, in the form of ground beef. Still, I took one bite and let the 12 year old finish it.
My Spaghetti Sandwich
See, I had a vision for a spaghetti sandwich. It didn’t necessarily fit in with those that had been described, but it certainly fit the looser parameters of the initial Wikipedia description–some kind of bread, with some kind of spaghetti and sauce. And I wanted to use meatballs. Why? Meatballs are good, that is why.
For the garlic bread, I used a simple “baguette” from my local grocery store’s bakery. It’s not the best baguette, but it’s soft on the inside and 5 minutes in an oven help crisp up the crust.
Sliced open, the crumb is not terribly impressive, but given the ingredients we will be putting in here, a softer crumb will allow the bread to compress around them, helping to hold them in place. I also left a “hinge” in place along one side of the bread. That’s going to help hold all that spaghetti in there.
I then spread the baguette with garlic butter–roughly equal amounts of butter and pureed garlic–and broiled it for a few minutes.
For the spaghetti, I used dried spaghetti, cooked al dente, mixed with just enough Rao’s Homemade Marinara sauce to coat it. OK, maybe a bit more than just enough, but not so much that it was sloppy.
Using tongs, I added what seemed like a reasonable amount of spaghetti to the garlic bread.
I then scattered grated Parmesan and Romano cheeses liberally over the top.
Finally, eight pan-fried (frozen, store-bought Italian) meatballs were placed along the length of the sandwich.
It was… ridiculous. Fantastic, gluttonous, sloppy, a serious violation of any known diet. I cut this sandwich in half and barely managed to finish that half. Mindy and our son took a few bites of the other half but the rest went to waste. The meatballs were not integrated well enough into the sandwich and had a tendency to go on walkabout. Any given bite ended up fairly evenly distributed between my mouth, my beard, my shirt, the table, and the floor around me.
It was sublime though. It was the best vision of a Spaghetti Sandwich that I could come up with. Perhaps if I were a genius entrepreneur, or cared more about keeping pasta sauce out of my beard, I could have come up with something like this guy did
But I’m not, and I don’t, and I didn’t, though I imagine if I ever end up in San Diego I’d at least give the place a shot.
Maybe not though. I’ve never been a big fan of stuffing carbs into more carbs. How about you? Do you eat spaghetti sandwiches? What is your ideal way of mixing noodles and bread?
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
We make spaghetti sandwiches pretty regularly – generally with leftover spaghetti from the night before lol.
Ours almost always get made in the sandwich maker, because who doesn’t like something like a cross between a hot pocket and a calzone? Sealing the edges like that also keeps it from making quite as much mess. I have a couple that experiment and have made theirs on the skillet – but we tend to like them at least toasted/grilled.
We like ours a bit saucier (maybe 1/2 & 1/2 sauce and noodles plus cheese) but then my sauce tends to be pretty thick anyway and full of meat and mushrooms so it’s not as runny as some could be. It could make a difference that I don’t mix sauce and noodles together generally speaking because I have kids who like just the noodles for their second plate sometimes – strange creatures, I know! – but because of that, they can make whatever ratio they like for a sandwich.
We have used spaghetti sauce with more cheese (and possibly other toppings) and no noodles at all and made a pizza style sandwich with it as well. Left-overs sandwiches for the win! 😀
I get it w/ the kids not wanting sauce–our 12yo does the same thing. Your spaghetti paninis sound pretty great Rosha, thanks!
I once spent the night in jail (long story) and we were served spaghetti and “meatballs” for dinner, as well as what initially seemed like an awful lot of white bread. I realized pretty quickly by watching my tablemates that the only plausible way to eat the very overcooked spaghetti with the plastic spork thing they gave us (the only utensil provided) was to make a sandwich out of it.
It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten – certainly better than the eggs in jail, anyway.