Boiardi’s story during the depression and war was so wholesome. The man really believed in his food, so much that he started growing his own ingredients in the factory and encouraging farmers to grow more tomatoes for him. He’s such a cool guy.
As someone who was born outside of the USA, the most confusing part of American culture was founding out chef Boyardee was a real person while Denny from Denny's wasn't
The weirdest part about American restaurant, food brand, and franchise names is that it's a coin flip for if said name is based on a real person/founder or if it's just a made up mascot name.
I am 65 years old, when I was young my father would make a Chef Boyardee pizza for dinner on a Saturday night back in the early 1960's. It gave my mom a break from cooking, and I learned how to make pizza with my Dad. I remember the one box kit and can of dried parma' cheese. You'd mixed the dough and let it rise. Spread the dough by hand on a cookie sheet until you got a nice thin crust, 14" pie and it was good. Luckily I grew up in the Philadelphia area where Pizza was "King" and fast food chains had yet to proliferate. So as times got better, so did the pizza, but the most enjoyable pizza I ever had was the Chef Boyardee pizza my Dad and I made.
We were still making it in the 90’s (I’m 38). Though my mom would buy extra Parmesan to shake on it to at least cover the top. My parents never did frozen pizza when I was growing up, it was either a pizza kit when we were young and the budget was tight, or order out from a pizza shop. Last time I made one was in college about 20yrs ago. I think they have since changed the kits to not include Parmesan and different dough, etc.
They still sell those kits - my dad and I make those pizzas every so often as well. Some of the best pizza sauce you can get. Even if I make everything else from scratch, I’ll still buy those cans of sauce for my own pizzas. (I’m 29 by the way)
I guess I’m now Officially Old. I grew up in the 1950s with that boxed spaghetti dinner with the cans of sauce and Parmesan cheese. My mother didn’t pry the lid off the can, instead she used a churchkey can opener to punch several holes in the lid so that it acted like a shaker. And yes, it was pretty darn good to eat.
@@MoondustManwise Yeahp, that's a church key. The rounded end is for opening bottles, the pointed end is for putting holes in cans. On the underside there's a little 'hook' that you place under the rim of the can and use as a lever to poke the sharp point into the top of the can. For liquids, you make two holes, a smaller one on one side to let air in, and a larger directly opposite to pour the liquid out of.
The original church key opener was shaped more like heavy wire curved to fit bottle caps, and was the form named "church key" for its resemblance to old keys. The form Jennifer describes is a bit more recent but still many decades old. I've never seen a real church key opener, but I've had a couple of the later form for years. I can't remember the last time I used the pokey end, though. I vaguely remember cans of tomato juice that had to be opened that way, with the big and little openings as described.
@@MoondustManwise, it has a triangular pointed edge, used for poking holes in cans, or opening bottles. It was called a "church key", because old timey church keys, for opening the massive main doors, could do the same thing, if manipulated correctly. Buck up the small lever at the base firmly to the can, and push down.
I grew up in the town with the original Chef Boyardee factory. He opened it in the middle of Central Pennsylvania so he could have access to fresh tomatoes. I used to see his nephew and his nephew's wife at my work at the grocery store.
As distant relatives of the Boiardi family, my grandparents were also from Piacenza. The sauce I grew up on and that I was taught to make, is essentially the same as Chef Hectors (Only difference being that my grandmother also added a few pats of butter to the sauté along with the olive oil and garlic always made its way into the sauce!) The sweetness comes not only from the tomato’s, and the slow cooking, but also from the carrots. Great presentation. Thank you!!!!!!
Sugar is added to tomato sauce not just to sweeten it but to lower the acidity of the tomato. But you can do the same thing with carrots which are much healthier and complement the sauce much better.
Excellent. Sweetness comes from the carrots btw. Same thing works for chili and broth for soup. The sweetness from the carrot is not overwhelming and not out of place
Both that and tomato are pretty sweet. On that note, it's pretty common to have some carrots in hot sauces, and I don't really like that because it makes them unsuitably sweet for many uses. 😅 In a sauce like this, though, I am sure it works great.
@@CorrodiasI just made a giant batch of hot sauce with carrots in, and i usually cut it with quite a lot of vinegar and oil so it keeps longer, and that can balance out the sweetness. Sometimes I mix it with Mayonnaise and that works too. I like it because you get hit with the flavor before you get hit with the heat.
You actually get sweetness from the onion, too. They're not super high in sugar, but there's more than most people realize, and it really comes out when you cook them.
San Marzano tomatoes from Italy are naturally nicely sweet. I almost never make a pizza anymore without them. They are my favourite tomato in the world!
My Dad had a small food stand near the Simmons Mattress Company in Bayway on the Elizabeth & Linden border in New Jersey, selling sandwiches, coffee tobacco goods, bottled sodas & ice cream, et cet. During WW2, he remained open 24 hours, having helpers come in to run the place, as the mattress factory had switched over to 24 hour war production items (one of which was the bazooka). He was awarded a medal that had a large letter E on it for his work toward the war effort. He was blind, so he was more than happy to contribute in the only way he could. I still have the medal.
What a cool story. Thank you for sharing it with us! It's always fascinating to learn the different ways people contributed during the war, even if they couldn't be the ones fighting. I'm glad the government took the effort to formally thank him.
As one of the grand children of Chef Hector, I heard so many stories growing up. My father was the only child of Hector and Helen; so the stories I heard I tended to believe more than the stories from other sources. It’s always fun reading about my family.
I really enjoyed this episode! I live in the province of Piacenza; the story is that Chef Boiardi returned to Italy in his old age and built a summer home out in the country, across the River Trebbia from the village where I live. The style of spaghetti sauce is very typical of this area, and as everyone else has said, the carrots and the onions are what gives it that sweetness. Thank you for your always meticulous research!
from what I have learned online (Alton Brown) I thought Italians thought Americans were strange putting meat sauce on spaghetti instead on wider noodles or shaped pasta that held the sauce better like penne. Is it common to use spaghetti for meat sauces in parts of Italy?
@@jc4jax I can't answer from personal experience, but can perhaps offer a glimmer of info from family experience. One branch of my family is 4th generation Italian American and we are very fortunate that we still have connections and roots in "the old country" with family from both sides coming and going off and on throughout the generations. The old country parts of the family are absolutely shocked about how the new world parts of the family do family dishes. A lot of the time, things like sauce recipes have stayed the same, mostly, with only certain things like the type or cut of meat changing, and oftentimes, the type of pasta changes. From what we have gathered, this has a lot to do with the great depression and WW2. Making use of what was cheap and available changed things up. As my rural Oregonian Italian American family members put it "where we are, you got two choices of noodle. Macaroni or spaghetti. You got four choice of meat. Ground beef, ground pork, ground chicken, or ground venison. Don't like it? Tough." PS my uncle makes a killer venison bolognese, which you would never see in Italy.
I really appreciate the fact that Max puts as much work into the history part of the presentation as he does for the cooking and seriously researches his subjects like a professional historian.
Something slightly off: the published recipe for Hector’s sauce didn’t include meat, mushrooms, or carrots. It was simply the greatest marinara sauce I’ve ever made. Max’s recipe took liberties with adding the ingredients of the canned sauce
Hello! My dad jus recently died and we used to watch this show together all the time, and i wanted to thank you for making these videos and helping me stay on my feet. This video reminded me of him as he loved chef boyardee canned foods. Thank you for having this channel. Update: thank you for all the replies, literally crying because people are actually appreciating me for once! thanks.
I remember the first time my mom made a Chef Boyardee pizza and my brother and I were fascinated with the yeasty smell of the dough as it was rising on the back of the stove top; that was probably 60 years ago but I remember that first bite of pizza and nothing has ever tasted so exotic and delicious! We lived in Tennessee then and it was hard finding those food products, too.
I used to make this in the 70's with my grandma and my mom. Not sure when they stopped making the kit. If I found it now I would definitely buy it and make it again. Great memories and it was delicious!
Pizza was exotic here in Sweden at least until the 1970s. It was probably brought here by Swedish diplomats in Italy in the late 1800s, but people in general didn't eat any Italian food except for macaroni boiled in milk until the late 1960s. My maternal grandfather was born in 1920 and passed away in 1989. He literally never tasted pizza or spaghetti in his whole life. People in America were open to new influences much earlier than we were in Europe.
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@@francisdec1615 The US probably had more Italian immigrants than Sweden did? (Same for immigrants from lots of other places.)
We used to have the Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza when I was a kid (late 1970's). My mother would load it with so much ground beef, mushrooms and green peppers that we had to eat it with a knife and fork. It was more of a casserole than pizza. The parmesan came in a little silver tin with a peel-back foil lid and the dough was in one of those cardboard tubes that you used a knife to "pop" open, like the old style Pillsbury cinnamon rolls.
Hmm…I wonder if the crust being in a pop can was a regional thing or if they changed it in the late 70’s? I grew up eating it as well, but the crust was a powder in a packet and you mixed 1/2 cup of hot water into it, put a bit of oil on the dough, cover with a kitchen towel and let it sit for 5 mins to rise. Then you pressed it onto your oiled pizza pan and voilà… freshly made pizza crust! They still have the kits, btw. And the dough is made the same way. I still buy them because it’s so nostalgic for me. ✌🏻😊
@@melissadunton3534 That's the version my mom would buy where she had to fix the dough. And she always added meat. Could be ground beef, sausage, pepperoni, etc. And a big helping of cheese on top.
@@kmbbmj5857 yes! My mom would always add other toppings and mozzarella too! Sometimes she would let each of us (kids) pick the topping we wanted and she would make one of each kind as well as one with just extra cheese…so we’d usually have 4 pizzas for the entire family. It’s so nostalgic for me. I still love to make pizza with the chef boyardee kits. ✌🏻😊
@juanelorriaga2840 NOPE industrialists were just as heartless back then. The unions arose in late 1800s because most factory owners were Not as kind as Boyardee .
I actually met the chef while on vacation in Florida in the late 1950s. He and his family were down to earth, willing to talk to a young family while sitting on the beach, even giving suggestions on sand castle building. On another note, my mother in law came from the same area in Italy as the chef. She also made pizza with just sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. She always refused to add spices, meat or mozzarella. Thanks for another great episode.
Little did he know that the vampires that ended up with his wonderful company would absolutely ruin all of his great recipes and turn them into reconstituted cat puke.
I had a major surgery back in November and your videos kept me company during my recovery. They were the perfect combo of being so entertaining and educational, but also short enough that my shorter attention span from the meds I was on didn't fight with me as much as with longer videos. Also, and I mean this in the best way possible, I didn't feel as guilty for falling asleep to them because I could always go back and re-watch them, where as with longer form videos I'd had alot of trouble finding where I left off. I fell asleep randomly alot post surgery, as to be expected. Thank you for these great videos and all the work and research you do to make them!
Hector's boxed 'sketti' dinner was the very first pasta I ever tried. It was considered quite the thing back in the '60s. I was hooked on it from the get-go. I make my own sauce from scratch these days, but it's coz of Chef Boiardi that I have my life-long love of pasta.
I suspect you weren't alone. After all, you look at Italian-American dishes that caught on here, and you've got a few assorted dishes that had their own origins (such as fettucini Alfredo--covered in this channel elsewhere--and Neapolitan-style pizza). And then you have pasta with tomato-based sauces, some containing meat. When Boiardi started his restaurant there wasn't a preexisting market for that kind of food, but now it's hard to imagine a time when it wasn't part of the typical American diet. I think we have Chef Boiardi to thank for dishes like spaghetti and meatballs becoming common dishes here.
I have an original 1950 jar of Chef Boy-ar-dee meat sauce with the full list of ingredients. Its net weight is 8 ounces and the ingredients are as follows: Tomato puree Water Onions Beef Carrots Mushrooms Salt Wheat flour Cornstarch Beef fat Cracker meal Sugar Spices It came concentrated and the instructions recommend diluting it as desired by adding half a sauce bottle of water and then heating until it reaches a boil.
Interesting. Also I have the book with Uncle Hector’s sauce recipe in it: the recipe did not include meat, mushrooms, or carrots. It was a pure marinara sauce. There was a Bolognese sauce recipe that had those in it though, it was used with rigatoni or as a layer in lasagna (with béchamel sauce instead of ricotta cheese for the alternate layer)
How long have you had it? Do you think it's still edible? okay let me rephrase that - anything is technically edible once. Do you think it's still PALATABLE?
