SCENE 1
The Kitchen

    [enters and stands in front of an American flag] Hello American cooks. I've got a question for you. If I went through your pockets right now, would I find a matchbook from some trendy pan-Asian tapas bar? Have you, in say, I don't know, the last six months, moved your grandmother's recipe book off the shelf to make room for a volume of new age holistic Norwegian vegan cuisine? Does the mailman periodically pile your portrait parcels from the Pretentious Pantry of the Month Club?
    Mmm hmm, just as I feared. In your effort to embrace the big world of food, you've forgotten where you're from. Well let me tell you, buddy, it's time you quit chasing those kimchi pierogies, and come on back home here, to America! [flag lifts revealing the kitchen] Now look, we've got your morsel compass right over here. Each one of the cards here in this Plexiglas box bears the name of a sad, lonely, endangered little dish which could very well disappear like the dodo if you don't do something about it.

AB: [to someone off camera] Hit it! [air mixes the cards] Kill it!

    We'll just take out a card here. And today's American classic is ... Jumpin' jehoso-duck-fat, we've hit pay dirt! You know it, you love it, and odds are, you've been getting it out of a jar. It's spaghetti and meat sauce! I'm sorry, what's that? Uh, Italian? Apparently we're going to need a history lesson on top of our cooking lesson. And that's just fine with me, because spaghetti and meat sauce was, is, and always will be ...

[Good Eats Theme]

SCENE 2
Cafe in Bologna, Italy

GUEST: Waiter

    [animation with a map and a small plane] To unlock the secrets of spaghetti and meat sauce, we must journey first to a city famous for its own meat sauce, Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

    Now, in America, "ragu" might not sound very special. But the word is actually derived from the French, "ragouter," meaning "to revive the taste," and it is actually special.
    Now, in the case of Bologna, it is a meaty stew based on long-simmered aromatics: carrots, onions, celery, minced meat, a bit of tomato product, and oddly enough, milk. Although most Americans would not recognize it as a "meat sauce", ragu alla Bolognese is no doubt the rich uncle of our meat sauce. Which may explain why the English, who love spaghetti and meat sauce even more than Americans, call it "spag bol", which of course is slang for spaghetti Bolognese.

AB: [as waiter leaves] Yeah.

    No matter what comes out through that door, I guarantee you, it won't look like what you and I think it ought to look like.

    Here's what it comes down to. Spaghetti, long strands of durum wheat pasta, extruded, dried, then boiled, and ragu alla Bolognese, a chunky, heavy meat stew, are physically incompatible. In Italy, spaghetti is tossed with oil, cheese and herbs, while heavy sauces are married to big, tube shapes, or fresh ribbons like tagliatelle. So how did a dish that's unheard of in Italy become the poster dish for Italian cuisine in the U.S.? Well the answer can be found on a small island, but I don't mean Capri.

SCENE 3
Stock Footage

    I mean Ellis. From 1892 to 1954, some 12 million immigrants began their American experience here. Some were rich, others poor beyond imagining. Many had their identities changed, while some lost them altogether.
    Now culturally, Ellis was an engine of homogenization. You might walk in Tuscan, Sicilian, or Venetian, but you walked out Italian, and the "American" came later on. Bound by little more than a common language, many of these strangers in a strange land settled in tight-knit communities inside larger urban landscapes. No longer forced to dine on black bread and beans, the cooks of such "Little Italys" began to innovate giving birth to many of the dishes that Americans consider to be Italian today. What's more, many of these new dishes quickly moved onto the plates of mainstream America, compliments of an active, motivated, and highly organized Italian-American manufacturing community.

SCENE 4
The Library

GUEST: Library Patron

    [whispering] A good example, the powerful National Macaroni Manufacturer's Association, which was like an extruded pasta cartel in the old days. Now during the 1920's, they published and distributed W.A.S.P. friendly recip ...

PATRON: Shhhhh!
AB: Sorry.

... recipes, including a wildly popular one for something called Italian spaghetti and meatballs, which was basically meat sauce. What was interesting is that it was cooked and served as a casserole. Fascinating! The association also offered up, shall we say, fanciful food mythologies in their magazine, "Macaroni Journal." In fact, an Association writer may have actually ... PATRON: Shhhhh! AB: Sorry. ... may have actually invented the whole Marco Polo-bringing-pasta-to-Venice-from-China legend. Nice piece of viral marketing, that.

