Well it's blogging time again, and today it’s another entry of Lookin at Food, where I take a look at a food that I’ve tried and discuss my thoughts on it. And today’s entry is what many consider a goto comfort food and a childhood classic: Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs.
This was something that I never really had growing up since I didn’t really like it, but during break I got tired of the ramen noodles I had, and wanted to get something different, and since money is tight for me, I decided to walk to the local Cumberland Farms and get one of the cheapest things I could get. Combined with researching the story behind it made me want to see if this stuff was really as bad as I thought it was.
Now first things first, the backstory. believe it or not, the iconic chef in the logo isn't just an ad campaign, Chef Ettore “Hector” Boiardi was real and had quite the beginnings.
Chef Ettore “Hector” Boiardi
Born in Piacenza Italy on October 22, 1897, he loved cooking at a young age. So young, that his family often joked that he used a wire whisk as a baby rattle, and had become a chef’s apprentice at the age of 11. In 1914, at the age of 16, Ettore left Italy and moved to America, where his brother Paul lived and worked as a waiter at the famous Plaza Hotel in New York City.
There, Paul managed to get Ettore a job in the kitchen, where he quickly earned the ranks and by the next year, Ettore was made head chef.
By 1920, Boiardi had experience working as the head chef at many hotels before supervising the catering at both a homecoming meal for 2,000 returning World War I soldiers, and even President Woodrow Wilson’s wedding. One year after getting married In 1924, he left his position as head chef at the Hotel Winton in Cleveland Ohio, and opened his own restaurant with his wife Helen. He named it Il Giardino d'Italia, which means The Garden of Italy in Italian.
At the time Italian food didn’t have the luxury status and ubiquity it has today, it was only available in prominent Italian American communities and all the fine food restaurants in America were French. But thanks to Boiardi’s cooking skills, his restaurant an immediate success as customers lined out the door to enjoy his famous spaghetti. It was so successful, that customers often asked if they could take his spaghetti sauce home.
Then a lightbulb went off, What if he could package his sauce and recipe and sell them? It seemed like a good idea and that's exactly what he did. He began collecting milk bottles, cleaned them out, filled them with his spaghetti sauce, and sold them to his customers. After this proved successful, he began selling take out orders of his sauce, uncooked spaghetti, and grated parmesan cheese. In 1927, Boiardi met Maurice and Eva Weiner, two customers of his restaurant and owners of a local A&P grocery store chain, who helped him develop a process for canning his sauce.
The Weiners also procured distribution across the United States through their grocery's wholesale partners. By 1928, the sales of his canned sauce had surpassed his restaurant business so he expanded by opening a canning plant with his brothers Paul and Mario which they called The Chef Boiardi Food Company.
They launched 3 sauces, traditional, mushroom, and spicy Naples-style. While the business was successful, there was a problem, American customers and salesmen couldn’t pronounce Boiardi. So, they changed the name to one that customers could sound out: Boy-ar-dee. They company moved operations to Milton Pennsylvania in 1930 and in 1936, they introduced their first prepackaged meal kit: A jar of sauce, a box of spaghetti, and a container of grated parmesan cheese, a full spaghetti dinner ready to make at home. The timing couldn’t have been better as an easy to use can opener had recently been introduced and people saw canned products as nutritious, trustworthy, and labor-saving.
It was a commodity, and by 1942 that commodity that was needed more than ever as America entered World War II. With the war raging, the United States military needed foods with a long shelf life that could be transported to the frontlines in Europe and the Pacific. So The United States commissioned the company to develop a version of their spaghetti that fully prepared and all that was needed was to be heated, and churn out can after can of rations for the soldiers. To keep up with increased demand, the factory kept its production lines running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And their efforts did not go unnoticed. One year after the war was won, in 1946, Boiardi, was awarded the Gold Star: one of the highest awards a civilian can receive, and his workers gathered in Milton to celebrate the Allied victory.
Ettore Boiardi (3rd left) reciving his goldstar of honor (1946)
However that lead to a problem, without the demand created by the war, he couldn’t afford to keep on all of the employees he hired to increase production. So he sold the company to Foods for nearly $6 million dollars and stayed on as both a spokesman and consultant.
An ad featuring Ettore Boiardi for Chef Boyardee's spaghetti kit (1953)
He continued to do so until 1979 when he retired. 6 years later, he passed away in 1985 at the age of 87. Eventually American Home spun off their food division so they could focus on healthcare and pharmaceutical products. The division was purchased by ConAgra Foods in 2000, which continues to produce Chef Boyardee canned pastas bearing Boiardi's likeness today.
The last ad featuring Ettore Boiardi for Chef Boyardee's spaghetti kit (1979)
So that’s enough history, let’s get into the spaghetti itself. Well there’s 2 ways to cook it, the traditional way in a pot on the stove, or in a container in the microwave. Being that I don’t have access to a pot, I went with the microwave option. Looking inside the can, the sauce looks pretty thick and so does the spaghetti, but there are no meatballs at all. They are in the can, but none are on the surface. The other can i got (Because yes I did buy 2 of them) did have a meatball on the top, but for this can there is none on the surface, bizarre!
Anyway into the microwave for 2 minutes I’m left with this:
So impressions for me? it looks pretty average, not great, but not terrible either. One thing that I notice is there’s only 5 meatballs in the can, I would expect a little more than that but there nisn’t also the spaghetti is quite short, so if you like twirling your spaghetti on a fork, your out of luck there.
Tastewise, it’s pretty decent for what it is. The sauce taste how it should, quite tomatoy, the meatballs have a distinct beef flavor which is nice, the only thing that’s a miss for me is the spaghetti. It’s got a slightly weird texture where it feels kind of mushy but it isn’t. If I grab a piece and squeeze it it doesn’t mash like I would expect, but instead stays together a bit more like spaghetti you cook yourself, it’s very odd.
So in conclusion, what do I think? Well, I think it’s ok, it’s obviously not going to be as good as Spaghetti you make yourself, but for a simple prepackaged can that you can heat up to get a spaghetti meal in a couple of minutes it does the job. So that wraps it up for today, Thanks for reading! see you next time!