3:19 Tomatoes passed through a sieve this way is called "passata di pomodoro" in Italian; (it's essentially tomato puree that isn't concentrated; you probably could even use tomato puree with some added water). So you might be able to find a can or carton of Passata and skip the breaking your spatula step completely.
Ahhh, so that is what passata is. I often see it next to the canned tomatoes and pure. Thanks for the tip. I'll try that next time I'll cook pasta with a tomato sauce.
If you are going to use a passata, I recommend you search the ingredients to get one that is only Tomatoes and salt (and basil if added), try and avoid the ones that add sugar or stabilizers. I find that Mutti is the best.
17:40 the sweetness you are tasting is from the carrots. Many Italian red sauce recipes use carrots for their sweetness instead of sugar, it is a more subtle sweetness.
The Bolognese I occasionally make used a couple of carrots, and the sweetness is really subtle and not at all sharp like it would be with sugar. I blitz them in my food processor so it is really fine, almost grated.
I’m from Cleveland, and my dad’s spaghetti is made almost exactly like this. He learned from his mom, I believe, who almost certainly ate at his restaurant in “Big Italy”!
Hi Max, as a kid in the 1970s the pizza boxes were still available and I remember them. Now, keep in mind, this was not rich people food, we were poor and it was cheap, and I'd never had any other pizza experience at that time. The crust came out thin but not light, the sauce kinda became a part of it (little moisture left), and the predominant flavor was the parm. No cheese-pull on that one, but I liked it as a kid. I had nothing better with which to compare.
My mom would sprinkle cooked ground beef on top. We did have a small chain of good Italian restaurants in San Diego at the time. (50’s and 60’s). The seven Pernicano brothers had each opened up a resturaunt using their mother’s recipes. Darned good pizza. But on a house painters wages it was a special occasion to go. So we had a lot of Chef Boyardee when I was growing up.
@@cartoonistaaronhazouriKids these days don't know how good they have it. When I was their age we had to travel an hour each way to the nearest pizza hut, in the back seat of a car that was falling apart despite the fact it was only a couple years old, no entertainment other than torturing your siblings and getting yelled at by your parents. The other options were frozen pizzas that were terrible, soggy bake-at-home fresh pizzas from the meat case, or the chef boyardee or some other brand shelf-stable kits. I can understand why everyone is overweight these days. Most of the food we eat today hadn't been invented yet.
Not that anyone will see this _BUT_ I grew up in an era long before there was a Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, or Domino's Pizza on every corner of every medium to large community. We purchased Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pizza kits and added our own fresh ingredients. I even made the pizzas ahead of time and froze them to thaw and cook on Sunday's after church. They were very good. Occasionally, I would pre-cook the rolled out dough a few minutes and then add the sauce and toppings for a crisper crust. I hadn't thought of that in ages until you mentioned it. I doubt they are even sold anymore, but up until about 25 years ago, I purchased the spaghetti dinners for just me and my husband before the kids started arriving. Again, I added fresh ingredients to jazz it up and we loved it. Thanks for this video. It brought back some very fond memories. Oh, and the Beefaroni? My husband still has me buy it for his lunch at work and my autistic 23 year old daughter loves ABCs and 123s with meatballs. So, it's still a staple in the house and will be as long as it's still produced.
Growing up in a small Michigan farm town (sign still says "Village Limits" and there's not a single fast food restaurant) - "ethnic food" was the Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee pizza in the box, complete with the sawdust parmesan cheese in a tiny can. That and La Choy or Chun King vacuum sealed Chinese food with those crispy noodles! Great memories!
@@DizzyBusy still Village Limits and still no fast food or Starbucks or DD. There's a Subway, and 2 bars (there were 3 back in the day) 2 mom n pop pizza joints a bakery/cafe and a "Dairy Den"! Still a tiny town!
The pizza kits in the box were so good. It was a special treat to make one. I used to think it wasn't much like "real" pizza but as an adult I realize simple pizza like that kit would make are the real pizza and the stuff just drowned in toppings are just junk food. I get it now.
Omg, La Choy chow mein noodles. Those were the special dinner in our house too! (We ate Boy-Ar-Dee and Campbells almost daily.) Needless to say, I grew up FAR from any coastal city.
My father in law Mr. Ted who became the banquet manager of the Plaza got his start with The Boiardi brothers in 1929. He was the maitre d of the Persian Room first. He also managed Truman Capotes Black and White Ball. His uncle John Foglia was one of the investors in the Boiardi company. It was bought out by Kraft. Love your channel and never miss an episode.
Really?!? Now I know from where the design and the setup of the product was familiar to me! I do not know if it is more widely known, but in Germany the brand Kraft sells a pasta product, prepacked with tomato paste, spices, and formerly a sort of grated cheese (I liked it, but too many people not, they now sell it for the same price without the cheese, which led me to return to making my own meals), ready in 9 to 12 minutes, box design VERY similar to the Boiardi carton. It is called Miracoli, and it was one of the cherished treats of my childhood! The original sauce was so delicious, but I never knew why. It took me years to determine what the secret ingredient of the spice and herb mix was, but it was really easy after I had a Bloody Mary - it's the celeriac salt, which since then I make myself to have it ready for tomato sugo! Until the ca. 2000s it was available in every supermarket, but since then - tumbleweeds. Maybe too many allergies, so that nobody buys it anymore... It is really useful if you can not get fresh celery or celeriac for any sugo, and luckily easy to prepare. Max does such a great job to teach and entertain his audience! And aftewards, something delicious to eat - what's not to love? The community here is s friendly and educated, I always learn so much new stuff, for which I am grateful!!! Have a nice week, and always eat well:-)
@@breeabroderick1204Thank you for being interested and so kind! Food is also our on history, and often it triggers memories of happy moments - I for one am happy for this :-) Have a good day!
Thank you for this wonderful throwback to my childhood. You see I DO remember those boxes of Chef Boyardee spaghetti when I was about 7 or 8 years old. It was the highlight of our week. When you opened the can of sauce and cheese you could smell the wonderful aroma of freshness and the “love” that went into making that product. We couldn’t wait to put them all together and enjoy our Chef Boyardee spaghetti dinner. And…..you are absolutely correct the recipe for things like the Beefaroni and Ravioli have changed over the years and it tastes nothing like my taste buds remember them to be like when I was young. You see the olfactory part of our brain has the capacity to retain memories far better than almost any other part of our brain. Thank you again, Dr. George Joseph Dallas, Tx
Here in Oz we have our icons too - like Arnott's Shortbread which taste NOTHING like when I had them as a kid. It's death by a thousand cuts - a different production method, butter not the same, one sugar swapped out for another, and so it goes....... Sad, but reality. I grew up in Toronto, arrived in 68 when I was 11 and I remember Chef Boyardee was SUCH a treat - and Mum was from the Slovenian/Italian border and is still a bloody good cook at 97 LOL Oh the power of marketing!
@@andersonomo597 even mcdonalds isn't as good as it used to be. the annoying thing is that the anti-corporates try to tell us that it gets more and more engineered to be addictive while it's just less so because they try to save money. like the cheeseburger, the cheese should go on it straight after the grill and if the patty waits for 20 minutes in some hotbox before that it just will not be as good. I never order cheese on a burger from bk because the recipe for that includes microwaving it to melt the cheese a little bit - and it doesn't even melt so whats the point! and there's never ready made burgers now waiting due to the hotboxing policy changes so it's slower to get the food(everything is assembled to order) while also affecting the taste negatively - and the restaurant floorplans are still bizarrely made as if you could get the food instantly after paying. they're also messing with soda tastes too - also not to save you but to just save their expenses, the sugarfree versions of sprite and others need a lot less. sure it's sweetness value whatever is the same but it doesn't taste the same and it doesn't feel the same, it doesn't bubble the same, it doesn't even flow the same without the mass of the sugar in it and it's effects on the surface tension etc, I don't want to drink them all day long it just needs to taste absolutely great for that one 0.33l bottles worth.
My Dad was born in 1929 and lived in Milton Pa growing up, and he always spoke about living next door to Chef Boyardee, and going to school with his sons. Loved watching your video, and cannot wait to make this authentic spaghetti. My Dad passed away in 2018, yet spaghetti was always his favorite meal and your video made me think of him tonight!! Thank you!!
WV native here. Growing up you hear all of these great tales about the Greenbrier Resort. I would love to see a tasting the history from there. According to the Greenbrier historians, it was here that the Arnold Palmer first got its name from the golfer. Very fun.
Northern italian here, we actually use garlic in our cooking (at least, my family and my friends do) in what we call a "soffritto", which is a sort of base layer for many of our dressings. Also, chef Boyardee sauce sounds veeeeeeery similar to a "bolognese", with the addition of basil and mushroom, which are not part of the bolognese, if i'm not mistaken. Also also, love your show
@@aiko9393soffritto recipe varies from culture to culture because my mom being Colombian she makes soffritto with cilantro, tomatoes, onion(either green or whatever kind of onion we have on hand) and depending on what we are making we also will throw in some tomato paste & tomato sauce but if aren't making a specific dishes that require that then pur saffritto is strictly what I first wrote in the beginning...
hell yeah! In my family we switch garlic soffritto and onion soffritto depending on the region the recipe comes from, I love how versatile and endlessly delicious a good soffritto is, makes every savory recipe better (family from Puglia, now 2nd generation in Turin)
@@IlastarothTayre Yeah, i probably failed to communicate how "soffritto" is not really a recipe, per se, more of an umbrella term for a...process...? i guess...? it's just that garlic is pretty often a part of it.
I once made a Bard in D&D that specialized in culinary arts rather than music or such. His name was Bo, of the prestigious family of chefs, House Yardee. It took 11 sessions before anyone figured it out, because I was very careful never to mention his birth name, surname, or his actual profession, all in the same session. That went on for a while longer, then we got mostly wiped, and decided to just start over. So I made a more traditional Bard... Doremi, of the famous troubadour family, the Fasolatidos. That one made it to 16 sessions before anyone caught on. I wasn't even careful about it. I just did my best Italian/Spanish accent at all times, and everyone just thought it sounded legit if I said it fast enough.
GM: A Goblin Raiding Party is coming your way, what do you do!? BARBARIAN: Charge at them! RANGER: Shoot arrows at them! WIZARD: Cast Magic Missiles! BARD: Cook up a nice plate of spaghetti! They're probably just hangry.
ive been working on home brewing what i call a sandwich bard. did you use food to distribute buffs? do you hand out tje food pre battle or do you toss a meatball into the barbarian from 10 ft away 😂
This was awesome. My dad has told me for years that Grandpa's go-to dinner for himself and his three boys whenever Grandma was out for the evening was Chef Boyardee's spaghetti dinner and iceberg wedges. That was back in the late '50s into the '60s.
I adore these videos and am so glad I found this channel. As a person raised in a Sicilian household, I am not going to lie-I love Chef Boyardee. Learning a bit of the history made me smile.
@ingridkeller9673 No, but Kraft sells a boxed spaghetti dinner complete with sauce, parmesan, and spaghetti at Wal-Mart. It's supposedly similar to the old Chef Boyardee one. Given the ingredients, I wouldn't bet on it though.
I remember my mom bringing home the boxed spaghetti dinners in the 60's. Other than toast, cereal, or sandwiches, it was the first meal that I learned to make by myself. I think I enjoyed just the cooked spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese as much as I did after topping it with the meat sauce. I remember the boxed pizza kits in the stores, but my mom never bought those. Later in life I found out that the Chef's first name was Hector; I got a kick out of the fact that I shared a first name with a famous chef...
There is a small shop in Philly that makes the most delicious tomato pie if you happen to be up that way (i am not alone in my assessment so while the name escapes me, "everyone" knows the shop). What's a four hour drive for good pizza? 😅
The sweetness also comes from the carrots. Its also why some brands of Jalapenos come with sliced carrots in alongside the peppers. Its to sweeten them while they're steam-sealed.
Interesting, I have a batch of red Turkish peppers, maybe carrots grated with them break a bit of the spicy heat also, per enhanced surface -> dilution? Where are my lab goggles...