Italian Spaghetti and Meatballs 1 cup tomato paste 1 cup strained canned tomatoes 2 cloves 2 allspice berries 1 bay leaf 1 clove garlic 1 cup bread crumbs 1 small onion ...d of ground meat ...d spaghetti MACARONI JOURNAL

But the full Americanization of Italian-American cuisine would actually have to wait until 1953 when a U.S. Army hospital cook, named Garibaldi Lapolla, wrote "Italian Cooking for the American Kitchen." Which despite vast popularity, was about as Italian as Florence ... Henderson! Hah hah hah hah. P: [gets up, exasperated, and walks off]

Spaghetti houses of the 1920's boiled cauldrons of pasta in their windows.
A plate with sauce, sold for around 35 cents.

SCENE 5
Mega Mart

GUEST: Butcher

[the following price list is the same as was first seen in the Tamale episode]

CTR. CUT PORK RIB CHOP ... $4.19/lb
PORK LOIN CHOP ........... $4.29/lb
HAM STEAK ................ $1.29/lb
FLANK STEAK .............. $6.99/lb

HAMBURGER ................ $3.29/lb
GROUND MEAT .............. $1.99/lb
GROUND PORK .............. $1.79/lb
LEAN GROUND PORK ......... $2.99/lb

    American mutts like me were raised on fire-engine red meat sauces built out of hamburger. Now the thing about hamburger is that ... Well, what you have to understand is that hamburger can ...

AB: Well, you know, you tell 'em:
BUTCHER: The federal government guidelines say that neither hamburger nor ground meat can contain any more than 30 percent fat.
AB: Whoa, then what's the difference between them?
B: Beef fat can be added to hamburger, but not to ground meat.
AB: Ah, what about ground round, ground chuck, or ground sirloin?
B: The only rule there is is that anything in the mixture, lean and fat alike, come from that cut, and still it can contain up to 30 percent fat.
AB: Ah, but what if the meat in question is labeled as being a certain percent "lean"?
B: That's where it gets complicated. Because of what the legal definition of what "lean" is, which, since 1993, has been about three percent fat. So, depending on the meat, you may need a calculator to get it straight.
AB: Okay, what about ground pork?
B: The standard is 20 percent. If it's labeled "lean," it contains less than 17 percent fat, but it can come from anywhere on the pig.
AB: Okay, thanks.

    Now, this is exactly why I buy 'cuts' and ask for them to be custom ground. It's the only way to really be sure. Now, since we have all the time in the world, I figure we might as well use cuts that can actually profit from long cooking, namely, shoulders.

AB: So, Ma'am, I'm going to go with eight ounces of beef chuck, and the same eight ounces of pork butt.

    But, don't worry, it's not actually, you know. It's shoulder too.

AB: And, would you grind them for me?
B: Coarse or fine?
AB: Ooh, excellent question. Love to hear that. I will take a coarse grind, please.

    However, in some shops, that would be referred to as a chili grind. Same thing, don't worry.
    Now while she's doing that, we will look into some seasoning meat, okay. We need some other meat to bring flavor to the party. A cured pork product would be appropriate. Now, authenticity would almost demand the use of pancetta, a tightly rolled form of bacon that is air-dried, unsmoked. But I like the smoke, so I'm going to go with six ounces, that's about five rashers of big, thick-cut slab American bacon.

SCENE 6
The Kitchen

GUESTS: Mama
              Witch

MAMA: [tending a large pot]

    To some folks, the image of a sauce pot burbling long and low on a back burner, tended by someone's lovin' Mama is comforting and magical: an emotional postcard from the era of hearth and home.

WITCH: [enters and takes over the pot]

    But for others, it's a sickly reminder of spooky childhood stories of witches, tending cauldrons in moonlit clearings, where not all magic is good, or good eats.

MAMA & WITCH: [both compete for the pot by continually adding their own ingredients]

    Either way, one-pot sauces are really a tradition borne of necessity. See, even in the early 20th century, many people only had fuel to heat one pot. These days, most of us can heat several at a time. Two different temperatures, no less, a fact that I plan to take full advantage of.

AB: Now, excuse me, ladies, I cook alone!

