So you’ve made a huge batch of chili, but now you’re scratching your head how to use it. You’re tired of eating it with crackers. You’ve already had it crumbled over cornbread and cheese. You’ve even made a chili cheese baked potato.There is still chili. It’s like loaves and fishes in your fridge.
But have you tried chili spaghetti?
Now some of you are like “sure, sounds great!” And others think I’ve officially lost my mind. (I have but that was decades ago.) But just in case you’ve never had anything on your spaghetti but a tomato sauce, I’m about to introduce you to ♪ a whole new world…♫. Admit it, you just sang that.
The best part of making chili spaghetti is that you can customize it to your liking. Not a fan of diced onion? Leave it off. Prefer green onions instead? Use ‘em! Feel like being extravagant with the cheese load on top? Go for it.
So this particular version has you cooking the noodles in the chili. That’s a completely valid method, provided if your chili is soup-like. If you have a thicker version, you can just install it on top of a pile of noodles and do the fork spin of noodles to combine and coat. It’s your food, eat it how you like it.
Chili Spaghetti
Course: MainCuisine: HomestyleDifficulty: Easy4
servings5
minutes10
minutesIngredients
6-8 cups of your favorite soup-like chili
8 ounces dry spaghetti noodles
1/2 onion, diced small (more if you like it!)
2-4 ounces of shredded cheese
Directions
- Bring chili to a boil in a large pot.
- Add spaghetti to chili pot. Make sure it’s fully submerged in the chili. If not, you might need to snap the noodles in half to fit, or add more Hot water to the pot.
- Reduce heat to medium-high and boil for 8 to 10 minutes, or until noodles reach your desired level of doneness. Stir regularly to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot.
- Top each serving with shredded cheese and diced onion. Then enjoy!
A Few Notes:
- If you have thick chili, you can cook your spaghetti according to package directions and simply top with your chili after heating it.
- If you’re coming here from the Emergency Dollar Tree meal plan, your box of spaghetti will be 20 ounces instead of 16. So half the box would be 10 ounces of pasta instead of 8.
- As stated above, if you like extra cheese, or onions, toss those on top when serving. Sour cream can also prove an interesting garnish if you prefer.
- The primary thing to watch when cooking your pasta in the chili, is ensuring that you have enough liquid in the pot to fully cook the noodles without it running dry.
- The picture above does show the pile of chili on top because nothing I could do would make the picture of the pasta look like anything more than a huge blob of brown. It’s tasty. But not particularly photogenic.
