Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need various pots and pans to make decent spaghetti. You can make one pot spaghetti. In fact, some would argue it tastes even better than spaghetti made in two or three pots.
This is my recipe for Dutch oven spaghetti made outside with charcoal briquettes or wood charcoal. The reason you can make this with just a Dutch oven over a fire (or one pot on your stove) is because you cook the sauce first and then cook the spaghetti in the sauce. What’s great about this strategy is the spaghetti gets infused with the flavor of the sauce as it cooks.
Cooking Spaghetti with a Dutch Oven and Charcoal Briquettes
This dish was one of the first recipes I made in my outdoor cooking fire pit.
This is a great family recipe for camping, because:
- There is only one dish so it’s quick cleanup.
- You save water because you boil the spaghetti in the sauce.
- The meals breaks up the camping monotony of hamburgers and hotdogs.
- Everyone loves spaghetti!
I used charcoal briquettes to cook this recipe, starting them in a charcoal chimney to speed the process along. I know charcoal briquettes are frowned upon for outdoor cooking because of the additives, but they’re really not a problem if you’re just using them to heat a Dutch oven. They are a cheap, fast, and consistent way to cook, and the food is fully sealed away from the briquettes when you’re using a Dutch oven.
One Pot Spaghetti Dutch Oven Recipe
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This recipe certainly rivaled anything I could make in the house short of spending a lot more time and energy building a homemade sauce. It was fast, easy, and because it only used the Dutch oven, clean up was much faster. Cooking it outdoors also meant no kitchen cleanup!
It’s worth noting that I could in fact taste a difference cooking the pasta in the sauce. It’s hard to describe the difference other than it was more uniform. In other words, it really didn’t taste like spaghetti with meat sauce, it tasted like spaghetti meat sauce – if that make sense.
Try it and tell me what you think in the comments section.
5 comments
good idea, the same technique applies to rice and beans
that seems like alot of water! does it cook down or what?
It boils down, but only to some degree because it’s covered.
just omit the 2 3/4 Cup water the recipe calls for then. I didn’t think that looked right!
Sorry, I was originally responding via my phone. The recipe is correct. I edited my former response.