@@SamBarge1I see from where you come - it is like adding a potato to overly salted dishes! It IMO depends which texture your sauce is desired to have. Grated carrot gives a bit of crunch to a sauce (and the fibers are probiotic), especially after long braising. Furthermore, the betacarotin/ lycopin mix (of which I want plenty in my sauce :-) ) is easier released into the liquid from smaller shreds/ concentrate, which I sautee in clarified butter with onions and garlic (to release the water AND oil soluble components) after browning the mincemeat. I freely admit that I am one of those who add plain sugar to tomato sauces, because I make them with concentrated tomato paste, the acidity of which will be too much for carrot confetti or a whole one to counteract. I can imagine that a whole transient carrot in a consommee would be great to balance out the taste! But I am often to hangry to make such a sophisticated dish -> Boiardi sugo for me, please.
@@sabinegierth-waniczek4872 I find that if you saute shredded carrots long enough they kinda disappear. Then again, maybe it's because I find texture in my sauces to be the enemy, so I try not to get any Chunkage in my servings lol
@@MissingmyBabbuThis is the problem - nowadays energy is too expensive to let carrot shreds do the Houdini! Apart from this I am totally in your camp: Nothing better than a slooooowly simmered beef stew with equal amounts of meat and then transcendent onions *sigh* Let there be peace in the pots :-))) But if I really need a velouté texture, I grip my big bad blender and dechunk the gunk. Nonetheless this occurs rarely, because I can not bear the mouthfeel of products that are too finely grinded/ blended. Maybe it remends me too much of baby food or liquid sustenance for the infirm (where are the simple words when I need them?!? Non-native speaker h3ll...). It is a pleasure to get so much information and inspiration, I am so happy to have found Max and his channel and community!
I remember the boxed spaghetti sauce cheese combo as well as the pizza. My dad was a real chef and refused to eat them, but my mom, who could not cook, loved the boxed spaghetti and or pizza. As a result, today, as I am 72, I still love to make spaghetti, although I do make it all from scratch, except the spaghetti noodles which I get from Italy.
It is a public fact that Beefaroni is a complete food group. Like many single-mom families, we found the spaghetti dinners (especially the meatball dinners) were a marvelous treat. Add toasted cheese bread and it was wonderful. Thank you Chef!!!!!! My mom also made Spam up like a little ham with cloves and maple syrup and served it with Kraft macaroni and cheese.
I took your advice and made it as you did use Anna's "Uncle Hectors tomato sauce". I was instantly transported back to my childhood. The flavor is phenomenal minus all that added sugar.
@@GamingGardevoir while most Italian Tomato based sauces share ingredients, one of Marinera's key ingredients is Garlic. What sets Uncle Hectors sauce apart regionally is that it lacks Garlic.
As someone not from the US, and for whom all this is new, I wanted to express my appreciation. It's fascinating to learn about past through this lens, and I so enjoy your enthusiasm and detective work. Kudos! Health!
I live in Milton Pennsylvania and used to work at "chefs" as we call it here. Hector also built a mansion for his wife here in Milton and of course its called the boardi mansion. The factory still stands but it is now owned by conegra. Hector also started the 1st. Tomato festival in 1977 which we still celebrate today.
The pizza was really good - late 50's, early 60's - we had a lot !! Making the crust was actually fun - of course, we always added a little ground beef and extra cheese - Thanks for the memories !!
I seem to remember the kits came with some fennel seeds, I loved it with the ground beef my mom would add. I need to do that again the next time I make pizza.
If memory serves me right, it was the spaghetti dinner that had the small plastic bag with assorted spices - not sure I ever knew exactly what. My mom had her own sauce recipe and spaghetti dinners weren't much of thing at our home. Most of the time when we had either angel hair of the bigger noodles, it was with tuna and Campbell's mushroom soup. I still like that !! It was the pizza box that had a more prominent place in the cabinet. Mom and dad loved the prices as well. In the late 60's I was making it so much, the Crisco I used with the crust made my hands really soft !! Just love the memories !! Have a nice day@@carolmelancon
@@carolmelanconGreat idea to add it to the minced meat, then you do something for your guts also (like in a salami finocchiata, very greasy, but the fennel helps to digest it...). I hope to remember it the next time I make pastizio or lasagna!
"The smile don't lie." When Max tastes his food, smiles and THEN says it's phenomenal, you KNOW it's gotta be good. I'm definitely trying this one for Saturday Night Spaghetti! Thank you so much! 🤗💖🙏🏻
lol, when I saw your face, Max, when you took that bite. The delight on your face made me interject out loud to the screen "Tell us how you really feel, Max" knowing it was going to be a wonderfully erudite expression of happiness. Thank you for taking us with you down the path of history.
Me too, he looked emotional, like he wanted to cry, at the same time, I got emotional about the memory and I'm writing this with tears in my eyes 😂 Tears of joy.
Definitely a good man. A pillar of the american history and someone that helped in the war effort as well as doing all he could to keep everyone’s job. Italian cuisine is second to none. Simple wholesome ingredients turn into huge flavour. Really one to try out for myself.
I'm a life-long Clevelander and had no idea Chef Boiardi lived and worked here. How cool! And, today, Big Italy has become Little Italy. Such a cool place to see.
I live near Cleveland so I have heard a few versions of the Boiardi story, the most plausible being parlaying his position at the Plaza into a head chef job at a small eatery in the Italian neighborhood, then bailing out of NYC for northeast Ohio, along with many thousands of other Italian immigrants. In my grandparents generation the population of cities like Cleveland and Youngstown (and our Ashtabula) took a very Italian shift and people wanted products they were familiar with, which fueled Hector's popularity along with other brands. Also, the Stop and Shop stores, that distributed the cookbook, can still be found in the area. - Thank you , Max, for a thorough and entertaining treatment of the subject, as always.
Its funny that, as a child, I took it for granted that he was just some made up mascot like Uncle Ben or the Borden cow. It was a trip when I first found out that he was not only a real guy, but a local hero! I wonder how much of his premade sauce was used in the making of Brier Hill style pizza?
I made pizza from those Chef Boyardee kits (or something VERY similar) as a newlywed in the early 1980s. Since we were on an extremely tight budget at the time, we'd add diced-up slices of American cheese if we couldn't afford shredded mozzarella, and would brown/crumble/drain 1/4 lb. of hamburger for a meat topping, since we couldn't afford pepperoni slices.
Aww, that's cheeseburger pizza, nothing wrong with that. My dad used to get the kits for us to help him with in the early 80s. We loved making the dough, pouring the sauce, sprinkling the cheese... They had their own distinct taste, but it was comforting.
15:20 if you add 'italian herb' packets, that's the modern day Kraft Pizza Kit here in Canada (at one point they included a free Diet Pepsi in the box). I remember about 15 or so years ago buying a Chef Boyardee pizza kit at my local market, and because i needed more, so i bought a store brand one as well (Co-Op Brand), and when i had gotten them home and opened both, the contents were identical down to the sachets the ingredients came in!!
I remember those boxed spaghetti dinners. My Dad's wife had them in the house just for me because she didn't like spaghetti. I'm not sure how I discovered spaghetti but once I found it, it was and has always been my favorite dish. I also liked the canned ravioli and beefaroni. It was great in a school lunch box if you forgot to pack one the night before. All you had to do was open the can, dump it into a bowl w/ a leakproof lid and put in a spoon. I never ate it heated up. Boy, those were the good old days.
Mom used to fix the "spagetti in the box" dinner every Wednesday as she worked as a reporter for the local newspaper. Single pan dinner in the electric skillet. To brown the burger, then add the can o' sauce, then the boiled pasta. And voila! Dinner for a family.
Thank you MAX for sharing this video!! My mother who was a HUGE fan of your Show and SPAGHETTI one of her favorite dishes passed away 10 days ago, I will make this in her HONOR thank you so much for sharing this GIFT!! ❤️ 🙏
Thank you for the trip down memory lane Max. In the late 50s/early 60s, the Chef's boxed pizza was a once a month treat for my sister and I. Mixing the dough and stretching it onto the pizza pan became a skill we were quite proud of. Our mother refused to even taste it so making sure we had a pan and the pizzas at all made the treat even better. We thought it was an exotic dish never realizing he was in Cleveland while we lived between Cincinnati and Dayton.
17:20 The recipe called for onion and carrot? That's the natural sweetness, especially if the onion and carrot caramelize together. My nonna would do the same thing with shredded carrot in her sauce.
@@lrom5445I've heard of people using shallots, but have never tried them. I suspect I wouldn't like them either. You're right that people's tastes vary. Yesterday I cooked a ribeye to a perfect medium rare, the way I like it. It was wonderfully juicy and tender. I can't fathom why people prefer well done beef, ie dry and "burnt". But that's exactly what my sister likes. She's one of those "red phobic" people.
I just made this recipe with a few tweaks (no fresh basil handy). It was simple and delicious! Our toddler snarfed his plateful and cried when we took his plate away. He ate a second plateful too (he NEVER asks for seconds). We will definitely be making this again. Thanks, Max! Also, we just got your signed cookbook at last, it's BEAUTIFUL!
15:17 you can still buy the pizza kits and it still comes with just the parm cheese. The sauce doesn’t taste exactly the same as it did when I was a child, but I still buy the pizza kits. They are nostalgic for me and I love how easy the crust is to make. I do add mozzarella to mine…but I still put the parm on top under the mozzarella. Every time I make it, it takes me back to my childhood. My mom would make pizza about once a month and she always used the Chef Boyardee kits…us kids would choose our toppings and we’d make four pizzas to our liking. You could make two pizzas with one kit. I think it was like .80¢ per box and about $2 for enough mozzarella to cover all 4 pizzas. So my mom would feed a family of 5 with less than $4. ✌🏻😊
I’ve yet to make the bolognese, I did make Hector’s sauce though and really enjoy it. Max appears to have made a hybrid of the two to approximate the canned sauce
Thanks for the episode! Note about the boxed pizza: The box suggested toppings such as hamburger, Sausage, mushrooms or torn basil leaves (strangely, no pepperoni that I recall). My hometown had such bad water that when Mom would get a quart of water from my Grandparent's pump, we knew we would have Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza that week! Always with hamburger (and occasionally mushrooms). Waiting for the crust to rise was the hardest part. It did not need anything else because the sauce and cheese were so good and the crust was fresh and perfect every time. Thanks for bringing back such great memories! Wish I could have a slice right now!
My dad used to make the pizza with just the kit only, and to this day it still is a nostalgic taste. They don't have the parm anymore but if you buy something like 4c brand that doesn't use cellulous powder, it tastes the same
I’m so excited to find this recipe demonstration. I noticed my childhood Chef Boyardee ravioli tasted different when I tried it a year or two ago for nostalgia. I consider myself a good cook, but I have never made a spaghetti sauce that tasted above cafeteria grade. I don’t know why I always manage to cook the flavor out of it. This recipe gives me hope!
this is the kind of sauce that I grew up on. Some of my mother's family were from northern Italy and this is pretty much her sauce. I still make it today!! I'll try the butter and parm on the noodles again... I haven't done that in a long time. Thanks for sharing an amazing simple family sauce. So good. It gave me the feels seeing you eat and enjoy it!!
My Mom used to get that Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Dinner in the box with the pasta, meat sauce and cheese. And it was awesome. This was back in the 1960s. Will have to try this recipe. Thanks for sharing.
I agree. It tasted way better back in the 70's and 80's. I do recall the throwback cans and I did buy them. I also ate them and yes, it was closer to what I had as a kid. Wish they bring it back again. That looks great and I will try it. The butter and parm cheese on the spaghetti is a great idea. Love your videos. Awesome work.
Great job on the website, Max. The canned Chef Boyardee just can't compete with making it yourself. Removing the tomato seeds which add a bitterness that I never liked so I've always removed them, adding carrots, also something I've done and it really does make a difference, makes for a much better flavor. And butter on the noodles with the cheese, a long time favorite with or without the sauce.
The History Channel has a series called "The Food That Built America" and I remember the episode featuring Chef Boiardi. It was interesting. I'm always curious about how foods came about. I think it's why I love your channel so much.
I still have cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Spaghetti and meatballs for a quick meal if I have nothing else. They are very cheap and tasty too. I loved it as a kid, but then again I like Vienna Sausages and Beenie-Weanies too. Totally fascinating story.
