Pool Room Spaghetti Bake

The F&D board had a thread a few weeks ago about hot dog chili sauce. I associate chili dogs with Pool Rooms since that's where the best ones were served where I grew up... thus the name of this dish.

In that thread, Treacherous Cretin suggested covering spaghetti with the chili in place of Italian style red sauce. That seemed like a fine idea, so that was the inspiration.

I decided to turn it into a baked spaghetti dish because who doesn't like baked gooey cheese and pasta?

First, make a Double Batch of chili.

Mash for Recipe

Boil a 1 pound package of spaghetti, but reduce the boiling time by a minute or two since the noodles will be baked later. (I ended up not using the full package, but I probably used 80% of it.)

Drain pasta (save some pasta water for later) and mix/toss the noodles with a ladle of the chili, 1 cup of ricotta cheese, 1 egg and 3 tablespoons of melted butter. (I used 4 egg yolks instead of a whole egg because my wife had separated some for baking that she was doing.)

It's easier if you let the ricotta come to room temp and mix it with the butter and egg before you toss it into the spaghetti.

Spread some chili in the bottom of your baking dish.

Add spaghetti mixture on top of the chili base.

Add some pasta water (I'm guessing 1/3 cup) to the bowl that you mixed the cheese in and mix and scrape any leftover ricotta into the pasta water.

Sprinkle that water over the pasta so that the noodles don't dry out during baking.

Top with the remaining chili and then top that with shredded cheddar cheese. (Sorry... failed to take a pic with the cheese.)

Cover baking dish with foil and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Remove foil and continue baking until the cheese is browned - about 10 more minutes.

As a nod to its Chili Dog origins, serve topped with raw chopped white onions and jalapeños.

I thought it was very good the day I made it, but the leftovers kept getting better and better over the next few days. When I do it again, I'll make it a day or two in advance.

Next time I'll also add more whole garlic cloves to the chili because they were amazing little bites baked along with the chili and cheese.

This post was edited on 11/15/22 at 10:03 am