Can my homemade spaghetti and meatballs beat the most expensive in LA? Welcome back to “Mythical Kitchen” where we all gotta eat and we all love some balls sometimes. Hey, speaking of balls, we have spaghetti and meatballs in front of us. We have the most expensive spaghetti meatballs in the city and the cheapest spaghetti and meatballs in the city. And yet to be seen in the middle will be my homemade spaghetti and meatballs. We’re going to have a judge blind taste test each of these and see if they can figure out where they’re from and also rate what the best spaghetti and meatballs is. So let’s introduce our balls. In the red corner, weighing in at 14.5 ounces because we did take a scale out and actually weight it. We have a $62 plate of spaghetti and meatballs. In the blue corner, weighing in at about 3.8 ounces, from what I can surmise. We went to a local Italian deli called Monte Carlo. open up the deli case. This costs $13. I wanna try these right now to see what. It’s gonna be the most quantity but. That’s really well cooked. The tomato sauce, that’s roasted. Let’s try out Monte Carlo’s. This is a longtime lunch staple of mine. Oh, oh man. Oh no. You can tell by the amount of. Let’s see, though. You know, a $12 lunch. This isn’t no al dente pasta. This is like, classic Northern Italian spaghetti. You think I got what it takes? Come on. Josh, Josh. Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh. Balls. Balls, balls. Josh. I know what you’re saying, “Josh, not a single ball is on this table.” And you would be absolutely correct. That’s because we’re starting with the sauce, I believe very firmly in a long-cooked spaghetti sauce, and I think I make it probably a lot simpler than other people. When I was growing up, I’d be watching Food Network, right? Somebody would be making spaghetti sauce and they’d go, “For extra flavor, add onion.” And I was like, “I think I know what onion tastes like, and I generally like the flavor of onion, but tomatoes, basil, and garlic is way more flavorful than onion. I think the onion might be taking away from the sauce a little bit.” Ever since I stopped adding onions in my tomato sauce, my life has only improved. I got fitter, I started making more money. You know, before, bills used to come in the mail when I was putting onion, now checks come in the mail, and I don’t put onion in my tomatoes sauce. So all I’m saying is the power of manifestation is absolutely real. Shout out to Oprah’s book club and “The Secret.” Anyways. We’re starting with whole San Marzano tomatoes over here. I know it’s a canned ingredient, but quality really does vary. And I was never a believer about the whole tomatoes. I was like, they already crushed them in the can for you. They’re called crushed tomatoes. But somebody was explaining the difference between the whole canned tomatoes and crushed canned tomatoes, and the whole tomatoes, because they’re kept in their more pure form, they actually pick them at peak brightness. Whereas crushed canned tomatoes, you can kind of disguise it a little bit by crushing it. And so again, I started using whole canned tomatoes. I got more attractive, I have more friends now, and I started answering texts in less than three days. That last part’s not true. That last part’s not true. We’re using a mixture of… Shoot, shoot, shoot. Get in there. Get in there. What I was going to say is, you want your pan to not be very hot, because you don’t want your butter to brown at all. I like to use a mixer of butter and olive oil because butter, you get that nice dairy richness. Olive oil, you get a little bit of that bitter, floral nature to it. I think both of them really have their place in spaghetti sauce. We’re also going to to braise our meatballs in there. So make sure the pan’s not very hot and you don’t scorch your butter. And then we’re going to add a whole lot of chopped garlic to this. Also in Italy, they rarely mix garlic and onion. That might be an old wives’ tale that isn’t exactly true, but I kind of do rarely do that now. So we’re just going to let this swim on low heat. Do not brown it. Taylor, if this garlic started browning, can you just let me know? Because I’m going to be over here. I’m going to be talking about balls and I’m not going to have an eye on this. Great, so you want to get that garlic infused to that butter. When you infuse flavors in some fat, you actually get like a much bigger return on it. Now for the first time ever in the Mythical Kitchen, I am wearing a glove. And that is because I don’t want to get a rash from tomatoes. No glove, no rash. No. Yes glove, no rash. Wear a glove. So we’re going to take all of these tomatoes and we’re going to. All right, perfect. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and crush these with our hands. You could add these tomatoes to the pot directly and use something like a potato masher, or in this case, a tomato masher. It’d be a tomato masher in this case because you’re mashing tomatoes. But the tool is called a potato masher, just so I’m being extra clear. But I like going in and crushing it with my hands because one, it’s fun, it’s nice, it’s interactive, it’s good for the kids. Taylor, where were you on that? Is it a browning at the edge? What the hell happened? What did you do? We hired you to be a garlic watcher and all you do all day is edit and hold the damn camera. The real future is in garlic watching. Yeah, I’m just going to go ahead and slowly do this. You want the mic closer to this? Yeah. No, I don’t like it. Never mind. Are you sure? I can get the mic even closer to the tomatoes. No, that’s okay. I think the people want it. Go ahead. Now, most Italian chefs, they say they leave the glove in there for flavor, but I’m not going to do that. So all this garlic, no browning on it. Thanks to Taylor and his watchful eye. So all we’re going to do, we’re going to take all of these hand-crushed tomatoes right there. Yeah. Gonna let this run nice and slow. And then we’re going to season it with a little bit of salt. And then what I’m going to do, basil, you could… Basil, what do you do? What is it? Nobody knows. The thing that I like to do, I think a lot of the flavor actually comes from stem. I’m going to hack off just a big old stemy bouquet. Check this out. So you’re going to take a piece of basil and you’re going to tie it around the other. You tie it around the other basil. And that’s going to make a little basil bouquet. Womp. So what you’re going to do. Okay, you’re going to cut. You have to cut it. I never would’ve made it on Food Network, man. I’m so glad I found you guys. This is incredible. All right, cool. So check this out. You’re going to take this wad of basil now. You’re going to take this piece of basil and then you’re going to maybe, and then you’re just going to throw that. Just throw that right in there. But for real, this is what I do. And then you submerge that. This is all going to cook. You’re going to remove all that basil. You get all of that nice fragrance from it, all the aromatization, it’s going to really bind with the fat in there. And we’re just going to let this run and simmer for a couple hours. You’re going to throw some meatballs in there. Get them braising. Yeah. Come on, everybody. One more time, balls. Balls, balls, balls, balls. All right, we got our sauce made. Now we’re going to go ahead and sear off some meatballs. Man, is it hot in here or is it just me? Cue the music. The reason I’m always so sweaty in the Mythical Kitchen is because when I’m at home, I exclusively cook without a shirt. I never understood why chefs always wear these super starchy heavy coats, big old thick aprons because when I’m cooking, I want to be comfortable, which is hey, a great segue to my new fit from Vuori. Please clap, please clap. For real. Shout out to Vuori for sponsoring this portion of today’s video. Cooking is basically a sport. You’re in here, you’re working hard, you’re moving around, you’re like a handball goalie stopping meatballs from being thrown at you all the time. We work in a very different kitchen environment. But why wouldn’t you want to wear the most comfortable clothing that you can? There is no more comfortable clothing than Vuori. You can see how soft and light this shirt is. Zoom in really close. You can absolutely see it. I’m wearing the new Strato Tech mushroom heather tee right here and I’m wearing the purple heather performance joggers. They really get my need for both versatility and mobility. Their clothes are actually built for life, and for me, my life is mostly searing meatballs. The fabric is so ridiculously soft and breathable. I feel like I’m wearing nothing at all. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. People who get the reference will get it. And for those of you who don’t just be chill. It’s a soft and breathable shirt, you get it. But for real, you can go from a workout to the rest of your day if you truly start every single day with a workout. You can just exit the gym and straight into searing meatballs. The designs are inspired by the effortless cool of coastal California and I think I’m probably the most effortlessly cool guy you know. And if you’ve been wanting pieces that actually keep up with your life, go online now, browse their bestsellers, and you’ll understand why they have become my absolute go-to. Big thank you to Vuori for both making me look cool and for sponsoring that horse for today’s video. Now we’ve done an episode of “Myth Munchers” about meatballs and it changed my life. There’s one thing specifically, I used to add breadcrumbs to my meatballs with the eggs, thinking that the breadcrumbs would soak up all the fat and they kind of do. But if you want the tenderest balls on the planet, which you absolutely do, you got to make what’s called panade or panad, as we call it in the Mythical Kitchen. Now what panade is, it is a piece made from bread that has been soaked in milk. Shout out to The Boxcar Children series where they ate a lot of bread soaked in milk after swimming in their jeans. Everybody read The Boxcar series growing up? Yeah. Boom, Boxcar Children. Those orphan kids man, out, there all scared on their own, but they made it work. Why? Because they had family. They had each other. Just like Vin Diesel. Go orphans! Go orphans! But for real, the panade absolutely changed my life. Once I stopped using breadcrumbs and started using panade, let’s see, got clearer interpersonal relationship, self-esteem. That’s pretty vague. So once you soak the bread in the milk, you’re going to take it, you’re going to start ripping it up and mash it with your hands. You don’t need to take the crust down. All right, fantastic. We’ve made our panade. Wow, isn’t she gorgeous? Look, at her, she’s running. We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to, ah. Hey, TMZ! You’ve heard the phrase that’s-a-spicy-meat-a-ball. Well, this is indeed a spicy meat ball. And we’re going to add a fair amount of crushed red pepper in there, we’re going to add some raw garlic. You could saute your aromatics. I really like the sharpness and pungency of raw garlic in there. It’s really really nice. We’re going to take some Parmesian cheese. It’s from Glendale. We’re going to go ahead and add a fair amount of salt here because a lot of this is actually going to come out in the meatball. You pull out of black pepper. Black pepper used to be more expensive than gold. And now eggs are currently more expensive than gold. Great segue, Josh. We’re going to add some eggs in there. Those were using two pounds of meat. So we’re going to use two eggs. One, ooh, perfect! And then now we take that beautiful panade. G-g-g-g-ghost! Go ahead and take, I’ve never seen an episode of “Scooby-Doo.” Is it good? Is it worth it to start now? Yes! Yeah. I feel there’s so much lore to catch up on. What’s Scrappy? What’s Scrappy-Doo? What’s his deal? He’s the cousin of Scooby. Cousin? Did they ever introduce like Scrappy’s mom? Was Scrappy’s mom, like, I don’t know, like dead or she died and now Scooby has custody of Scrappy? Never talked about Scrappy’s mom? No. Something happened to Scrappy’s mom. Something happened to Scooby’s parents. Shoot. Anyways, we’re just gonna add the panade in here. Now the key with mixing meatballs, you want to go in there with your fingers like the tines of Poseidon’s trident. What I’m saying is, you don’t wanna like mash it with the palm of your hands because you don’t wanna heat up all that fat in the beef and you don’t wanna like mash everything together too hard. So you want to go in, remember what I said, tines of Poseidon’s trident, also known as Neptune. So you wanna like really mix it in gently. You must resist the temptation to just really go in there and mash. You wanna kind of like fold it over itself. You wanna fold in the cheese According to Scoobypedia, Scrappy’s mom is named Ruby-Doo. Ruby-Doo! I’m going to lube up my hands a bit. Some people use an ice cream scoop for meatballs. I just like to really kind of estimate it. You eventually get good at making, I’m want, like, squash-ball-sized meatballs. You ever played squash? None of you have you ever played squash? Did you even go to Yale? Yale did win an inordinate amount of squash national championships. I’ve also never played squash, but I imagine it’s the size of a squash ball. So what you should do is make your meatballs the size of what I imagine a squash ball to be. Or just kind of like whatever the hell you want. Let ’em roll around your hand. Nice little balls of meat. We’re going to keep repeating this process till we have a whole bunch of balls. Check back in a second. Is the graphic that I want. Taylor, can we get a throw one of them in there? Yeah. For me. Wow! We’re gonna go ahead, we’re gonna take a little bit of vegetable oil, a little bit more than a little bit. My imaginary size of the squash ball, a little bit more than a little bit. We are an absolute precise cook today. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to sear off these balls here. We’ve tested this multiple ways. We’ve tested dropping raw balls directly into the sauce. It’s kind of fun, but it’s a little bit too wet too. We’ve tested baking off the meatballs, then putting them in the sauce. It’s perfectly fine. But if you wanna get, like, all those delicious browned meat bits, you gotta put it in a pan and actually sear it off. There was actually a moment in my life where I really learned about the taste of browned meat simmered in tomato sauce. And it was the best meal that anybody has ever cooked for me in my entire life. When I was dating, even all the way back to college, I would always try and cook for my date, right? So I was like, that is how I gained self-esteem. This is where, you know, I felt comfortable and could actually demonstrate my value. The problem is, everybody that I’ve ever dated was like, “Well, now I feel pressured to cook for you.” And it would always end up being a disaster. But one, one asked her dad for his Sunday gravy. He grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood. And she went and bought, like, lamb neck bones and oxtail and took this giant 10-gallon vat of sauce, and she was just sweating in the kitchen simmering it for eight hours. And to this day I think back to that fatal night, just all of that meatiness, all of that tomatoness. That was incredible. All right, pan’s hot. We go ahead and sear off some meatballs. What I like to do is I like to place one right by my left hand. That way I remember that one went in first. So I can flip that one first and then I go in a clockwise motion, ’cause here’s the thing, you gotta, first ball down, first ball flip. That’s what they say. Come back to the sink. Let’s go. Just kidding. Let me go and wash my hands. Sometimes I take my shirt off and I have to shower in the sink. It’s either if my whole body’s gotten very dirty or if I’ve eaten something very spicy. I don’t know why I’d do that for the second one. But it has happened before. So you’re not trying to fully cook the meatballs, you are really just trying to develop some of that Maillard reaction on there. See where we’re at. See, that is some nice golden brown. You don’t want to take it too far. Probably only need to sear, like, three to eight sides of this. Sphere technically has eight sides. You know what I mean? Because technically a sphere has no sides. But if a sphere has no sides, what the hell did I just sear? You know what I mean? Like for real when you, because you… The idea is if you wanna make perfectly seared, perfectly spherical meatballs, the way to do it is to drop them immediately in a deep fryer. But also like I would never advocate for you to just fire up a deep fryer, which I know is a crazy thing for me to say because that’s almost all I’ve advocated you to do for six years at this point. But that’s really cool technique to get perfectly seared balls. Otherwise you’re kind of ending up with like, I don’t know, half-triangular-prismatic balls. So what I like to do, so hold on. Come on. Come, come. You wanna be very careful doing this. I’m a professional, like Siegfried and Roy and the tigers. Nothing bad ever happened to them because tigers love them. And so what we’re going to do is, there’s a lot of browned meat bits at the bottom here and a lot of good beef fat. You could just take these and put them directly into the sauce right now. I’ll show you the sauce. We’ve been keeping it covered up for a long time. Here’s the sauce. But what I like to do is put some water in there and then stir it up a little bit. And this is called deglazing a pan, effectively. You can use wine or whatever, but water’s just fine. So I wanna get all of those little browned meat that’s off the bottom. There is some fat in here. Adding water to boiling fat is generally bad. But you know what I say to that? Get ‘er done! Sorry, I had the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” on DVD when I was a kid and it was a big influence to me. So we’ve got the browned bits off the bottom. Now we’re just gonna go ahead, take