I'm from Milton, Pennsylvania! It was very interesting to hear the history of Chef Boyardee. I love the days when our town smells like tomato sauce. My friend's father even dresses up as Hector Boiardi for our town's annual Harvest Festival parade in September :)
A friend of mine from Italy said that they don't use as much garlic as people think. She said for example, that when they use it on bread, they take a clove of garlic and lightly rub it over the bread so that it's almost imperceptible. She is from the Piedmont region. She didn't speak about all of Italy but she indicated that it was the general practice in Italy.
Yeah I’ve heard the situation with garlic in Italy is not great and kinda discriminatory. Something like many/most of em think it’s super low class to use and get really judgy about it
@@monhi64 She never mentioned it being considered low class. But it could be because she didn't want to offend me. However I did learn something ( not from her) that the garlic they use in Italy is different than the garlic we use in the US. It's a larger, milder garlic with a lot more cloves. It's around the size of what is known as elephant garlic.
@@boredpeanutbutter75 So this is actually really interesting. Garlic has for a very long time in Italy been considered poor peoples food. It was still used, but using it regularly, and especially using a lot of it in a recipe was considered a sign that you were dirt poor. As a result, Italians, especially the ones in the richer North, prided themselves on using as little garlic as possible. The Italian and Sicilian immigrants to the U.S however were mostly from the South a historically poorer and more agricultural so they were already using garlic in their food, and since garlic didn't carry the same stigma as it did back home, there was no one to really look down on them for using as much garlic as they wanted when times got tough. But what's really intriguing is that even after the cultural bleed over that happened during WW2 it's only been in the last 20-30 years that the Italian American love affair with garlic has started to upend the stigma in Italy.
@@89Crono That is very interesting. It's so silly how people will use just about anything to create class distinctions. I might feel embarrassed if I've got garlic breath but not for using garlic in my cooking. Anyway, thanks for sharing this interesting information.
In boy scouts we made reflector ovens in metal shop that folded down flat. The cooking shelf was the exact size for those boxed pizzas. Not fancy but delicious by campfire.
My family used the pizza products while I was growing up in the 1960's. My mom added toppings, but the basic ingredients that came in the kit tasted good and felt like a great treat. I love knowing his story and how much her gave back to the United States and other countries during WWII. Thanks!
Another wonderful food history video! This story reminds me of a movie that I just love, called The Big Night with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, released in 1996, which tells the story of two Italian brothers who emigrate to the US and open an authentic Italian restaurant in New Jersey, and all the trials and tribulations they go through, particularly getting Americans to understand actual Italian dishes! It’s a charming movie, and highly recommended for foodies! I look forward to every Tuesday for a new video from you Max, and thank you!
My family in the coal fields of WV back in the 1960s, we made the Boyardee Pizza nearly every week. We would mix the package of flour with water and spread the dough out on a round cookie sheet then spread on the can of sauce and sprinkle the dried cheese. We almost always also had pepperoni slices too. I was probably in my late teens before I heard of any other pizza other than what you made at home from the yellow box. As far as taste I would probably say something like a thin crust Little Caesars or Domino's.
Now the kit taste nothing like we remembered especially the can sauce they sell the pizza sauce here alone in save a lot markets here in Buffalo New anyways
You're getting sweetness from the carrots and basil along with the tomato's. My God what a simple and wholesome sauce. Defiantely on my list now. I'm 55 and grew up in a small Iowa town, the nearest place to get pizza was 12 miles away, so the old Chef's pizza dinner was a fun way for us to have fresh pizza on Saturday nights back in the 70's. Thank you, Ettore. And thank you to the Boiardi family.
One of my best memories is eating Chef Boyardee pizzas from the box with my mom and sister in the late 80's. I don't think it had anything other than grated parm for cheese and little pepperoni, but it was so good when I was a kid. This video made me smile.
I remember that Chef Boyardee pizza was still around in the 80s. My husband and I both have fond memories of that stuff from our childhood. I recall my cousin making it once and he really jazzed it up... he put hotdog slices on it in addition to the sprinkle of cheese. So fancy!! :D
Grew up eating that pizza almost every Sun night. My mom would occasionly put hotddog slices on it and chopped onions. A couple years ago I tried the modern version... Not the same at all :(
There are a lot of cooking channels on youtube, but yours is my absolute favorite. I love love love love the history lesson, and for some reason especially this one as someone who grew up in the 70s eating a lot of beefaroni. I will say though my current favorite is the mini ravioli with meatballs cuz it's a little sweeter, but Beefaroni is amazing
He was a great supporter of HEALTHY lunches for kids in school. I grew up on many of his recipes that were carefully followed by legions of cafeteria lunch ladies in Ohio. It was more than a "spaghetti dinner." Yes, many of those recipes are in his nieces book.
That poor kid who lost his meatball should have had a delicious Chef Boyardee meal instead. At least then if it rolls out the door it's still eat-able 😉
I used to work for ConAgra/Chef-Boyardee. The plant in Milton PA is HUGE - I want to say it was 12-14 stories tall. The plant personnel were wonderful and gave us a tour of the facilities. They were making ravioli when I visited. They could make about 2 million cans in a day at full capacity. As a young latchkey kid, with a working single mom, I would sometimes fix myself a can of the spaghetti - which I loved at the time.
My grandma used to make a sauce similar to this! She added a diced bell pepper instead of a carrot, some paprika and dried oregano bloomed in the hot oil with the onions. It's such a delicious, hearty sauce! The bell pepper really does something in the sauce, it's such a distinctive taste. Almost adds a little bitterness to cut through the sweetness of the tomatoes and lifts the whole thing.
Ate the pizza mix alot during my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s, it did not come with mozzerella, but my Mom bought big blocks of low moisture mozz, and it was MY job to grate it. Back then, "pre-grated" mozz just didn't exist. We put that on top, and mushrooms and pepperoni, and it was amazing. We had a family of 5 (my two sisters, myself, and my Mom and Dad) made 5 pizzas every single Saturday night. A family tradition. Later we moved onto "Appian Way" mixes, and then my Mom found frozen bread dough, and we made our pizzas using that. A flavor I remember fondly!
I use fresh mozzarella frequently and can't imagine having to grate it. That's probably why classico Italian pizzas just cut the mozz into pads. Maybe the water content was lower? **hopefully. Hopefully the water content was lower.
Max! I remember the throwback cans that came out about a decade ago! I did some research myself when it came out, and from what I learned, the biggest difference is the herbs added, specifically oregano and basil used in the sauces!
While stationed in Afghanistan at a remote Forward Operating Base (FOB) I ordered a small pizza oven and two cases for Chef Boyardee peperoni pizza kits from Amazon. Since we only had one hot meal a day and two MREs these were a welcome treat!
Boiardi’s story during the depression and war was so wholesome. The man really believed in his food, so much that he started growing his own ingredients in the factory and encouraging farmers to grow more tomatoes for him. He’s such a cool guy.
It’s probably a lot cheaper too to buy directly from the farmers than thru wholesalers, given the scale of tomatoes needed.
“Anyone can cook “ 😂😂😂❤
Yeah... can't imagine he could import most of that after the US dollar crashed.
You mean up until the point where he sold the company to an outfit that changed all the recipes into mass produced chemical laden garbage food?
@@PatrickDKing So that he wouldn't have to layoff all of his employees. What the company did after his death is not his fault.
As someone who was born outside of the USA, the most confusing part of American culture was founding out chef Boyardee was a real person while Denny from Denny's wasn't
And that Betty Crocker want a real person!
I've noticed that most of the time, the simpler the name, the more likely it ain't a real dude. Denny, Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, etc.
The weirdest part about American restaurant, food brand, and franchise names is that it's a coin flip for if said name is based on a real person/founder or if it's just a made up mascot name.
As someone who was born inside the US, I had no idea chef boyardee was a real person until this very moment (this very video)
Or a ww1 German aircraft hero@@joshuakim5240
I am 65 years old, when I was young my father would make a Chef Boyardee pizza for dinner on a Saturday night back in the early 1960's. It gave my mom a break from cooking, and I learned how to make pizza with my Dad. I remember the one box kit and can of dried parma' cheese. You'd mixed the dough and let it rise. Spread the dough by hand on a cookie sheet until you got a nice thin crust, 14" pie and it was good. Luckily I grew up in the Philadelphia area where Pizza was "King" and fast food chains had yet to proliferate. So as times got better, so did the pizza, but the most enjoyable pizza I ever had was the Chef Boyardee pizza my Dad and I made.
I am just 6 younger than you are. We used the same pizza kits when I was a kid, but making the pizza was more of a family project.
We were still making it in the 90’s (I’m 38). Though my mom would buy extra Parmesan to shake on it to at least cover the top. My parents never did frozen pizza when I was growing up, it was either a pizza kit when we were young and the budget was tight, or order out from a pizza shop. Last time I made one was in college about 20yrs ago. I think they have since changed the kits to not include Parmesan and different dough, etc.
They still sell those kits - my dad and I make those pizzas every so often as well. Some of the best pizza sauce you can get. Even if I make everything else from scratch, I’ll still buy those cans of sauce for my own pizzas. (I’m 29 by the way)
There's nothing quite like nostalgia to.season your food with
I wish I grew up in the 60s
The man was a hero who wore an apron rather than a cape. Awesome story!
A cape is just apron worn backwards
He wore a cape, but since he was a foreigner, he got confused about which way it went.
These cape comments are so cringey. Where did this come from?
I guess I’m now Officially Old.
I grew up in the 1950s with that boxed spaghetti dinner with the cans of sauce and Parmesan cheese. My mother didn’t pry the lid off the can, instead she used a churchkey can opener to punch several holes in the lid so that it acted like a shaker.
And yes, it was pretty darn good to eat.
What's a churchkey can opener? Is that the pokey thing my grandma has on the fridge? I could never figure out how to use it
@@MoondustManwise Yeahp, that's a church key. The rounded end is for opening bottles, the pointed end is for putting holes in cans. On the underside there's a little 'hook' that you place under the rim of the can and use as a lever to poke the sharp point into the top of the can. For liquids, you make two holes, a smaller one on one side to let air in, and a larger directly opposite to pour the liquid out of.
We had it in the '60s too. I think we probably had it at least once a month.
The original church key opener was shaped more like heavy wire curved to fit bottle caps, and was the form named "church key" for its resemblance to old keys. The form Jennifer describes is a bit more recent but still many decades old. I've never seen a real church key opener, but I've had a couple of the later form for years. I can't remember the last time I used the pokey end, though. I vaguely remember cans of tomato juice that had to be opened that way, with the big and little openings as described.
@@MoondustManwise, it has a triangular pointed edge, used for poking holes in cans, or opening bottles. It was called a "church key", because old timey church keys, for opening the massive main doors, could do the same thing, if manipulated correctly. Buck up the small lever at the base firmly to the can, and push down.
I grew up in the town with the original Chef Boyardee factory. He opened it in the middle of Central Pennsylvania so he could have access to fresh tomatoes. I used to see his nephew and his nephew's wife at my work at the grocery store.
U r one very blessed person. Ty for sharing your story. 😊
*BONA FIDE!!!*
I was born in the town he was born in. Piacenza, Italy
Hell yeah. NEPA stays winning.
i'm assuming you also tasted his actual handmade sauce. if you did, could you maybe cook this recipe and tell us if it's the same sauce?
As distant relatives of the Boiardi family, my grandparents were also from Piacenza. The sauce I grew up on and that I was taught to make, is essentially the same as Chef Hectors (Only difference being that my grandmother also added a few pats of butter to the sauté along with the olive oil and garlic always made its way into the sauce!) The sweetness comes not only from the tomato’s, and the slow cooking, but also from the carrots. Great presentation. Thank you!!!!!!
I was guessing that (since carrots get very sweet when cooked). Thank you!
🐻❄️🐻❄️🐻❄️🐻❄️😍😍😍😍
Came here to say it was the carrots... good stuff
Did you ever go to the mansion in maryland?
We put some raisins into the gravy!
Sugar is added to tomato sauce not just to sweeten it but to lower the acidity of the tomato. But you can do the same thing with carrots which are much healthier and complement the sauce much better.
which is where the sofrito comes in
Chef Boyardee Spaghetti used to have orange colored sauce until someone (me I hope) complained and got heard!
No
I came to say this. That sweetness he's tasting is partially the tomatoes but the carrots are pulling a lot of weight there
@@krisshaw9464 yes!
Excellent. Sweetness comes from the carrots btw. Same thing works for chili and broth for soup. The sweetness from the carrot is not overwhelming and not out of place
Both that and tomato are pretty sweet. On that note, it's pretty common to have some carrots in hot sauces, and I don't really like that because it makes them unsuitably sweet for many uses. 😅 In a sauce like this, though, I am sure it works great.
