Napolitan Spaghetti
A Japanese diner pasta of spaghetti fried for 15 minutes with sausage, onion, green pepper and mushrooms in a ketchup sauce.
Photograph credit: Italian-Spaghetti-1 by Evelyn-rose · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Where This Goes Wrong
Cook the pasta a little longer than usual.
Fry the ketchup briefly to deepen its flavour.
Top with a fried egg for the classic version.
Making Napolitan Spaghetti
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Cook the spaghetti in salted water for 11 minutes, a little past al dente. Drain.
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Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the sausages for 4 minutes until browned.
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Add the onion, pepper and mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes.
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Stir in the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce and cook for 2 minutes. Add the spaghetti and toss for 2 minutes until coated.
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Season with the salt and pepper and serve hot.
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Why the Method Works
Sweet, savoury and slightly nostalgic, this pasta has little to do with Naples, and that is the charm of it. Napolitan is a Japanese diner dish of spaghetti tossed in a thick ketchup sauce with sausage, onion, green pepper and mushrooms, and it is eaten in cafés across the country. It is plain comfort.
The pasta is cooked a little past al dente, which is traditional and means it soaks up the sauce. Fry the sausage first, then the vegetables, until they begin to brown. Cook the ketchup in the pan for a couple of minutes before adding the pasta. This takes away the tinny, raw taste and deepens it to something closer to a tomato sauce. Soft pasta is the point.
Toss everything together with butter or oil, a splash of Worcestershire sauce and plenty of black pepper. Serve hot, with grated cheese on top, and, in the traditional style, a pile of the pasta on a plate with a fried egg. Pepper it generously.
Storage and Reheating
Keeps for 2 days in the fridge. Reheat in a frying pan with a splash of water.
What to Serve Alongside
- Fried egg
- Grated cheese
- Green salad
- Cold lager
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Sunomono, Japanese Milk Bread (Shokupan), Gomae.
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published .
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