Poll of the Day > You have pasta and pasta sauce...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Do you add meatballs... or chicken?

Neither, I don't like meaty pasta.

For that matter, I might even throw out the pasta sauce as well. I've got issues with tomatoes so I tend to minimize my intake. Usually if I'm eating pasta there's a good chance I'll eat it with some sort of cream or butter sauce (butter and onion salt on egg noodles is an old favorite). Or something like mac and cheese.

definitely meatballs. maybe chicken for alfredo.

what kind of pasta and sauce (gravy for you authentics)? would go with mild sausage and meatballs. but if its Alfredo sauce, bring on the seafood!!!

always the basilly oreganoey tomato sauce

I slam them together and make pasta sauce pasta.

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Chicken. I hate meat balls.

Usually I just add veggies, though. Tomato, bell pepper (red, orange, or yellow), and mushrooms. And spinach, if I have it.

Beef with red sauce; chicken or shrimp with white sauce.

both

Pikazard1 posted...

what kind of pasta and sauce (gravy for you authentics)? would go with mild sausage and meatballs. but if its Alfredo sauce, bring on the seafood!!!

Who the hell puts gravy on pasta?

Revelation34 posted...

Who the hell puts gravy on pasta?

smh so uncultured

I do something super creepy

and I make it a



you know

Crumbled beef

Revelation34 posted...

Who the hell puts gravy on pasta?

Depending on where you are/are from in Italy, they'll use the word "gravy" to describe what other people call tomato sauce.

I think it's a northern Italian thing, but I'm not 100% sure.

I think legit gravy could work... it'd be like a cousin to poutine

If I'm doing ground beef I'm making a meat sauce not meatballs. I prefer a thick meaty sauce if I'm gonna have beef in there.

Ground beef but not in ball form.

tomato sauce is really just tomato gravy anyways

Bulbasaur posted...

tomato sauce is really just tomato gravy anyways

tomato gravy sounds tasty

Lokarin posted...

Do you add meatballs... or chicken?

Neither?

Minced meat, ham and tuna all come to mind before either.

what the fuck do you mean ham and tuna

Just naming the three most common pasta meats that I could think of.

If it's a matter of improvising a dinner with pasta and sauce that are already on hand and wanting to make that more interesting with some meat, probably chicken, specifically frozen breaded chicken strips. Even if I've already got ground meat available, it'll be in the freezer unless I planned to use it that night, and making meatballs is a non-trivial amount of extra work. By comparison, I almost always have some frozen chicken strips available (my girlfriend's go-to lunch is a salad topped with a diced one), so it's a simple matter of throwing some in the oven for half an hour and dicing them up to put on the pasta for a discount chicken parmagiana sort of experience.

If it's a matter of specifically planning a few nights of pasta dinners and preparing the sauce and meat for that, generally meatballs or a ground meat sauce over anything using chicken breasts/thighs. That said, saying this, I'm kind of craving exactly that (specifically, chicken cooked by simmering it in marinara sauce, served with pasta) and that may end up being one of my dinners in the coming weeks, so that's far from being an absolute preference.

Jen0125 posted...

If I'm doing ground beef I'm making a meat sauce not meatballs. I prefer a thick meaty sauce if I'm gonna have beef in there.

I find they serve different purposes. As much as both ultimately boil down to just "beef in pasta sauce," meatballs offer such a different texture and flavour distribution that I don't feel I can really compare them directly. Sometimes I'm in the mood for one, sometimes the other.

Though a bolognese sauce is like a million times quicker and easier to make than doing meatballs, especially where I tend to sautee a bunch of veggies to mix in with my sauce regardless of what I do with the meat and I therefore already have the pan out and hot. That's a big plus.

adjl posted...

I find they serve different purposes. As much as both ultimately boil down to just "beef in pasta sauce," meatballs offer such a different texture and flavour distribution that I don't feel I can really compare them directly. Sometimes I'm in the mood for one, sometimes the other.

What if you do both meatballs and a meat sauce?

Revelation34 posted...

What if you do both meatballs and a meat sauce?

Too much meat. Even if it's a matter of splitting half of the meat each between the sauce and the balls (for the same amount of total meat), that's just a whole lot of extra work for no particular gain.

Ham pastas are literally the easiest ones to make, just dump all ingredients in an oven dish and put it in the oven.

Tuna pastas are also very common.

Americans would generally call that ham or tuna casserole, which is seen as being distinct from including a meat with whatever sauce is being used to top the pasta (which is what this topic is talking about). Ham and tuna are pretty uncommon for that, especially when talking about marinara (ham/bacon with alfredo sauce isn't unusual, though the number of times people try to call that "carbonara" is kind of ridiculous).

adjl posted...

Americans would generally call that ham or tuna casserole

Google told me the word I wanted to use translates to oven dish, so I used that. Casseroles do look like what I had in mind, so I learned some American.

Nichtcrawler X posted...

Google told me the word I wanted to use translates to oven dish, so I used that. Casseroles do look like what I had in mind, so I learned some American.

"Casserole" is actually the French word for the kind of cookware they're usually baked in, so it is a bit of an odd term to try translating. You'll sometimes see "pasta bake" instead, which is more accurately descriptive, but that's less common.

Off-hand, I don't know what the usual term is in English-speaking regions outside of the US/Canada. I feel like the Brits also call them casseroles, but I could be very wrong about that.

Ham with marinara sauce would probably be weird.

adjl posted...

"Casserole" is actually the French word for the kind of cookware they're usually baked in, so it is a bit of an odd term to try translating.

The cookware is what I was going for.

Also, if ham is confusing, I am talking about small cubes, not big still all round and in one piece..

ya, bolognese is made of... bologna