@@CorrodiasI just made a giant batch of hot sauce with carrots in, and i usually cut it with quite a lot of vinegar and oil so it keeps longer, and that can balance out the sweetness. Sometimes I mix it with Mayonnaise and that works too. I like it because you get hit with the flavor before you get hit with the heat.
You actually get sweetness from the onion, too. They're not super high in sugar, but there's more than most people realize, and it really comes out when you cook them.
San Marzano tomatoes from Italy are naturally nicely sweet. I almost never make a pizza anymore without them. They are my favourite tomato in the world!
I just knew there would be a smarty pants in the comment section that had to point out that carrots are sweet
My Dad had a small food stand near the Simmons Mattress Company in Bayway on the Elizabeth & Linden border in New Jersey, selling sandwiches, coffee tobacco goods, bottled sodas & ice cream, et cet. During WW2, he remained open 24 hours, having helpers come in to run the place, as the mattress factory had switched over to 24 hour war production items (one of which was the bazooka). He was awarded a medal that had a large letter E on it for his work toward the war effort. He was blind, so he was more than happy to contribute in the only way he could. I still have the medal.
Your dad sounds like an amazing person.
I have no idea how he made food, but that is v sweet
@@StonedtotheBones13 its not the same being blind and being incapacitated. People adapt at overcoming their difficulties.
What a cool story. Thank you for sharing it with us! It's always fascinating to learn the different ways people contributed during the war, even if they couldn't be the ones fighting. I'm glad the government took the effort to formally thank him.
You're Father was a hero. Please, always remember that.
As one of the grand children of Chef Hector, I heard so many stories growing up. My father was the only child of Hector and Helen; so the stories I heard I tended to believe more than the stories from other sources. It’s always fun reading about my family.
How cool!
Awesome coming across a member of the Boiardi family! Your grandfather was a great Italian American!
But, can you cook?
Bro that's awesome! Do you still get royalties?
@@bigfenix8272nah he doesn't. Look at that sweaty profile pic
I really enjoyed this episode! I live in the province of Piacenza; the story is that Chef Boiardi returned to Italy in his old age and built a summer home out in the country, across the River Trebbia from the village where I live. The style of spaghetti sauce is very typical of this area, and as everyone else has said, the carrots and the onions are what gives it that sweetness. Thank you for your always meticulous research!
You cook a ragù for less than an hour? With mushroom?
@@WinstonSmithGPT I've never tried this particular recipe but apparently it works
from what I have learned online (Alton Brown) I thought Italians thought Americans were strange putting meat sauce on spaghetti instead on wider noodles or shaped pasta that held the sauce better like penne. Is it common to use spaghetti for meat sauces in parts of Italy?
@@jc4jax I can't answer from personal experience, but can perhaps offer a glimmer of info from family experience. One branch of my family is 4th generation Italian American and we are very fortunate that we still have connections and roots in "the old country" with family from both sides coming and going off and on throughout the generations. The old country parts of the family are absolutely shocked about how the new world parts of the family do family dishes. A lot of the time, things like sauce recipes have stayed the same, mostly, with only certain things like the type or cut of meat changing, and oftentimes, the type of pasta changes. From what we have gathered, this has a lot to do with the great depression and WW2. Making use of what was cheap and available changed things up. As my rural Oregonian Italian American family members put it "where we are, you got two choices of noodle. Macaroni or spaghetti. You got four choice of meat. Ground beef, ground pork, ground chicken, or ground venison. Don't like it? Tough."
PS my uncle makes a killer venison bolognese, which you would never see in Italy.
The River Trebbia!! The site of one of Hannibal's victories and Rome's defeats.
I really appreciate the fact that Max puts as much work into the history part of the presentation as he does for the cooking and seriously researches his subjects like a professional historian.
Something slightly off: the published recipe for Hector’s sauce didn’t include meat, mushrooms, or carrots. It was simply the greatest marinara sauce I’ve ever made. Max’s recipe took liberties with adding the ingredients of the canned sauce
@@GamingGardevoir Wow. You didn't pay attention then, because he explains the sauce in his video.
@@FVWhimsy2010 ?
Hello! My dad jus recently died and we used to watch this show together all the time, and i wanted to thank you for making these videos and helping me stay on my feet. This video reminded me of him as he loved chef boyardee canned foods. Thank you for having this channel. Update: thank you for all the replies, literally crying because people are actually appreciating me for once! thanks.
Deepest condolences for your dad's passing. May his memory be a comfort to you and the people who knew him ❤
I am sorry to hear that 🫂❤️
love u be well
May his memory be a blessing .
Sorry to hear of his passing. May he and your family be at peace 💐 🕊
I remember the first time my mom made a Chef Boyardee pizza and my brother and I were fascinated with the yeasty smell of the dough as it was rising on the back of the stove top; that was probably 60 years ago but I remember that first bite of pizza and nothing has ever tasted so exotic and delicious! We lived in Tennessee then and it was hard finding those food products, too.
I used to make this in the 70's with my grandma and my mom. Not sure when they stopped making the kit. If I found it now I would definitely buy it and make it again. Great memories and it was delicious!
We had Appian Way pizza, which I now realize was probably a rip off of Chef Boyardee pizza kit. :D
Pizza was exotic here in Sweden at least until the 1970s. It was probably brought here by Swedish diplomats in Italy in the late 1800s, but people in general didn't eat any Italian food except for macaroni boiled in milk until the late 1960s. My maternal grandfather was born in 1920 and passed away in 1989. He literally never tasted pizza or spaghetti in his whole life. People in America were open to new influences much earlier than we were in Europe.
@@francisdec1615 The US probably had more Italian immigrants than Sweden did? (Same for immigrants from lots of other places.)
We used to have the Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza when I was a kid (late 1970's). My mother would load it with so much ground beef, mushrooms and green peppers that we had to eat it with a knife and fork. It was more of a casserole than pizza. The parmesan came in a little silver tin with a peel-back foil lid and the dough was in one of those cardboard tubes that you used a knife to "pop" open, like the old style Pillsbury cinnamon rolls.
Hmm…I wonder if the crust being in a pop can was a regional thing or if they changed it in the late 70’s? I grew up eating it as well, but the crust was a powder in a packet and you mixed 1/2 cup of hot water into it, put a bit of oil on the dough, cover with a kitchen towel and let it sit for 5 mins to rise. Then you pressed it onto your oiled pizza pan and voilà… freshly made pizza crust!
They still have the kits, btw. And the dough is made the same way. I still buy them because it’s so nostalgic for me. ✌🏻😊
@@melissadunton3534 That's the version my mom would buy where she had to fix the dough. And she always added meat. Could be ground beef, sausage, pepperoni, etc. And a big helping of cheese on top.
@@kmbbmj5857 yes! My mom would always add other toppings and mozzarella too! Sometimes she would let each of us (kids) pick the topping we wanted and she would make one of each kind as well as one with just extra cheese…so we’d usually have 4 pizzas for the entire family. It’s so nostalgic for me. I still love to make pizza with the chef boyardee kits. ✌🏻😊
Oh yes, I love that pizza! The sauce is unmatched. ❤ Now I've got a craving 😊. I live in a hot region, but will get the oven on soon.
@@melissadunton3534 My mum, too! Both the Pizza and the spaghetti dinner. It was always a treat. Thanks, Mum!
That was really cool he found a way to not lay any one off, you don't hear about people caring for employees like that anymore. Really awesome of him.
Too bad that selling it ultimately led to the recipe being changed to what it is now. Which is terrible if you don't have nostalgia for it.
Bob’s Red Mill has also a wholesome story on how Bob benefited his employees. Check it out. 😊
@@adde9506 they sold the throwback cans a few years ago, the taste was far better
Different time people had souls and cared about people more than their money
@juanelorriaga2840 NOPE industrialists were just as heartless back then. The unions arose in late 1800s because most factory owners were Not as kind as Boyardee
.
I actually met the chef while on vacation in Florida in the late 1950s. He and his family were down to earth, willing to talk to a young family while sitting on the beach, even giving suggestions on sand castle building. On another note, my mother in law came from the same area in Italy as the chef. She also made pizza with just sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. She always refused to add spices, meat or mozzarella. Thanks for another great episode.
In the 1950's. 😳
So you're old enough to remember Hank Williams Sr being alive, and the news of his passing in 1953?
That’s so cool.
That's basically "roman-style" pizza, aka foccacia with a bit of tomato sauce.
Why are you lying? It's not like this is a karma system
I am actually very j right now. That's awesome!!😊
Little did he know that decades later, his food would be enjoyed by babies in high chairs world-wide.
Little did he know that the vampires that ended up with his wonderful company would absolutely ruin all of his great recipes and turn them into reconstituted cat puke.
I had a major surgery back in November and your videos kept me company during my recovery. They were the perfect combo of being so entertaining and educational, but also short enough that my shorter attention span from the meds I was on didn't fight with me as much as with longer videos. Also, and I mean this in the best way possible, I didn't feel as guilty for falling asleep to them because I could always go back and re-watch them, where as with longer form videos I'd had alot of trouble finding where I left off. I fell asleep randomly alot post surgery, as to be expected. Thank you for these great videos and all the work and research you do to make them!
I hope that you feel better.
hope you're doing well😊
Hope you're doing better!
Hector's boxed 'sketti' dinner was the very first pasta I ever tried. It was considered quite the thing back in the '60s. I was hooked on it from the get-go. I make my own sauce from scratch these days, but it's coz of Chef Boiardi that I have my life-long love of pasta.
I suspect you weren't alone. After all, you look at Italian-American dishes that caught on here, and you've got a few assorted dishes that had their own origins (such as fettucini Alfredo--covered in this channel elsewhere--and Neapolitan-style pizza). And then you have pasta with tomato-based sauces, some containing meat. When Boiardi started his restaurant there wasn't a preexisting market for that kind of food, but now it's hard to imagine a time when it wasn't part of the typical American diet. I think we have Chef Boiardi to thank for dishes like spaghetti and meatballs becoming common dishes here.
I have an original 1950 jar of Chef Boy-ar-dee meat sauce with the full list of ingredients.
Its net weight is 8 ounces and the ingredients are as follows:
Tomato puree
Water
Onions
Beef
Carrots
Mushrooms
Salt
Wheat flour
Cornstarch
Beef fat
Cracker meal
Sugar
Spices
It came concentrated and the instructions recommend diluting it as desired by adding half a sauce bottle of water and then heating until it reaches a boil.
Interesting. Also I have the book with Uncle Hector’s sauce recipe in it: the recipe did not include meat, mushrooms, or carrots. It was a pure marinara sauce.
There was a Bolognese sauce recipe that had those in it though, it was used with rigatoni or as a layer in lasagna (with béchamel sauce instead of ricotta cheese for the alternate layer)
How long have you had it? Do you think it's still edible? okay let me rephrase that - anything is technically edible once. Do you think it's still PALATABLE?
Make a video of it, please!
but what are the spices!~? thats the IMPORTANT PART~! WHAT WAS HIS SECRET SPICE BLEND!?
@@lornbaker1083 "spices" for this would be Black Pepper as well as Basil and/or Nutmeg
3:19 Tomatoes passed through a sieve this way is called "passata di pomodoro" in Italian; (it's essentially tomato puree that isn't concentrated; you probably could even use tomato puree with some added water).
So you might be able to find a can or carton of Passata and skip the breaking your spatula step completely.
Alternatively throw together a 28oz can of Crushed Tomatoes and a 6 oz can of tomato paste, and you're in flavortown.
Ahhh, so that is what passata is. I often see it next to the canned tomatoes and pure. Thanks for the tip. I'll try that next time I'll cook pasta with a tomato sauce.
If you are going to use a passata, I recommend you search the ingredients to get one that is only Tomatoes and salt (and basil if added), try and avoid the ones that add sugar or stabilizers. I find that Mutti is the best.
@@bartomand3681 Yes, can't go wrong with the Mutti passata!
I like living on the edge
17:40 the sweetness you are tasting is from the carrots. Many Italian red sauce recipes use carrots for their sweetness instead of sugar, it is a more subtle sweetness.
The Bolognese I occasionally make used a couple of carrots, and the sweetness is really subtle and not at all sharp like it would be with sugar. I blitz them in my food processor so it is really fine, almost grated.
