People On TikTok Are Just Now Discovering "Million Dollar Spaghetti," So I Tried It And It's Definitely Earned A Spot In My Pasta Rotation
Hi! I'm Shelby and I really like trying out different pasta dishes. It's a hobby of mine.
Here's me trying a viral cacio e pepe recipe and thoroughly enjoying it.
Luckily for me, TikTok is a treasure trove of noodle concoctions. And not too long ago, I started seeing a ton of people trying out something called "TikTok Spaghetti," which looks like a delicious, baked combo between spaghetti with meat sauce and fettuccine Alfredo. Needless to say, I was intrigued.
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♬ original sound - thee Purple Room
And while perusing the different videos, I noticed an interesting comment:
Hmmm...
I decided to dig a little deeper into this spaghetti mystery, so I did a quick Google of "Million Dollar Spaghetti," and sure enough, there were a ton of results. Most were from this past year, but the oldest recipe I could find was this one from 2017, from the food blog Spend with Pennies.
There are a few differences between the OG recipe and the recipes that have been going around TikTok. For example, the Spend with Pennies recipe calls for cottage cheese, cream cheese, and sour cream to make the white sauce, while those on TikTok seem to prefer a traditional Alfredo sauce (butter, cream, and parmesan cheese). I decided to stick to the TikTok version since that's what's been going viral, but it was interesting to see how the recipe has evolved over the years!
Here's everything I needed for the dish. In total, the ingredients cost me around $32.
Note: every TikTok I saw called for a pound of ground beef, but I opted for ground Impossible Meat instead, so it's pretty easy to make this recipe vegetarian-friendly if you'd like to!
In terms of actually making the spaghetti, I decided to follow the steps outlined in this TikTok, but there are tons of others that pretty much follow the exact same process. Now, onto the journey!
First, I prepped the ingredients by chopping up the onion and green bell pepper, and shredding two cups of fresh parmesan cheese.
You totally can use pre-shredded or pre-grated parmesan cheese if you want. I just wanted to be ~fancy.~
Next, it was time to prepare the first of the two sauces: the red sauce. After heating up some olive oil in a pan, I threw in the Impossible Meat, onion, and pepper. From there I broke up the Impossible Meat with a spoon and sautéed everything until the meat was browned and the veggies were soft.
The TikToks claim you can season with whatever you want, so I opted for garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning. I eyeballed everything and then mixed it together to let it sauté a little longer.
Something that I really appreciate about this recipe is that you can use jarred red sauce to save a little time. I was thanking the cooking gods as I emptied the jar over my meat/veggie mixture.
While I let my red sauce simmer, I put a pound of spaghetti noodles into some boiling water and then turned my attention to the Alfredo sauce.
The Alfredo sauce was also pretty easy and straightforward! All I had to do was combine a stick of butter, two cups of heavy cream, and some minced garlic in a pan, and stir until everything was melted and combined.
Then I added the shredded parmesan cheese, stirred again, and seasoned with salt and pepper.
Upon tasting the Alfredo sauce, I thought it was pretty plain, so I added even more parmesan cheese (LOL).
Something I'll say about this recipe is that it does involve a bit of multitasking. I was using three of my four burners at once and had to keep track of the timing for the pasta and both sauces, but thankfully I managed not to burn or overcook anything!
Once the Alfredo sauce had simmered and thickened to my liking, I threw in my pasta and tossed until it was nice and coated.
After that, it was time for the baking portion. I laid out the noodles in my trusty Pyrex and poured the red sauce over the top.
Lovely.
The final step before popping it in the oven was a layer of mozzarella cheese on top.
And with that, I stuck it in my (preheated) oven to bake at 350ºF for 15–20 minutes. After 17 minutes of waiting, I noticed that the mozzarella cheese wasn't bubbling how I hoped it would, so switched to broil for another five minutes.
When I took it out of the oven, this is what it looked like:
And it was BUBBLING. I was ready.
As I scooped the noodles onto my plate, it was truly a thing of beauty.
After letting it cool a bit, I put on my spaghetti sweatshirt for the occasion and dug right in.
First impression: very tasty and VERY decadent. It was super creamy and ultra Alfredo-forward, so I think in the future I would probably add more red sauce to get a little more tomato flavor. Nevertheless, I was feeling it.
I normally don't like bell peppers in my pasta dishes, but this time I LOVED the addition of green bell pepper. It cut right through the creaminess and added a lil' something beyond the meat and cheese flavors that kept me coming back for another bite.
However, I did think the dish was missing a bit of a "WOW" factor. But that might've had something to do with how I seasoned it. On another try, I'd love to throw in some sun-dried tomatoes and red pepper flakes on top of the seasonings I chose. I think that would really put it over the top.
But with all that being said, I was a member of the "clean plate club" within seconds and immediately went back for another serving, so I'm still giving this an 8 out of 10!
