Sunday Vintage Recipe Roulette with Ketchup Spaghetti: The fifth horseman of the apocalypse?

Japanese Napolitan might change your mind

Fresh off the smashing culinary disaster that is Irish-Italian Spaghetti, for this episode of Sunday Vintage Recipe Roulette, I’ve decided to push my luck with another inadvisable-sounding dish: Ketchup Spaghetti.

Is it spaghetti with tomato sauce that has a little soupçon of ketchup for interest? Is it perhaps a Southern style baked chicken spaghetti with an intriguing ketchup drizzle? Oh no, dear ones, this is spaghetti with a sauce whose primary ingredient is…ketchup.

I’m talking about Japanese Napolitan, a 1950s-era recipe still in common rotation today. The story is that tomato sauce and paste were in short supply in postwar Japan, and ketchup was used as a substitute in literal desperate times. For the most part, recipes I’ve seen use about 1/4-1/3 c of sweet Japanese ketchup per 2 main dish servings, but some use almost double that, and usually the mix-ins are the Italian staples of sausage, onion, and peppers. Mushrooms, Worcestershire, hot sauce or pepper flakes, and Parmesan are common supporting players. NYT writer Eric Kim’s version is vegetarian, using an egg instead of sausage…and only half the ketchup.

Although it might be out of left field for US readers, it’s actually not out of nowhere. I went to plenty a church supper that featured a Southern classic little known outside of the region: Macaroni and Tomatoes. Every family had their own constellation of tweaks, like bacon grease or Tabasco, but it’s incredibly simple — cooked macaroni, canned tomatoes (diced or stewed), and a not insignificant amount of sugar. And let’s not forget the buttered ketchup “sketti” made infamous by Mama June and Honey Boo Boo. Although much of the country looked on in horror, I’ve talked to many people in nutrition counseling who ate something like it as a child. It hits those inherently-treasured flavor points of salt, acid, and heat, and it’s inexpensive, shelf-stable, and easy to make. I don’t think we should easily dismiss regional foods originally born out of struggle. Maybe when we eat those, we are not prioritizing our health, but we are prioritizing something important…thrift, comfort, or tradition.

Maybe Japanese Napolitan is a way to make something sliiiiightly healthier but still crazy South-adjacent (I’m a crazy Southerner — it’s a compliment). Let’s make it! But keep in mind, although I’m a spaghetti enthusiast, I’m merely ketchup-tolerant. If I don’t like this, it might be because I have been traumatized by the room temp pasta at the aforementioned church suppers, and because I don’t happen to admire ketchup as a minor deity the way so many humans do. That shouldn’t be taken as proof that recipes of necessity or with a single prominent flavor are bad — it’s just that this one might not be my personal jam.

I’m still optimistic, because I really love Pad Thai, and although I make it using tamarind pulp (I keep Dragonfly brand concentrate frozen in ice cubes for handy use), I have had somewhat successful versions made with ketchup coming off the bench to pinch hit. It’s not traditional…but it’s also not terrible? My main concern here is that the other ingredients may not pull enough ketchup-balancing weight the way fish sauce and soy sauce do.

I love every recipe Eric Kim writes, but I’d like to really go for the ketchup gusto, so I’ve chosen Namiko Hirasawa Chen’s recipe from Just One Cookbook. I like the idea of the Worcestershire, and it overlaps significantly with most recipes in terms of ketchup-to-pasta ratio. She also hails from Yohkohama, just like Napolitan reportedly does, and her recipes are reliably excellent.

It looks like a lot of ketchup when it’s all laid out there, doesn’t it? Definitely more than I’ve ever eaten in one sitting. Even the Worcestershire is eerily aware of staring into the great void.

Prep couldn’t be easier — slice the ingredients, and while the pasta is boiling, toss them in a skillet to brown a bit, add the sauce, and then the cooked pasta with a little pasta water if needed. I only used a spritz of oil instead of a tablespoon, but I did finish with a drizzle of olive oil and a half pat of butter. I’m going to skip the mushrooms because I think they taste like dirt and dead moths, but I encourage you to use them if you like them — they’ve got some lovely health benefits and can keep a dish less meat-centric, which is often good for health and environment alike. As for the sausage, I like Bilinski’s, because it freezes perfectly, has a great flavor and browns like a charm, but it’s low fat, minimally processed, organic, and nitrite-free (as with the Dragonfly tamarind above, this is not an ad, no samples or sponsorship — it’s just yummy and consistent with a general healthy diet). I eat meatless a lot of the time, though, and when I do, I usually make minimally processed meat subs like this bean sausage from Elevegan, or I sub in something like egg or beans. I just don’t love ultra-processed vegan dopplegangers in nutritional terms, although some of them taste amazing.

So how does the finished recipe taste? Is it a comforting but surprising instant classic, or does the city of Napoli have a legitimate defamation case? Well, next time I will make it with maybe 1/4 c of the pasty red stuff, but friends, it’s pretty delicious. All the best sauces use a little bit of a really strong flavor — fish sauce or anchovy, capers, lemon, vinegar — to bring out the flavors of the main ingredients without overwhelming. I’m shocked to say that this is pretty balanced. It’s not overly salty, and the vinegar in the ketchup is just the right tang, like the ringing of a little bell. I think sausage is the right choice if you’re going to add meat, but next time, I’ll probably give Kim’s egg version a try.

Ketchup sauce actually cuts the mustard. Who knew?