the balls, put ’em in the sauce. Now, the balls are going to be cooked in probably about 15 minutes. However, the longer you let it run, the more of that brown meat flavor is going to get into that sauce. And the more that flavor of the sauce is going to get into the meatballs. Like the longest I probably cooked this is probably three hours. The shortest I probably cooked this is about an hour. You can stop looking at me now, please. Are they back? Yes. They’re back on the YouTube? Yes. Great. What if I just started hosting this like I’m a 75-year-old who hasn’t heard of YouTube before? What channel’s the YouTube’s on? So we’re gonna take the last of the balls, we’re gonna scoop it in there and then all of that delightful sauce in there, all those brown bits. Nah, I’m going to do this proper. Come on. Come on, come here, come here. All right, take a wooden spoon, scrape up all the bits from the bottom of the pan and that, dump that into the pot. It’s all going to reduce now. Don’t be afraid of adding water to the sauces. because the way you get water out of your sauce is just do that. You see all that stuff? You see it? It’s like the white stuff like when the new pope is announced, the white stuff rising, man, that’s just water leaving the system. But you know what that isn’t is flavor. So when the pope, like, the smoke is actually unflavored. Because it’s illegal to sell the flavors in California. We have everything we need to make spaghetti and meatballs. We have spaghetti and we have meatballs. The spaghetti right now finishing up cooking up in some water. We’re going to take that directly from that pot, put it into this pan, get some sauce in there. All right, we’re going to go ahead and take this spaghetti, that is plural for a singular spaghetto. A little bit of pasta water in there. Remember when I talked about all that stuff? The pope thing? Crap. It’s fine. The water will evaporate out, especially when you saute it with the sauce. So we’re going to get this heating up. Now what I’m going to do, all of this sauce in here, you can see how much it’s reduced. So go with the two-spoon method. So what we’re going to do is we’re gonna avoid the balls, completely avoid ’em. We’re going to go ahead and we’re just going to spoon some of that sauce directly in there. Try not to crush any of the balls, which would be the reason the balls are different sides so they can slide against each other and not get crushed. Ladle it in. Ah, shoot! I forgot to remove the basil. Here’s the basil. They’ve made it edible now, so you can just leave it in there. So we’re just going to go ahead, rip that up. You could add Parmesan now. I kind don’t want to, I kind of just like adding Parmesan at the end. Let this cook and saute a little bit. I don’t want any residual water in there. Come back in a second. Come back. I’ll see you there. I’ll see you another time. All right, spaghetti is sauteed. You can see there’s no more water, just all that lovely tomato pulp. And actually some of that spaghetti starch has helped thicken the sauce. All right, so we’re going to take some spaghetti. What I like to do is, I like to. There we go. Yeah, look at that, the juice. You gotta hold the plate here, put that on. That did nothing. That is nice. There we go. That’s beautiful. Now don’t mind me. Don’t mind me. All right, now we’re just going to take three meatballs. These are again, slightly larger than a squash ball, but they are about what I imagine a squash ball to be. Perfect. Take a little bit of that sauce, put that right on top of the meatballs. Beautiful. So now, finish it up. Garnish a little bit. Imported cheese from Glendale. This is an unwieldy piece of cheese. You see most people using cheese that’s like wedged. It’s much to grate when it’s a think chunk. So let that cheese down there. I’m gonna take, just gonna go to our little garden, pick a couple basil leaves for color, you know. But also again, as we mentioned, they have made basil edible now. Just put some nice little basil leaves right there, right on top. This is what I’ve decided is my final plate. This is our final plate. My eyes just started burning. Here you have it, our final plate of spaghetti and meatballs. The ones that I’m sure cost less than $62. Trevor Evarts. What’s up? What’re you seeing man? Tell me what you’re seeing. I’m seeing all my hopes and dreams and I’m seeing myself and I’m seeing myself achieve them and grab onto them. And I’m seeing myself sore in sky like an eagle. Oh, god, that hurt. But mostly