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Hi, y’all! This vegan Filipino spaghetti recipe is another one from my past. Well, sort of since I veganized it. But it’s still something from my childhood: Filipino Spaghetti.
Filipino Spaghetti isn’t your authentic Italian spaghetti or even your basic American spaghetti. And it’s not trying to be. Filipino Spaghetti is its own sweet thang and I love it so much.
This vegan Filipino spaghetti is a sweet dish. So please be aware of that. It is *sweet*. Sweet. Sweet. Sweet.
Vegan Filipino spaghetti is another favorite comfort food of mine. It’s what I want when I/m not in the mood for my favorite vegan Filipino Adobo.
Filipino Spaghetti is generally loaded with chopped onions, garlic and carrots, packaged tomato sauce, processed cheese, sliced hot dogs and ground beef. It was especially sweet due to added sugars in the sauce and/or banana sauce (also called banana ketchup). Not gonna lie, the loads of sodium content makes me nervous sometimes! I’m all about salting my food properly but I’m not super excited about the amounts of sodium in packaged foods.
Filipino Spaghetti was a birthday party favorite. Every family had their own recipe for it but the same result was always the same: No one ever turned it down and everyone always wanted more!
Filipino Spaghetti is incredibly sweet due to both the Philippine store-bought spaghetti sauce and banana sauce. And because of the diabetes that runs in my family, I wanted to be reasonable. While I use organic cane sugar in this vegan Filipino spaghetti recipe, I am actually relying way more on a whole pound of carrots for the sweetness. The carrots also help give the spaghetti an orange hue which helps make it look like old school Filipino Spaghetti. I also removed the banana sauce altogether because I wanted to make a recipe that would only require things I’m likely to already have in my pantry.
Now I present to you my Vegan Filipino Spaghetti Recipe without Banana Sauce! If you decide to use it, please read the notes thoroughly. Hope you like!
30 Minute Vegan Filipino Spaghetti without Banana Sauce
Easy 30 minute vegan Filipino Spaghetti Recipe without the need for banana sauce!
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 15
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
Ingredients
- 1 lb dried spaghetti noodles
- a heaping tablespoon of salt for pasta water (don’t come at me with sodium comments – do your research)
- 24–28 oz jar of your favorite tomato-based pasta sauce
- 28 oz canned, unpeeled tomatoes
- 12–16 oz vegan ground beef
- 12–16 oz frozen carrots
- 5 vegan hot dogs (not Italian sausage)
- 1 large yellow onion, peeled and roughly chopped
- ⅔ cup of organic cane sugar
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 5 cloves of garlic, peeled, ends removed and roughly chopped
Instructions
- Bring a 6 qt stockpot or 6 qt saucepan to medium heat.
- Once the pot is hot, add ¼ cup of olive oil.
- Once olive oil is hot, add the onion, garlic and frozen carrots and cook until garlic and onion are translucent, about 3-5 minutes.
- When done onion and garlic are done cooking, add the organic cane sugar, tomato-based pasta sauce and roasted tomatoes. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 minutes.
- Once simmering, cook pasta according to directions on the box. Just make sure to salt properly with the heaping tablespoon of salt once the water is boiling.
- When pasta is done cooking, drain the pasta using a colander and immediately rinse with cold water to stop cooking.
- Quickly discard the pasta water in the sink and return cooked pasta to the pot. Drizzle with olive oil and toss with tongs to coat each noodle as much as possible to avoid clumping.
- At this point the sauce should be done or close to done. Turn off heat.
- With an immersion blender, blend the sauce so that it’s not so chunky. Blend maybe about 75%. Just eyeball this, no worries if you have big chunks of the carrots, it’s good for texture and color.
- Salt to taste. Seriously, you need to salt enough.
- Add the pasta to the sauce, this will almost fill up the smaller pot but that’s okay. Keep the pasta pot accessible to use for the frying of the vegan meats.
- Fully submerge pasta in the sauce and let sit while you fry up your vegan hot dogs and vegan ground beef.
- Preheat to medium again and add olive oil when it’s hot.
- Drizzle olive oil to the bottom of the larger pasta stockpot. Once it’s hot, add the ground beef and vegan hot dogs to cook for a good 2-3 minutes (or follow instructions on the packaging. This isn’t real meat so it doesn’t have to cook as long.
- When vegan meat is done cooking, add to the pasta and carefully mix.
- Salt to taste again.
- Serve in bowls with a sprinkle of dried parsley on top and enjoy!
Notes
- This is a very sweet dish. I generally don’t encourage people to switch out ingredients especially when they’re taking on non-white-centered dishes like mine unless it’s for health/ethical reasons. But adjusting sugar content is reasonable for obvious reasons. Diabetes runs in my family so I get it.
- To test if a pot or the oil is hot enough, use the water flick method (obviously only using a TINY bit of water…like quickly run your fingers tips under the running tap and use that) – if it snaps and crackles, then it’s ready. If it does nothing, then it’s not. Just don’t burn yourself.
- Make sure you salt your pasta water with a palmful of salt! If you’re not familiar, watch this two minute video to learn how to salt properly. This is important and non-negotiable if you don’t like bland food. If you don’t salt your pasta water properly, that’s on you.
- It’s fine to use fresh or frozen vegetables. I just tried to make this as easy as possible.
- Make sure to taste and properly throughout the cooking process.
- When cooking, you will have to adjust temperature accordingly based on your own stove. I’m going off of my induction stove that tends to heat way more intensely than your regular gas or electric stove.
- You must move quickly when draining the pasta, etc. If you don’t get the olive oil on it, it’ll start to clump.
- Make sure not to have the heat too high for the vegan meats as you don’t want it to smoke and set off your smoke detector!
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