    Here we have an 8-quart cast iron Dutch oven, known far and wide for its ability to cook low and slow. We'll also be employing the 4-quart straight sided stainless steel sauté pan, known far and wide for its ability to take high levels of heat, and for giving quick evaporation.
    Our strategy is going to be to build the sauce over here [in the Dutch oven], but we're going to feed it ingredients from here [the sauté pan]. That way, we'll always have the flavors kind of at their peak, and doneness will hopefully be all synched up so the sauce can be all it can be. Now it's important that the sauté pan go on whatever your beefiest burner is. Mine is over here. The Dutch oven can go on a relatively low burner.

    Meanwhile finely chop two whole onions and three stalks of celery. Then mince three cloves of garlic, and then slice two more.

    Now that goes in, low heat, until the onions break down and caramelize. It's going to take 45 minutes to an hour, and you're going to have to stir every few minutes to keep burning at bay.

    [later] All right, the meat is good and brown, so move that to a colander set over a bowl. Let it drain until we are ready to implement it further.

The Maillard reaction refers to the browning of proteins and
carbohydrates in meats, resulting in pleasingly complex flavors.

SCENE 7
The Kitchen

    This would, by the way, be a nice time to crank up some Puccini. You know, just for atmosphere. [a scratchy instrumental version of "O Mio Babbino Caro from Gianni Schicchi begins to play] Excellent.
    Okay, the fat soluble flavors from the spices have been extracted, so I'm going to go ahead and remove the little sack. Next, the meat goes into the Dutch oven, and the reduced wine, with all the juicy little bits, that goes in too. Now we're still maintaining this over low heat.

SCENE 8
Backyard

SCENE 9
The Kitchen

    Now you're going to let this heat very slowly, and cook very slowly, covered, over low heat for three hours. That's right, hours. The goal is to slowly break down the connective tissue that's still in the meat, thus extracting all of the gelatin possible. Remember, at this point, it's basically a stew, and stews take time. Just remember, lift the lid every half hour and give it a stir.
    All right, the Dutch oven has been perking away for an hour and a half, so we'll give that a stir, and then turn our attention .... [to the lid that won't go on] down ... to the sauté pan. Now we are going to build the tomato–herb–acid part of the sauce. The way I see this, it's really the pickiest part of the process, because it involves very careful reductions. So I want to keep that out of the meat until we are completely—well, I'm—completely happy with it.

    There, that has got as much flavor in it as we can possibly develop. So we now move that into the meat mixture, and we'll finally have a finished sauce. Believe me, this has all been worth it. Now we're going to keep this barely simmering until the pasta is done, uncovered, please.

Tightly sealed meat sauce will keep in the freezer for up to six months.

SCENE 10
The Kitchen

    As we discovered earlier, when in Bologna you will no doubt enjoy meat sauces tossed with wide noodles, like fettuccine and tagliatelle. But this is America, and like the English before us, we want our spaghetti, and we're going to have it. But you know what, at least make it a nice Italian spaghetti, because they tend to be a little bit thicker than our domestic product. Now for six people, I'm going to go with half a pound, because I actually like to serve a little bit more sauce than noodles.

    All right, time's up. We taste. Now what I'm looking for here is not al dente, but something just shy of al dente. I actually want just a hair of crunch still on the back of my teeth. Only one way to find out. [tastes] Perfect. We drain.
    And move the noodles straight into the meat sauce. That's right, we are not going to serve the sauce over the pasta as you see done so often. You see, by allowing the noodles to finish cooking, say, four to five minutes over low heat in the sauce, they'll actually drink up some of that goodness that we have worked so hard to make. And, some of the starch coat from the noodles will bond, lightly, to the meat sauce, and that's going to help to make up for the fact that, well, technically speaking, these two just aren't very physically compatible.

SCENE 11
In Front of the Flag

    [holding the finished dish] Well, I hope that the last half hour has snapped a new heading line on your appetite's GPS, which, at this very moment, should be guiding you home. Now I know it's easy in this age of edible irony to pass on a good old plate of spaghetti as, I don't know, a quaint anachronism of a naive culinary age. Easy, but dead stinkin' wrong.
    See you next time on Good Eats.

Transcribed by Michael Roberts
Proofread by Michael Menninger

Last Edited on 05/01/2011