Making spaghetti dinner for 4 or 400 guests? This calculator will calculate how much spaghetti you should prepare depending on the number of people you are serving. It will provide the amount of dry pasta, sauce, and meatballs (or meat sauce) you will need per person/serving. Suggestions are provided in both ounces and grams.
Spaghetti dinners are a popular option for large gatherings such as weddings, graduations, and fundraisers. Aside from being economical, the ingredients are easy to prepare, transport, and serve. People love pasta so much they eat it at least once per week so spaghetti is always a great choice for dinner.
Read more or skip to the bottom of the page to use the calculator.
How Much Spaghetti Dinner To Make Per Person
The calculations used in this calculator are based on Barilla’s recommendations, which are roughly 2 ounces of dry pasta and 2 to 4 ounces of sauce per person. Two ounces of dry pasta generally will equal one serving of cooked pasta. This applies to any type of pasta, regardless of whether it’s spaghetti noodles, fettuccine, linguine, penne, etc.
Our calculator used 4 ounces of sauce…because we love sauce! It doesn’t matter if it’s a traditional spaghetti sauce, marinara, or an alfredo sauce, the amount needed would be the same. This calculator is similar to our How Much Pasta To Cook Per Person Calculator, but it also provides sauce and protein amounts specifically for spaghetti dinners.
How Much Hamburger For Spaghetti Sauce Or Meatballs
If you are adding hamburger to your sauce you will want approximately 3-4 ounces of hamburger for every 4 ounce of sauce. Meatballs are typically prepared with fillers, so for meatballs you will want 4 ounces per serving
The Secret To Perfect Pasta
As with our rice calculator, we researched what it takes to make great pasta. And it turns out much of the chemistry is the same, with a few additional tricks.
- Season the water with salt. Three teaspoons of salt will increase the boiling temperature of your water by a few degrees. This higher temperature is a good thing for the starches in pasta. It will also season your pasta noodles as they cook.
- Wait until your water is at a rolling boil before adding your pasta. The starches in the pasta need both consistent heat and water to cook evenly.
- Should you add oil to your pasta’s water? Chemists found that most of the oil that is added to the water used to boil pasta rinses off when you strain the pasta.
- Pasta should be cooked minutes before it is served. The starches on the outside of pasta are meant to be sticky so that they hold onto sauces they are being served with. The sauces will help in preventing the pasta from sticking to itself.
- When to rinse pasta? Rinsing with cold water stops the cooking process and washes off starches. For this reason, rinsing is only recommended when you will be serving the pasta later, or using it in a salad.
If you are cooking for a large gathering and need to calculate other food items, check out our Cooking For A Crowd Calculator.
