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Home » Main » Spaghetti Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Pasta)

September 8, 2020 By Yumiko 12 Comments

Spaghetti Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Pasta)

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Spaghetti Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Pasta) is one of the popular yōshoku (Western-style food) dishes. The uniqueness of this pasta is the sauce that is based on ketchup/tomato sauce (Aussie), making the colour of the pasta almost red.  It is a simple pasta dish but very tasty.

Hero-shot of Spaghetti Napolitan.

The name of the dish sounds like the Italian pasta dish, Spaghetti Napolitana but the sauce is quite different. While the sauce of the Italian pasta is made with crushed/pureed tomato and herbs, the Japanese Napolitan sauce uses ketchup/tomato sauce.

Apparently, the chef at Hotel New Grand in Yokohama invented the dish soon after WWII. Hotel New Grand was used as accommodation by American troops during the Occupation of Japan, for 7 years from 1945.

The chef watched how the American soldiers were eating pasta by simply adding ketchup to it and nothing else. He thought it was too plain as a dish so he added all the ingredients to the pasta that resembles today’s Spaghetti Napolitan. The name of the dish came from the Italian dish, Spaghetti Napolitana due to its similarity.

Spaghetti Napolitan is widespread among young and old, so much so that if people hear the word ‘Napolitan’ (ナポリタン), everyone knows that it is a Japanese Ketchup Pasta.

Nostalgic Spaghetti Napolitan

Picking up strands of Spaghetti Napolitan with a fork.

The original Spaghetti Napolitan served at restaurants was more authentic than what you are served at yōshoku restaurants in Japan these days.

To start with, the pasta was cooked the day before and to beyond al-dente, i.e. fully cooked to almost like soft noodles. Oil was sprinkled to prevent the pasta from drying up and kept in the fridge overnight. Then when an order came through, the pasta was reheated by stir-frying it with the vegetables, ham and sauce.

Basically, the method of cooking Spaghetti Napolitan at the time was conceptually similar to the noodle soups served at stand-and-eat noodle shops. Pre-cooked noodles are ready; toppings and broth are ready; warm up the noodles in boiling water; drain and transfer to a serving bowl; add the soup and toppings.

Zoomed-in photo of Napolitan.

Some people apparently still prefer overcooked pasta to bring back memories of the good old days.

When my children were still little, I sometimes cooked Spaghetti Napolitan. I think that the pasta was close to the nostalgic version. My son still remembers that my pasta was beyond al dente and not saucy. I have improved my Neapolitan since then and I think my Napolitan is quite good.

What’s in my Spaghetti Napolitan

The ingredients are grouped into two parts – Pasta ingredients and Neapolitan sauce.

The list of pasta ingredients is pretty much the same among most of the Napolitan recipes:

Napolitan ingredients.

  • Pasta – Spaghetti (no.5, standard spaghetti) or Spaghettoni (no.7) is the best.
  • Oil to sauté vegetables and protein.
  • Crushed Garlic
  • Onion, sliced to 1cm wide strips
  • Green capsicum, thinly sliced
  • Sliced button mushrooms (I used Swiss mushrooms in the photo above)
  • Ham, sliced into strips
  • Butter – to add flavour and richness to the dish.

Instead of ham, you can use bacon or sliced sausages (not raw). If you omit ham/bacon/sausage, you can make it vegetarian.

Napolitan Sauce:

  • Tomato sauce (Aussie) or ketchup
  • Tomato paste
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Water

How to make it

Cooking Napolitan is very easy and fast. In fact, cooking the pasta takes the longest time.

  1. Mix sauce ingredients.
  2. Cook pasta.
  3. Sauté garlic and onion, then add the rest of ingredients and sauté.
  4. Add sauce and mix with other ingredients.
  5. Mix the pasta.
  6. Add butter and toss the pasta.

Step-by-step photo of making Ketchup Pasta.

In step 4 above, I push the sautéed ingredients to one side and add the sauce so that the sauce cooks by itself (see the top left photo above). By doing this, you can reduce the sharp acidity of the ketchup/tomato sauce. Then mix with the sautéed ingredients.

Although my recipe instructions for cooking pasta and other ingredients are synchronous processes, you can start cooking the vegetables and get the Napolitan sauce ready while cooking the pasta. Then you can get Spaghetti Napolitan ready in one minute after the pasta is ready!

Toppings for Napolitan

As far as I remember, Spaghetti Napolitan has always been served with a bottle of Tabasco and grated parmesan cheese.

Spaghetti Napolitan with parmesan cheese sprinkled over.

Given that the origin of this dish is associated with the US, I can easily understand the inclusion of Tabasco as a topping. I think that tomato flavour goes very well with Tabasco. By adding a few dashes of Tabasco to the dish, the sweetness of the sauce that comes from tomato ketchup becomes somewhat milder.

I read in an article that there are rules as to what kind of pasta dishes should have cheese added and what kind shouldn’t. I don’t know if Japanese Ketchup Pasta should or shouldn’t have cheese by Italian standard. Well, this dish does not exist in Italy anyway so let’s sprinkle on some cheese!