I’m from Cleveland, and my dad’s spaghetti is made almost exactly like this. He learned from his mom, I believe, who almost certainly ate at his restaurant in “Big Italy”!
That child-like smile of delight while you were chewing was so endearing. That was a face that says, "This tastes like childhood memories."
Hi Max, as a kid in the 1970s the pizza boxes were still available and I remember them. Now, keep in mind, this was not rich people food, we were poor and it was cheap, and I'd never had any other pizza experience at that time. The crust came out thin but not light, the sauce kinda became a part of it (little moisture left), and the predominant flavor was the parm. No cheese-pull on that one, but I liked it as a kid. I had nothing better with which to compare.
Grew up in the 80s and 90s and it was in regular rotation at our house. My dad hated it!!
My mom would sprinkle cooked ground beef on top.
We did have a small chain of good Italian restaurants in San Diego at the time. (50’s and 60’s). The seven Pernicano brothers had each opened up a resturaunt using their mother’s recipes. Darned good pizza. But on a house painters wages it was a special occasion to go. So we had a lot of Chef Boyardee when I was growing up.
I think you should have used quotation marks around "Parm." Your description was otherwise perfect. 😄
@@cartoonistaaronhazouriKids these days don't know how good they have it. When I was their age we had to travel an hour each way to the nearest pizza hut, in the back seat of a car that was falling apart despite the fact it was only a couple years old, no entertainment other than torturing your siblings and getting yelled at by your parents. The other options were frozen pizzas that were terrible, soggy bake-at-home fresh pizzas from the meat case, or the chef boyardee or some other brand shelf-stable kits. I can understand why everyone is overweight these days. Most of the food we eat today hadn't been invented yet.
We loved them
Not that anyone will see this _BUT_ I grew up in an era long before there was a Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, or Domino's Pizza on every corner of every medium to large community. We purchased Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pizza kits and added our own fresh ingredients. I even made the pizzas ahead of time and froze them to thaw and cook on Sunday's after church. They were very good. Occasionally, I would pre-cook the rolled out dough a few minutes and then add the sauce and toppings for a crisper crust. I hadn't thought of that in ages until you mentioned it.
I doubt they are even sold anymore, but up until about 25 years ago, I purchased the spaghetti dinners for just me and my husband before the kids started arriving. Again, I added fresh ingredients to jazz it up and we loved it. Thanks for this video. It brought back some very fond memories. Oh, and the Beefaroni? My husband still has me buy it for his lunch at work and my autistic 23 year old daughter loves ABCs and 123s with meatballs. So, it's still a staple in the house and will be as long as it's still produced.
Kraft makes a boxed spaghetti dinner with seasonings in a packet. It's very good.
Growing up in a small Michigan farm town (sign still says "Village Limits" and there's not a single fast food restaurant) - "ethnic food" was the Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee pizza in the box, complete with the sawdust parmesan cheese in a tiny can. That and La Choy or Chun King vacuum sealed Chinese food with those crispy noodles! Great memories!
That's so cute!! Is the small Michigan farm town still a small farm town, or does it now have a Starbucks and a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner?
@@DizzyBusy still Village Limits and still no fast food or Starbucks or DD. There's a Subway, and 2 bars (there were 3 back in the day) 2 mom n pop pizza joints a bakery/cafe and a "Dairy Den"! Still a tiny town!
The pizza kits in the box were so good. It was a special treat to make one. I used to think it wasn't much like "real" pizza but as an adult I realize simple pizza like that kit would make are the real pizza and the stuff just drowned in toppings are just junk food. I get it now.
Omg, La Choy chow mein noodles. Those were the special dinner in our house too! (We ate Boy-Ar-Dee and Campbells almost daily.) Needless to say, I grew up FAR from any coastal city.
My father in law Mr. Ted who became the banquet manager of the Plaza got his start with The Boiardi brothers in 1929. He was the maitre d of the Persian Room first. He also managed Truman Capotes Black and White Ball. His uncle John Foglia was one of the investors in the Boiardi company. It was bought out by Kraft. Love your channel and never miss an episode.
Really?!? Now I know from where the design and the setup of the product was familiar to me!
I do not know if it is more widely known, but in Germany the brand Kraft sells a pasta product, prepacked with tomato paste, spices, and formerly a sort of grated cheese (I liked it, but too many people not, they now sell it for the same price without the cheese, which led me to return to making my own meals), ready in 9 to 12 minutes, box design VERY similar to the Boiardi carton.
It is called Miracoli, and it was one of the cherished treats of my childhood! The original sauce was so delicious, but I never knew why. It took me years to determine what the secret ingredient of the spice and herb mix was, but it was really easy after I had a Bloody Mary - it's the celeriac salt, which since then I make myself to have it ready for tomato sugo!
Until the ca. 2000s it was available in every supermarket, but since then - tumbleweeds. Maybe too many allergies, so that nobody buys it anymore... It is really useful if you can not get fresh celery or celeriac for any sugo, and luckily easy to prepare.
Max does such a great job to teach and entertain his audience! And aftewards, something delicious to eat - what's not to love? The community here is s friendly and educated, I always learn so much new stuff, for which I am grateful!!! Have a nice week, and always eat well:-)
i love food history thank you for your story
@@breeabroderick1204Thank you for being interested and so kind! Food is also our on history, and often it triggers memories of happy moments - I for one am happy for this :-) Have a good day!
@@sabinegierth-waniczek4872 There was celery salt in the spaghetti sauce? I have never heard of it. I love celery seed.
Thank you for this wonderful throwback to my childhood. You see I DO remember those boxes of Chef Boyardee spaghetti when I was about 7 or 8 years old. It was the highlight of our week. When you opened the can of sauce and cheese you could smell the wonderful aroma of freshness and the “love” that went into making that product. We couldn’t wait to put them all together and enjoy our Chef Boyardee spaghetti dinner. And…..you are absolutely correct the recipe for things like the Beefaroni and Ravioli have changed over the years and it tastes nothing like my taste buds remember them to be like when I was young. You see the olfactory part of our brain has the capacity to retain memories far better than almost any other part of our brain.
Thank you again,
Dr. George Joseph
Dallas, Tx
So right, the beeforoni was pretty tasty back in the 60s. Now it’s not that good.
Here in Oz we have our icons too - like Arnott's Shortbread which taste NOTHING like when I had them as a kid. It's death by a thousand cuts - a different production method, butter not the same, one sugar swapped out for another, and so it goes....... Sad, but reality. I grew up in Toronto, arrived in 68 when I was 11 and I remember Chef Boyardee was SUCH a treat - and Mum was from the Slovenian/Italian border and is still a bloody good cook at 97 LOL Oh the power of marketing!
@@andersonomo597 it's the same in Britain. I miss when real butter was used in things and pop had real sugar.
@@andersonomo597 even mcdonalds isn't as good as it used to be.
the annoying thing is that the anti-corporates try to tell us that it gets more and more engineered to be addictive while it's just less so because they try to save money. like the cheeseburger, the cheese should go on it straight after the grill and if the patty waits for 20 minutes in some hotbox before that it just will not be as good. I never order cheese on a burger from bk because the recipe for that includes microwaving it to melt the cheese a little bit - and it doesn't even melt so whats the point! and there's never ready made burgers now waiting due to the hotboxing policy changes so it's slower to get the food(everything is assembled to order) while also affecting the taste negatively - and the restaurant floorplans are still bizarrely made as if you could get the food instantly after paying.
they're also messing with soda tastes too - also not to save you but to just save their expenses, the sugarfree versions of sprite and others need a lot less. sure it's sweetness value whatever is the same but it doesn't taste the same and it doesn't feel the same, it doesn't bubble the same, it doesn't even flow the same without the mass of the sugar in it and it's effects on the surface tension etc, I don't want to drink them all day long it just needs to taste absolutely great for that one 0.33l bottles worth.
The main thing that killed Boyardee was replacing the ground beef with “textured soy protein”
My Dad was born in 1929 and lived in Milton Pa growing up, and he always spoke about living next door to Chef Boyardee, and going to school with his sons. Loved watching your video, and cannot wait to make this authentic spaghetti. My Dad passed away in 2018, yet spaghetti was always his favorite meal and your video made me think of him tonight!! Thank you!!
Chef Hector had one child, that would have been Mario. Mario was my father.
Yes my family was in the Milton area around your dad's time. At 64 I remember the old plant
@@missgoodnfilthy2243 who got busted for what?
3:14 If a clove of garlic falls into a pot and there’s no one around to hear it…
Does it truly fall? 🧄
Shrodingers clove
The problem is i've never ever ever used just one clove.
He said clove? I thought he said head.
😂
WV native here. Growing up you hear all of these great tales about the Greenbrier Resort. I would love to see a tasting the history from there. According to the Greenbrier historians, it was here that the Arnold Palmer first got its name from the golfer. Very fun.
The cross referencing of old and new family cookbooks to be true to the original recipe is super cool. Thanks for all your great work, Max!
Anna is the GOAT for releasing those recipes
Northern italian here, we actually use garlic in our cooking (at least, my family and my friends do) in what we call a "soffritto", which is a sort of base layer for many of our dressings. Also, chef Boyardee sauce sounds veeeeeeery similar to a "bolognese", with the addition of basil and mushroom, which are not part of the bolognese, if i'm not mistaken. Also also, love your show
Soffrito is onion, carrot, and celery right? Or is that garlic?
@@aiko9393soffritto recipe varies from culture to culture because my mom being Colombian she makes soffritto with cilantro, tomatoes, onion(either green or whatever kind of onion we have on hand) and depending on what we are making we also will throw in some tomato paste & tomato sauce but if aren't making a specific dishes that require that then pur saffritto is strictly what I first wrote in the beginning...
hell yeah! In my family we switch garlic soffritto and onion soffritto depending on the region the recipe comes from, I love how versatile and endlessly delicious a good soffritto is, makes every savory recipe better (family from Puglia, now 2nd generation in Turin)
E' praticamente il ragù montanaro, ma con il manzo al posto della salsiccia.
@@IlastarothTayre Yeah, i probably failed to communicate how "soffritto" is not really a recipe, per se, more of an umbrella term for a...process...? i guess...? it's just that garlic is pretty often a part of it.
I once made a Bard in D&D that specialized in culinary arts rather than music or such.
His name was Bo, of the prestigious family of chefs, House Yardee.
It took 11 sessions before anyone figured it out, because I was very careful never to mention his birth name, surname, or his actual profession, all in the same session.
That went on for a while longer, then we got mostly wiped, and decided to just start over.
So I made a more traditional Bard...
Doremi, of the famous troubadour family, the Fasolatidos. That one made it to 16 sessions before anyone caught on. I wasn't even careful about it. I just did my best Italian/Spanish accent at all times, and everyone just thought it sounded legit if I said it fast enough.
Totally stealing Doremi Fasolatidos for my own game -- the elves in my campaign world all have Spanish names and Inigo Montoya accents.
I need players like you in my games.
GM: A Goblin Raiding Party is coming your way, what do you do!?
BARBARIAN: Charge at them!
RANGER: Shoot arrows at them!
WIZARD: Cast Magic Missiles!
BARD: Cook up a nice plate of spaghetti! They're probably just hangry.
Loved playing a cook in D&D! Went Artificer (assuming 5e), but should have went your route with the Bard
ive been working on home brewing what i call a sandwich bard. did you use food to distribute buffs? do you hand out tje food pre battle or do you toss a meatball into the barbarian from 10 ft away 😂
This was awesome. My dad has told me for years that Grandpa's go-to dinner for himself and his three boys whenever Grandma was out for the evening was Chef Boyardee's spaghetti dinner and iceberg wedges. That was back in the late '50s into the '60s.
I adore these videos and am so glad I found this channel. As a person raised in a Sicilian household, I am not going to lie-I love Chef Boyardee. Learning a bit of the history made me smile.
I can't believe Max didn’t scoure the internet for a vintage can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti sauce.
😂 I’ll leave that to SteveMRE
Speaking of MRE's, is that something you may do one day? Would be interesting to get your take on MRE's.@@TastingHistory
I feel like Good Mythical Morning would probably try it
@@TastingHistoryHaha I love watching SteveMRE's videos as well.
Spaghetti Sauce with meat is still available and still made using the original recipe according to their customer help desk
I love Max being just as much of a nerd as the rest of us with his Pokémon.