nothing. Yeah, well, that’s good because we’re going to blind feed you three. Don’t touch the meatballs. Don’t touch the spaghetti and meatballs. I was touching the plate. I’ll feed you. Touching the plates. We have three spaghetti and meatball dishes here. One of them by moi, that’s French for me, then one of them’s the most expensive, one of them is the cheapest in the city. You need some balls? Yeah, I love me some balls. I love spaghetti. It’s thick! Oh my god. Watch the fork. Okay. He likes it. Ball? Ball time? Mm! ‘Cause here’s the thing. Are you enjoying that, off the bat? I am, and you know what? The noodles were just okay, but the meatball is outshining the spaghetti. Okay, you want another? No, we’re going to noodles first. I don’t know, let’s do ball first. You wanna go ball first? Yeah, I’ll go ball first. Okay, balls and then the… Mmm! Vastly different ball. In a good or bad way? Not in a good or bad. I think it’s different. It’s almost a little bit sweeter. Even though my last words to you were “I’m kinda full.” I don’t know why I’m . All right. Wow. That is a lot of slurping. I don’t even eat anything. I don’t think that that needed to be slurped that much. What are your thoughts on it? I think I like the meatball maybe a little bit less. But I think even the sauce by itself I liked better. Hm! You know, I’m a big meatball fan. Yeah, I’m very critical of meatballs. Yeah, I see that. Already off the bat, you have your serious Trevor stance right now? Yeah. You know? This is my meatball stance. All right, do you want noodle or ball of the last one first? You know what? I’m gonna do noodle. Okay, good. It’s already the fork. That’s awesome. Mm! Meatball? Yeah. This is so tough. I know, you’ve been given a really hard task. What do I? You wanna feel how soft my shirt is? Yeah. Oh wow, that’s beautiful. Right? It’s Vuori. Oh, I have a couple of their shorts. comfortable. Okay, so what do I do now? I pick my favorite? Yes. I pick my favorite now? You’re gonna pick your favorite plate of spaghetti and meatballs, ball one, ball two, or ball three. I got to go the first ball that I tasted. That’s my favorite. The meatball’s really important to me and I really like the meatball a lot. So Trevor, which one do you think was from the most expensive restaurant in LA? Which one do you think I made? And which . Hm, see, I always wanna believe that we’re doing . So I think that this is the most expensive in LA. That’s number three. Okay, yeah, number three. You think number three is the most expensive one? Yeah, right. Number two- There you go. Is the cheapest. And then the one on the end is the one that I think you made. Trevor, open your eyes. You are wrong. You thought mine was the cheapest in LA. That was yours? Yeah. And then this one, this is the most expensive. This is a $60 plate of spaghetti from Lavo. And there is a lot going on in that meatball, honestly. Especially on second taste, I see why you love this meatball so much. There is so much complexity going on. There’s so much herb, so much cheese. I tried to go really simple and to let, like, simple clean cooking win. No, they’re not full of hot, nasty bombasticness. And then this is from Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo? inside Monte Carlo deli? Oh my god. You know we drive by it all the time, and you’re like, I wonder who’s going in there. Mm! Yeah, you, you went in there. it was me! It’s me going in there for spaghetti. So this one cost $12.99. This is $62. And then we spent $18 to make this plate. And I did kind of base my basis on the meat in the meatballs too. Now, and I’m thinking that if I had this spaghet here. Have some spaghet. I gotta make dinner when I get home. Oh dude! Oh, all over your white sneakers. That’s crazy. Thanks for putting it right next to my bite of spaghetti. Mm, mm! By tasting the noodles again, I think it’s pretty clear to me. Yeah, yeah. And that’s a lesson out there for everyone, okay? It’s not just about the ball, it’s about the noodles. It’s always about the noodle and the ball as a whole. Well, it’s on the laces. The laces, now I see it, yeah. And that’s a lesson, everybody, that if you’re eating spaghetti, take your shoes off. You go into Olive Garden, you’re gonna want to leave those shoes at the door. That’s why they have the shoe rack. That’s right, shoe rack at the Olive Garden. Most people don’t use it. Hand the host your shoes. You know, you get that dripping zuppa toscana down the chin, it’s, yeah. Sometimes I take off my pants, too.