Cowboy Spaghetti (Made With Einkorn Pasta)
Saddle up! This cowboy spaghetti recipe is meaty, full of flavor, feeds 8 – and has a fun name. Find out why this recipe deserves a spot in your dinner rotation.
This recipe was created in partnership with Grand Teton Ancient Grains. As always, I only share products I genuinely use in my own kitchen, and their pasta is a great fit for budget-friendly, satisfying meals like this one
You don’t need another traditional spaghetti recipe. You just don’t. You know the ingredients, you know the process. Which is why you won’t find a regular recipe for spaghetti here on Cheap Recipe Blog.
You simply don’t need it .
But here’s the deal. Do you know what you do need when it comes to spaghetti recipes?
A fun, flavorful twist on spaghetti.
Enter cowboy spaghetti – a meaty, smoky, slightly spicy one-pan sauce tossed with bronze-cut organic einkorn spaghetti from Grand Teton Ancient Grains.
Cowboy spaghetti is a hearty, flavorful pasta recipe popularized by Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman). A hearty, meat-forward pasta sauce is mixed with cooked spaghetti and topped with cheese and other toppings.
What Is Cowboy Spaghetti?
While classic American-style spaghetti typically consists of pasta and tomato sauce with some browned meat (like ground beef or ground pork), cowboy spaghetti has more ingredients, more pizzaz, and more flavor.
Cowboy spaghetti gets its vagabond name from the melange of ingredients cowboys might add to their campfire meal. Throwing in a bit of this and a bit of that.
In this recipe, classic spaghetti sauce is replaced by a flavorful tomato-based sauce with additional spices, sauces, and ingredients added like:
- Tomato paste
- Rotel (canned diced tomatoes with green chilis)
- Hot sauce
- Worcestershire sauce
- Garlic powder
- Cayenne pepper
- Smoked paprika
- Toppings: Shredded cheddar cheese, chopped green onions, diced jalapeños, hot sauce, etc.
- MEAT!
The real game-changer? Swapping regular spaghetti for bronze-cut einkorn pasta. The old-world extrusion method creates a rugged surface that holds onto the smoky tomato sauce, bacon grease, and bold spices like nothing else. Every forkful bursts with flavor instead of leaving sauce at the bottom of the bowl.
And just to top it off, not one, not two, but three meats are used in the sauce: Bacon, ground beef and smoked sausage (or Polska kielbasa or ring bologna).
If you’re closely watching your food budget, you can certainly omit one or even two of the meats. But for the best flavor, include them all!
About The Einkorn Pasta
Growing up, we didn’t eat a lot of pasta. And pasta has never been my favorite thing to make or to eat.
But my views on pasta have changed ever since I tried einkorn pasta.
Einkorn pasta is made out of einkorn flour, an ancient grain that is more wholesome and more flavorful than regular flour. I’ve become a regular user of Ancient Grains All-Purpose Einkorn Flour, and now I’m loving their new pasta too.
You don’t have to make homemade pasta out of einkorn flour – you can just buy it! All the hard work is done for you. Grand Teton Ancient Grains Einkorn Spaghetti is 100% organic, non-GMO, kosher, and glyphosate-free.
Another great feature of this pasta is that it is bronze cut: This old-school method of cutting results in a superior, porous pasta that sauce sticks better to. The end result for you is a more flavorful pasta dish.
I absolutely love this pasta for its flavor and health benefits and am excited to try more recipes with einkorn pasta.
Recipe Notes: Building Flavor
Maximize the flavor of your cowboy spaghetti:
- The first step in making the sauce is to render the bacon. Once cooked, you’ll remove the bacon but keep the bacon grease in the pan, which adds major flavor.
- Next, you’ll brown the ground beef. Don’t drain all of the grease here either. It adds more flavor.
- Next, you’ll add the canned Rotel (canned tomatoes with green chilies). The canned tomatoes add more flavor than diced fresh tomatoes.
- The bronze-cut einkorn spaghetti from Grand Teton Ancient Grains should be cooked in well-salted water for extra flavor. Thanks to the traditional bronze-die cutting, the pasta has a naturally rough, porous texture that makes the hearty cowboy sauce cling to every strand — no more sauce sliding off like it does with smooth supermarket noodles.
Once you have the pasta sauce cooking, you can add extra spices and hot sauce to your liking. It’s easy to build flavor in this cowboy pasta sauce recipe.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Here are several reasons this cowboy spaghetti recipe will probably gain a spot in your weekly meal rotation:
- A fun twist on spaghetti: Trad spaghetti is good, but it can get boring. This version is still spaghetti – but it’s so much more interesting! I mean… with a name like cowboy spaghetti, it’s gotta be good!
- It’s simple: The sauce is made in one pan, the pasta is cooked in another – and the two are combined making it an easy two-pan recipe.
- It feeds a crowd: This recipe is hearty and contains a lot of protein (3 meats!). With a pound of spaghetti and a hearty pasta sauce, this recipe feeds 8.
A Budget-Friendly Recipe That Feeds 8
Traditional spaghetti with meat sauce is a simple, budget-friendly staple.
This cowboy spaghetti recipe has a longer ingredient list and costs more than traditional spaghetti, but it’s still an affordable recipe, especially since it makes such a large amount.
All in all, this recipe costs about $4.00 per serving. Much less than going out to a restaurant. Much less than a fast food meal.
More Einkorn Recipes
If you’re interested in experimenting with more einkorn recipes, check these out:
Flaky Einkorn Buttermilk Biscuits
Pineapple Cheddar Quick Bread (Made With Einkorn Flour)
Hot Honey Pizza Muffins (Made With Einkorn Flour)
Asparagus, Bacon, Blue Cheese Pizza On An Einkorn Pizza Crust
Reheating Instructions
- This pasta keeps and reheats well.
- Leftovers keep well in the fridge for 4 to 5 days. Simply reheat on the stovetop or in the microwave with a splash of water.
Cowboy Spaghetti (With Einkorn Pasta)
As noted above, to save money you can omit one or two of the meats. However, for best flavor, include them all.
Ingredients
- 6 slices bacon
- 4 smoked sausages (or ring bologna or polska kielbasa)
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 1 jalapeno, diced
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 2 cans Rotel
- 1 can (8 oz.) tomato paste
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon hot sauce
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 lb. einkorn spaghetti
Toppings
- Shredded cheddar cheese
- Chopped green onion
- Diced jalapeno
- Hot sauce
- Sour cream
Instructions
- Cut bacon slices into bite-sized pieces. Add to a large Dutch oven and cook over medium-high heat until bacon is browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove bacon from pot. Set aside. Reserve bacon grease.
- Cut sausage links into bite-sized coins. Add to Dutch oven and cook, turning, to brown. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside with bacon.
- Add onion to Dutch oven. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add ground beef. Stir, breaking up meat until browned. Add Rotel, tomato sauce, spices, sugar, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, cook the pasta:
- To cook pasta: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Break spaghetti noodles in half. Add to water. Cook for 5 minutes to al dente. Drain and add to pasta sauce.
- Cook for 3 more minutes, stirring,
- Serve with desired toppings.