It’s his husband Jose’s plushies actually! So he’s the real nerd here 🤣
They're adorkable
Chef Bioardi, I choose you!
They need to release a spaghetti meatball Pokémon. 😆
Good to know I’m not the only one who came to the comments to see if Chef Pikachu was mentioned!😂🤌🏼💁🏼♀️
I remember those little cans of parmesan cheese in the box. So cute.
Yeah, that sparked a few brain cells that hadn't been active in a long time :D
That was before my time, I grew up with Beefaroni ...so good...
I had forgotten about them too. I bet you a penny there's still a can or three holding hardware in my dad's woodshop.
Can you still buy a box of the original? With the spaghetti on one side, the sauce on the bottom, and the mini can of parmesan above it.
@ingridkeller9673 No, but Kraft sells a boxed spaghetti dinner complete with sauce, parmesan, and spaghetti at Wal-Mart. It's supposedly similar to the old Chef Boyardee one. Given the ingredients, I wouldn't bet on it though.
I remember my mom bringing home the boxed spaghetti dinners in the 60's. Other than toast, cereal, or sandwiches, it was the first meal that I learned to make by myself. I think I enjoyed just the cooked spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese as much as I did after topping it with the meat sauce.
I remember the boxed pizza kits in the stores, but my mom never bought those. Later in life I found out that the Chef's first name was Hector; I got a kick out of the fact that I shared a first name with a famous chef...
The tomato pie with just parmesan on top is a classic Neopolitan pizza, still served in New Haven, CT. at places like Frank Pepe's.
This. The first "pizzas" sold in the US were tomato pies like that. You can still get them in NYC and they're delicious even cold.
There is a small shop in Philly that makes the most delicious tomato pie if you happen to be up that way (i am not alone in my assessment so while the name escapes me, "everyone" knows the shop). What's a four hour drive for good pizza? 😅
@@TheQwuilleran Corropolese?
@@Guy_GuyGuy YES! yes. Thank you 🙇🏽
The sweetness also comes from the carrots. Its also why some brands of Jalapenos come with sliced carrots in alongside the peppers. Its to sweeten them while they're steam-sealed.
Interesting, I have a batch of red Turkish peppers, maybe carrots grated with them break a bit of the spicy heat also, per enhanced surface -> dilution? Where are my lab goggles...
Yes, I was coming to say that. We boil a carrot (whole, not cut up) in sauce if we need to cut the acidity of the tomatoes.
@@SamBarge1I see from where you come - it is like adding a potato to overly salted dishes! It IMO depends which texture your sauce is desired to have. Grated carrot gives a bit of crunch to a sauce (and the fibers are probiotic), especially after long braising. Furthermore, the betacarotin/ lycopin mix (of which I want plenty in my sauce :-) ) is easier released into the liquid from smaller shreds/ concentrate, which I sautee in clarified butter with onions and garlic (to release the water AND oil soluble components) after browning the mincemeat.
I freely admit that I am one of those who add plain sugar to tomato sauces, because I make them with concentrated tomato paste, the acidity of which will be too much for carrot confetti or a whole one to counteract.
I can imagine that a whole transient carrot in a consommee would be great to balance out the taste! But I am often to hangry to make such a sophisticated dish -> Boiardi sugo for me, please.
@@sabinegierth-waniczek4872 I find that if you saute shredded carrots long enough they kinda disappear. Then again, maybe it's because I find texture in my sauces to be the enemy, so I try not to get any Chunkage in my servings lol
@@MissingmyBabbuThis is the problem - nowadays energy is too expensive to let carrot shreds do the Houdini! Apart from this I am totally in your camp: Nothing better than a slooooowly simmered beef stew with equal amounts of meat and then transcendent onions *sigh* Let there be peace in the pots :-)))
But if I really need a velouté texture, I grip my big bad blender and dechunk the gunk. Nonetheless this occurs rarely, because I can not bear the mouthfeel of products that are too finely grinded/ blended. Maybe it remends me too much of baby food or liquid sustenance for the infirm (where are the simple words when I need them?!? Non-native speaker h3ll...).
It is a pleasure to get so much information and inspiration, I am so happy to have found Max and his channel and community!
I remember the boxed spaghetti sauce cheese combo as well as the pizza. My dad was a real chef and refused to eat them, but my mom, who could not cook, loved the boxed spaghetti and or pizza. As a result, today, as I am 72, I still love to make spaghetti, although I do make it all from scratch, except the spaghetti noodles which I get from Italy.
It is a public fact that Beefaroni is a complete food group. Like many single-mom families, we found the spaghetti dinners (especially the meatball dinners) were a marvelous treat. Add toasted cheese bread and it was wonderful. Thank you Chef!!!!!!
My mom also made Spam up like a little ham with cloves and maple syrup and served it with Kraft macaroni and cheese.
3:00 The script and narration in your videos is something I always seem to look forward, as much as the recipe in topic.
Glad to hear it!
I took your advice and made it as you did use Anna's "Uncle Hectors tomato sauce". I was instantly transported back to my childhood. The flavor is phenomenal minus all that added sugar.
Love the derpy pfp
@@MoondustManwise Thank you. I love your Luna pfp as well. ^~^
Anna’s recipe was marinara, Max doctored the recipe to match the description of the canned meat sauce
@@GamingGardevoir while most Italian Tomato based sauces share ingredients, one of Marinera's key ingredients is Garlic. What sets Uncle Hectors sauce apart regionally is that it lacks Garlic.
As someone not from the US, and for whom all this is new, I wanted to express my appreciation.
It's fascinating to learn about past through this lens, and I so enjoy your enthusiasm and detective work.
Kudos! Health!
I live in Milton Pennsylvania and used to work at "chefs" as we call it here. Hector also built a mansion for his wife here in Milton and of course its called the boardi mansion. The factory still stands but it is now owned by conegra. Hector also started the 1st. Tomato festival in 1977 which we still celebrate today.
The pizza was really good - late 50's, early 60's - we had a lot !! Making the crust was actually fun - of course, we always added a little ground beef and extra cheese - Thanks for the memories !!
I seem to remember the kits came with some fennel seeds, I loved it with the ground beef my mom would add. I need to do that again the next time I make pizza.
If memory serves me right, it was the spaghetti dinner that had the small plastic bag with assorted spices - not sure I ever knew exactly what. My mom had her own sauce recipe and spaghetti dinners weren't much of thing at our home. Most of the time when we had either angel hair of the bigger noodles, it was with tuna and Campbell's mushroom soup. I still like that !! It was the pizza box that had a more prominent place in the cabinet. Mom and dad loved the prices as well. In the late 60's I was making it so much, the Crisco I used with the crust made my hands really soft !! Just love the memories !! Have a nice day@@carolmelancon
@@carolmelanconGreat idea to add it to the minced meat, then you do something for your guts also (like in a salami finocchiata, very greasy, but the fennel helps to digest it...). I hope to remember it the next time I make pastizio or lasagna!
"The smile don't lie." When Max tastes his food, smiles and THEN says it's phenomenal, you KNOW it's gotta be good. I'm definitely trying this one for Saturday Night Spaghetti! Thank you so much!
🤗💖🙏🏻
lol, when I saw your face, Max, when you took that bite. The delight on your face made me interject out loud to the screen "Tell us how you really feel, Max" knowing it was going to be a wonderfully erudite expression of happiness. Thank you for taking us with you down the path of history.
Me too, he looked emotional, like he wanted to cry, at the same time, I got emotional about the memory and I'm writing this with tears in my eyes 😂 Tears of joy.
Definitely a good man. A pillar of the american history and someone that helped in the war effort as well as doing all he could to keep everyone’s job. Italian cuisine is second to none. Simple wholesome ingredients turn into huge flavour. Really one to try out for myself.
I'm a life-long Clevelander and had no idea Chef Boiardi lived and worked here. How cool! And, today, Big Italy has become Little Italy. Such a cool place to see.
@@Kerithanos Wow! That's really interesting! I love local history. Thank you! 🙂
My dad was born in Milton, PA. I've actually seen Chef Boyardee at a parade about 50 years ago.
I live near Cleveland so I have heard a few versions of the Boiardi story, the most plausible being parlaying his position at the Plaza into a head chef job at a small eatery in the Italian neighborhood, then bailing out of NYC for northeast Ohio, along with many thousands of other Italian immigrants. In my grandparents generation the population of cities like Cleveland and Youngstown (and our Ashtabula) took a very Italian shift and people wanted products they were familiar with, which fueled Hector's popularity along with other brands. Also, the Stop and Shop stores, that distributed the cookbook, can still be found in the area. - Thank you , Max, for a thorough and entertaining treatment of the subject, as always.
Its funny that, as a child, I took it for granted that he was just some made up mascot like Uncle Ben or the Borden cow. It was a trip when I first found out that he was not only a real guy, but a local hero!
I wonder how much of his premade sauce was used in the making of Brier Hill style pizza?
Props to you, from someone else who grew up in Bula (live in Euclid now)
I made pizza from those Chef Boyardee kits (or something VERY similar) as a newlywed in the early 1980s. Since we were on an extremely tight budget at the time, we'd add diced-up slices of American cheese if we couldn't afford shredded mozzarella, and would brown/crumble/drain 1/4 lb. of hamburger for a meat topping, since we couldn't afford pepperoni slices.
My parents were fans of its competitor Appian Way because they still have and use the baking sheet.
Aww, that's cheeseburger pizza, nothing wrong with that. My dad used to get the kits for us to help him with in the early 80s. We loved making the dough, pouring the sauce, sprinkling the cheese... They had their own distinct taste, but it was comforting.
@@AmyC28713 Oh man, Appian Way pizza kits! I haven't thought about those in decades. My Mom used to make those when I was a kid in the 1960s...
@@DavidHuffTexasSame here. It was fun to help her stretch out the crust.
So, how did it taste? I posted that it was probably my first pizza but I don't remember if it was any good.
15:20 if you add 'italian herb' packets, that's the modern day Kraft Pizza Kit here in Canada (at one point they included a free Diet Pepsi in the box). I remember about 15 or so years ago buying a Chef Boyardee pizza kit at my local market, and because i needed more, so i bought a store brand one as well (Co-Op Brand), and when i had gotten them home and opened both, the contents were identical down to the sachets the ingredients came in!!
I remember those boxed spaghetti dinners. My Dad's wife had them in the house just for me because she didn't like spaghetti. I'm not sure how I discovered spaghetti but once I found it, it was and has always been my favorite dish. I also liked the canned ravioli and beefaroni. It was great in a school lunch box if you forgot to pack one the night before. All you had to do was open the can, dump it into a bowl w/ a leakproof lid and put in a spoon. I never ate it heated up. Boy, those were the good old days.
Yeah, but you probably should have heated it up, cuz it’s a health hazard if you don’t
Mom used to fix the "spagetti in the box" dinner every Wednesday as she worked as a reporter for the local newspaper. Single pan dinner in the electric skillet. To brown the burger, then add the can o' sauce, then the boiled pasta. And voila! Dinner for a family.
Thank you MAX for sharing this video!! My mother who was a HUGE fan of your Show and SPAGHETTI one of her favorite dishes passed away 10 days ago, I will make this in her HONOR thank you so much for sharing this GIFT!! ❤️ 🙏
Condolences on the loss of your Mother.
@@gyrogeargoose thank you that means the world bless you!! 🙏
Thank you for the trip down memory lane Max. In the late 50s/early 60s, the Chef's boxed pizza was a once a month treat for my sister and I. Mixing the dough and stretching it onto the pizza pan became a skill we were quite proud of. Our mother refused to even taste it so making sure we had a pan and the pizzas at all made the treat even better. We thought it was an exotic dish never realizing he was in Cleveland while we lived between Cincinnati and Dayton.
17:20 The recipe called for onion and carrot? That's the natural sweetness, especially if the onion and carrot caramelize together. My nonna would do the same thing with shredded carrot in her sauce.
It’s a basic sofritto.
I use celery and carrot instead of onion and carrot ( i hate onions).
@@RobertR3750 Understandable, people's taste varies. Have you tried other varieties, like shallots? Not that it's a big deal, I have olive similarly.
