The Spaghetti Index

Posted on by Dylan

Taking care of a baby is hard, but we gotta eat dinner.

Spaghetti is dinner. Spaghetti is easy to make.

Other things are also dinner. But other things are not necessarily easy to make.

I need a way to know how hard it is to cook those other things.

Therefore, I propose THE SPAGHETTI INDEX™

What if there was a ten point scale for the judging the difficulty of cooking a meal, in comparison to cooking spaghetti?

Hear me out.

Everyone can make spaghetti, right?

You just cook some meat in some sauce, and throw pasta in boiling water. It’s pretty damn hard to mess up.

Let’s say that spaghetti, being the baseline, gets a score of 0.

If a dish is harder to make than spaghetti (i.e. Coq au Vin), it gets a higher score.

If a dish is easier to make than spaghetti (i.e. poptarts?), it gets a lower score.

Me cooking a 10 on THE SPAGHETTI INDEX™ (please ignore the watermarks yolo)

The beauty of THE SPAGHETTI INDEX™ is that since most people are familiar with the difficulty level of cooking spaghetti, you will have a pretty good feel for what you’re signing up for when embarking on a new culinary adventure.

As with any scale, THE SPAGHETTI INDEX™ is more robust with more data, so spread the word! Anytime you cook a meal, I encourage you to asses its difficulty and assign a completely objective number between -10 and 10 to help other aspiring chefs determine whether its worth their time.

Here’s one to start. It’s a staple during winter at our house, even though we are proud carnivores. It gets a…2? Slightly more “advanced” than spaghetti because you have to actually chop some vegetables.

Vegetarian Chili

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 large yellow onion, diced
1/2 large red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 cup salsa
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
Water

Directions:

  1. sauté le onions and pepper
  2. add the whole can of tomatoes (don’t hold back), 1 cup salsa, 1 TB chili, 1 TB cumin, and 2 cups water (or half of tomato can cuz then you don’t have to wash the measuring cup)
  3. stir, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes, or less. whatever.
  4. add beans plz
  5. cover and simmer for 15 minutes. again, time is a construct. it’s just beans and tomatoes…

p.s. – Lena, I wrote this during time that I had planned on writing your “when you grow up” letter, to be read – by you – when you’re eighteen. I’ll still write that letter, because I love you very much, but I hope you still like this. Long live THE SPAGHETTI INDEX™!

Dad