Top chef reveals you should NEVER serve meatballs with spaghetti if you want to..

[Isleño]

well, I mean it's true that spaghetti and meatballs is not a thing in Italy, but in Puglia where I lived for a long time when I was young, we often eat polpette/meatballs with tomato sauce and pasta grossa. really not that different from american spaghetti and meatballs. But anyway I still find spaghetti and meatballs amazing, no matter what any of my Italian friends say. I mean there are areas in Italy, where pasta grossa is eaten with meatballs and tomato sauce, like in Puglia. I also know in Calabria (told me by a few friends from there) they do occasionally eat pasta with polpette and tomato sauce. But I think it was a local thing only of certain areas in the south, certainly not a common thing.

And no, i'm not tlaking about pastal al forno, but actual pasta with polpette and tomato sauce:



Or even just orecchiette con le polpette; in puglia we generally fry first the meatballs, then mix them with tomato sauce and use it on pasta; this is a typical and common dish in Puglia:






Is it really that different? For me not really.

ok, I see it's called maccheroni della sposa in Sicily and there is another version called pasta seduta and maccheroni azzesse in Abruzzo and Puglia. These are the dishes a Sicilian guy commented on a food blog that resemble American spaghetti and meatballs.

[Svipdag]

Yes I know but believe me it is t what they call Ragù here in the US.

this is what Americans think of when you say ragù. Non contiene carne di qualsiasi forma, e ti assicuro che fa schifo.

Unfortunately, I don't think that the real thing is to be had here in the US. If it is, I've never seen it.