@@lrom5445I've heard of people using shallots, but have never tried them. I suspect I wouldn't like them either. You're right that people's tastes vary. Yesterday I cooked a ribeye to a perfect medium rare, the way I like it. It was wonderfully juicy and tender. I can't fathom why people prefer well done beef, ie dry and "burnt". But that's exactly what my sister likes. She's one of those "red phobic" people.
@@WinstonSmithGPT True, but my nonna only used carrot for a basic tomato sauce to sweeten it.
I just made this recipe with a few tweaks (no fresh basil handy). It was simple and delicious! Our toddler snarfed his plateful and cried when we took his plate away. He ate a second plateful too (he NEVER asks for seconds). We will definitely be making this again. Thanks, Max! Also, we just got your signed cookbook at last, it's BEAUTIFUL!
15:17 you can still buy the pizza kits and it still comes with just the parm cheese. The sauce doesn’t taste exactly the same as it did when I was a child, but I still buy the pizza kits. They are nostalgic for me and I love how easy the crust is to make. I do add mozzarella to mine…but I still put the parm on top under the mozzarella. Every time I make it, it takes me back to my childhood.
My mom would make pizza about once a month and she always used the Chef Boyardee kits…us kids would choose our toppings and we’d make four pizzas to our liking. You could make two pizzas with one kit. I think it was like .80¢ per box and about $2 for enough mozzarella to cover all 4 pizzas. So my mom would feed a family of 5 with less than $4. ✌🏻😊
I love Anna Boiardi's cookbook. The Bolognese sauce is amazing.
I’ve yet to make the bolognese, I did make Hector’s sauce though and really enjoy it. Max appears to have made a hybrid of the two to approximate the canned sauce
Thanks for the episode! Note about the boxed pizza: The box suggested toppings such as hamburger, Sausage, mushrooms or torn basil leaves (strangely, no pepperoni that I recall). My hometown had such bad water that when Mom would get a quart of water from my Grandparent's pump, we knew we would have Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza that week! Always with hamburger (and occasionally mushrooms). Waiting for the crust to rise was the hardest part. It did not need anything else because the sauce and cheese were so good and the crust was fresh and perfect every time. Thanks for bringing back such great memories! Wish I could have a slice right now!
It is always fun to see an old recipe come out really well. I am old enough to have seen commercials with Hector Boiardi.
My dad used to make the pizza with just the kit only, and to this day it still is a nostalgic taste. They don't have the parm anymore but if you buy something like 4c brand that doesn't use cellulous powder, it tastes the same
The way that parmesan cheese has been bastardized by additives like cellulose is Criminal
Idk cellulose doesn’t have any flavor so you should be good either way. It does add a texture though if it’s in high enough a proportion
@@monhi64 I'm not complaining about a flavor, I'm complaining about paying for cheese and getting wood pulp
I’m so excited to find this recipe demonstration. I noticed my childhood Chef Boyardee ravioli tasted different when I tried it a year or two ago for nostalgia. I consider myself a good cook, but I have never made a spaghetti sauce that tasted above cafeteria grade. I don’t know why I always manage to cook the flavor out of it. This recipe gives me hope!
this is the kind of sauce that I grew up on. Some of my mother's family were from northern Italy and this is pretty much her sauce. I still make it today!! I'll try the butter and parm on the noodles again... I haven't done that in a long time. Thanks for sharing an amazing simple family sauce. So good. It gave me the feels seeing you eat and enjoy it!!
My Mom used to get that Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Dinner in the box with the pasta, meat sauce and cheese. And it was awesome. This was back in the 1960s. Will have to try this recipe. Thanks for sharing.
I agree. It tasted way better back in the 70's and 80's. I do recall the throwback cans and I did buy them. I also ate them and yes, it was closer to what I had as a kid. Wish they bring it back again. That looks great and I will try it. The butter and parm cheese on the spaghetti is a great idea. Love your videos. Awesome work.
Great job on the website, Max. The canned Chef Boyardee just can't compete with making it yourself. Removing the tomato seeds which add a bitterness that I never liked so I've always removed them, adding carrots, also something I've done and it really does make a difference, makes for a much better flavor. And butter on the noodles with the cheese, a long time favorite with or without the sauce.
The History Channel has a series called "The Food That Built America" and I remember the episode featuring Chef Boiardi. It was interesting. I'm always curious about how foods came about. I think it's why I love your channel so much.
I still have cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Spaghetti and meatballs for a quick meal if I have nothing else. They are very cheap and tasty too. I loved it as a kid, but then again I like Vienna Sausages and Beenie-Weanies too. Totally fascinating story.
"...it was the 50s and food was weird so they were lucky to have any pizza at all."
I LOLed at this.
I'm surprised he didn't mention putting meat in lime Jello in the 1970s but I imagine that's a future episode
I'm from Milton, Pennsylvania! It was very interesting to hear the history of Chef Boyardee. I love the days when our town smells like tomato sauce. My friend's father even dresses up as Hector Boiardi for our town's annual Harvest Festival parade in September :)
A friend of mine from Italy said that they don't use as much garlic as people think. She said for example, that when they use it on bread, they take a clove of garlic and lightly rub it over the bread so that it's almost imperceptible. She is from the Piedmont region. She didn't speak about all of Italy but she indicated that it was the general practice in Italy.
Yeah I’ve heard the situation with garlic in Italy is not great and kinda discriminatory. Something like many/most of em think it’s super low class to use and get really judgy about it
@@monhi64 She never mentioned it being considered low class. But it could be because she didn't want to offend me. However I did learn something ( not from her) that the garlic they use in Italy is different than the garlic we use in the US. It's a larger, milder garlic with a lot more cloves. It's around the size of what is known as elephant garlic.
Yeah, my mom always said it was funny how Americans turned up their noses at garlic for decades, then started overpowering everything with it....
@@boredpeanutbutter75 So this is actually really interesting. Garlic has for a very long time in Italy been considered poor peoples food. It was still used, but using it regularly, and especially using a lot of it in a recipe was considered a sign that you were dirt poor. As a result, Italians, especially the ones in the richer North, prided themselves on using as little garlic as possible.
The Italian and Sicilian immigrants to the U.S however were mostly from the South a historically poorer and more agricultural so they were already using garlic in their food, and since garlic didn't carry the same stigma as it did back home, there was no one to really look down on them for using as much garlic as they wanted when times got tough.
But what's really intriguing is that even after the cultural bleed over that happened during WW2 it's only been in the last 20-30 years that the Italian American love affair with garlic has started to upend the stigma in Italy.
@@89Crono That is very interesting. It's so silly how people will use just about anything to create class distinctions. I might feel embarrassed if I've got garlic breath but not for using garlic in my cooking. Anyway, thanks for sharing this interesting information.
In boy scouts we made reflector ovens in metal shop that folded down flat. The cooking shelf was the exact size for those boxed pizzas. Not fancy but delicious by campfire.
My family used the pizza products while I was growing up in the 1960's. My mom added toppings, but the basic ingredients that came in the kit tasted good and felt like a great treat. I love knowing his story and how much her gave back to the United States and other countries during WWII. Thanks!
Another wonderful food history video! This story reminds me of a movie that I just love, called The Big Night with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, released in 1996, which tells the story of two Italian brothers who emigrate to the US and open an authentic Italian restaurant in New Jersey, and all the trials and tribulations they go through, particularly getting Americans to understand actual Italian dishes! It’s a charming movie, and highly recommended for foodies! I look forward to every Tuesday for a new video from you Max, and thank you!
My family in the coal fields of WV back in the 1960s, we made the Boyardee Pizza nearly every week. We would mix the package of flour with water and spread the dough out on a round cookie sheet then spread on the can of sauce and sprinkle the dried cheese. We almost always also had pepperoni slices too. I was probably in my late teens before I heard of any other pizza other than what you made at home from the yellow box.
As far as taste I would probably say something like a thin crust Little Caesars or Domino's.
Now the kit taste nothing like we remembered especially the can sauce they sell the pizza sauce here alone in save a lot markets here in Buffalo New anyways
You're getting sweetness from the carrots and basil along with the tomato's. My God what a simple and wholesome sauce. Defiantely on my list now.
I'm 55 and grew up in a small Iowa town, the nearest place to get pizza was 12 miles away, so the old Chef's pizza dinner was a fun way for us to have fresh pizza on Saturday nights back in the 70's.
Thank you, Ettore. And thank you to the Boiardi family.
One of my best memories is eating Chef Boyardee pizzas from the box with my mom and sister in the late 80's. I don't think it had anything other than grated parm for cheese and little pepperoni, but it was so good when I was a kid. This video made me smile.
I remember that Chef Boyardee pizza was still around in the 80s. My husband and I both have fond memories of that stuff from our childhood. I recall my cousin making it once and he really jazzed it up... he put hotdog slices on it in addition to the sprinkle of cheese. So fancy!! :D
It's still around.
@@earlwright9715yo mama
Grew up eating that pizza almost every Sun night. My mom would occasionly put hotddog slices on it and chopped onions. A couple years ago I tried the modern version... Not the same at all :(
Google Roma pizza Hamilton Ontario Canada this is still made as a type of pizza it’s been around here for along long time
Not letting the dough rise long enough may have been what contributed to my preference for "thin crust" pizza!
My Dad always added shredded carrots to his sauce to sweeten it up. He'd throw a fit when people said they added sugar to their sauce.
I put a little to cut the acidity. Not enough to change the overall flavor of my sauce.
If you only want to cut the acidity, a tiny pinch of baking soda is all you need.
Sugar is for deserts and pastries. It has no place in hot food.
But...we *like* it acidy in our house. Any kind of sweetener in the sauce just feels wrong to me.
There are a lot of cooking channels on youtube, but yours is my absolute favorite. I love love love love the history lesson, and for some reason especially this one as someone who grew up in the 70s eating a lot of beefaroni. I will say though my current favorite is the mini ravioli with meatballs cuz it's a little sweeter, but Beefaroni is amazing
He was a great supporter of HEALTHY lunches for kids in school. I grew up on many of his recipes that were carefully followed by legions of cafeteria lunch ladies in Ohio. It was more than a "spaghetti dinner." Yes, many of those recipes are in his nieces book.
They have one of the greatest commericals of all time with the rolling can. I love chef!
That poor kid who lost his meatball should have had a delicious Chef Boyardee meal instead. At least then if it rolls out the door it's still eat-able 😉
I used to work for ConAgra/Chef-Boyardee. The plant in Milton PA is HUGE - I want to say it was 12-14 stories tall. The plant personnel were wonderful and gave us a tour of the facilities. They were making ravioli when I visited. They could make about 2 million cans in a day at full capacity.
As a young latchkey kid, with a working single mom, I would sometimes fix myself a can of the spaghetti - which I loved at the time.
My grandma used to make a sauce similar to this! She added a diced bell pepper instead of a carrot, some paprika and dried oregano bloomed in the hot oil with the onions. It's such a delicious, hearty sauce! The bell pepper really does something in the sauce, it's such a distinctive taste. Almost adds a little bitterness to cut through the sweetness of the tomatoes and lifts the whole thing.
Ate the pizza mix alot during my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s, it did not come with mozzerella, but my Mom bought big blocks of low moisture mozz, and it was MY job to grate it. Back then, "pre-grated" mozz just didn't exist. We put that on top, and mushrooms and pepperoni, and it was amazing. We had a family of 5 (my two sisters, myself, and my Mom and Dad) made 5 pizzas every single Saturday night. A family tradition. Later we moved onto "Appian Way" mixes, and then my Mom found frozen bread dough, and we made our pizzas using that. A flavor I remember fondly!
I use fresh mozzarella frequently and can't imagine having to grate it. That's probably why classico Italian pizzas just cut the mozz into pads. Maybe the water content was lower? **hopefully. Hopefully the water content was lower.
Now I'm going to have that old Chef Boyardee jingle stuck in my head all day. 😆
Oh my goodness Yes! Same here.
🎵 Thank goodness for Chef Boyardee! 🎶
Max! I remember the throwback cans that came out about a decade ago! I did some research myself when it came out, and from what I learned, the biggest difference is the herbs added, specifically oregano and basil used in the sauces!
I made this recipe. It was very tasty and easy. My youngest son who is a picky eater absolutely loved it. It's now a keeper. Thanks Max Miller
While stationed in Afghanistan at a remote Forward Operating Base (FOB) I ordered a small pizza oven and two cases for Chef Boyardee peperoni pizza kits from Amazon. Since we only had one hot meal a day and two MREs these were a welcome treat!