Spaghetti Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Pasta) can be a great bento food as it reheats well. It is also suitable as a side dish to be packed in a bento box. Imagine the colour!

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Spaghetti Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Pasta)
Prep Time
5 mins
Cook Time
12 mins
Total Time
17 mins
 

Spaghetti Napolitan is one of the popular yōshoku (Western food) dishes. The uniqueness of this pasta is the sauce, which is based on ketchup/tomato sauce (Aussie), making the colour of the pasta almost red. It is a simple pasta dish but very tasty.

Omit the protein to make it vegetarian!

Cook Time = time to cook my Spaghetti (n.7) + 1 minute to mix pasta with the sauce. This is because I started making the sauce while cooking pasta.

Don't forget to see the section 'MEAL IDEAS' below the recipe card! It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and this recipe that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.

Recipe Type: Main
Cuisine: Japanese
Keyword: ketchup spaghetti, pasta, spaghetti
Serves: 1
Author: Yumiko
Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)
  • 100g / 3.5oz pasta (dried, note 1)
  • ½ tbsp oil (note 2)
  • 1 clove garlic crushed
  • 60g / 2.1oz onion sliced into 1cm / ⅜" wide pieces
  • 40g / 1.4oz green capsicum thinly sliced (note 3)
  • 20g / 0.7oz mushrooms thinly sliced
  • 40g / 1.4oz ham sliced into 1cm wide strips (note 4)
  • 1 tsp butter
Sauce
  • 2 tbsp ketchup (= tomato sauce for Aussie)
  • 1 tsp tomato paste
  • ¼ tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp water
Serving
  • Grated parmesan cheese
  • Tabasco
Instructions
  1. Cook pasta in a big pot of boiling water per packet instructions (al dente).

  2. Reserve 1 tablespoon of water from the pot, then drain the pasta.

  3. Put all the Sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

  4. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add garlic and onion, sauté for about 1½-2 minutes until the onion pieces become transparent.
  5. Add capsicum, mushrooms and ham to the pan and sauté 1 minute.
  6. Push the ingredients to one side and put the Sauce in the cleared area. The sauce should starts bubbling immediately.

  7. Stir the sauce for 30 seconds (note 5), then mix the ingredients and the sauce together.
  8. Add the pasta and a tablespoon of the pasta water to the pan. Mix quickly.

  9. Add butter to the pan and toss several times until the butter melts and mixes with the pasta, then turn the heat off.

  10. Transfer the pasta to a serving plate with grated parmesan cheese and a bottle of tabasco.
Recipe Notes

1. I used Barilla brand spaghetti no.7, which is called spaghettoni. Spaghettoni is thicker than standard spaghetti (no.5). For today’s pasta dish, I think either spaghetti or spaghettoni are best suited.

2. Unlike standard pasta dish, I didn’t use olive oil because I wanted the pasta just like how it was made in Japan when I was in Japan. But if you wish, use olive oil instead.

3. I sliced the capsicum thinly because in Australia. capsicum is quite large and the flesh is very thick. I halved the capsicum vertically, then sliced the half perpendicular to the first cut.

If your capsicum is like Japanese capsicum, which is about 5-6cm / 2-2⅜" long with very thin and soft flesh, you should slice it to 7mm / ¼" wide strips.

4. Instead of ham, you can use bacon strips or thinly sliced sausages (not the raw meat sausages).

5. This is to remove the acidity of the tomato sauce/ketchup.

6. Nutrition per serving, not including toppings.

serving: 326g calories: 616kcal fat: 15g (23%) saturated fat: 3.6g (18%) trans fat: 0.2g polyunsaturated fat: 2.3g monounsaturated fat: 7g cholesterol: 36mg (12%) sodium: 763mg (32%) potassium: 878mg (25%) carbohydrates: 98g (33%) dietary fibre: 5.6g (22%) sugar: 17g protein: 25g vitamin a: 19% vitamin c: 178% calcium: 4.7% iron: 27%

 

Meal Ideas

A typical Japanese meal consists of a main dish, a couple of side dishes, a soup and rice. I try to come up with a combination of dishes with a variety of flavours, colours, textures and make-ahead dishes.

Since today’s main is yōshoku (Western-style food), I tried to choose the dishes that are not too authentically Japanese. I realise the collection of my recipes are mostly authentic, but I think the dishes I picked today go well with the pasta dish.

Spaghetti Napolitan does not contain a lot of protein, so I picked oysters as a starter. I felt that two sides and a soup would be sufficient to accompany the pasta dish. So I picked a dessert to fill the 5th panel but it’s optional.

  • Main: Spaghetti Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Pasta) – today’s recipe.
  • Side dish 1: Oysters with Tosazu Dressing 3 Ways – you don’t need them 3 ways, you can even have them plain.
  • Side dish 2: Persimmon Daikon Salad – or other vegetable salad.
  • Soup: Japanese-style Egg Drop Soup (Kakitama-jiru) – or other clear soup.
  • Dessert: Coffee Jelly (Jello) – or omit dessert.

Dinner idea with Spaghetti Napolitan.

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Filed Under: All Recipes, Collections - Quick Meal, Main, Rice & Noodles, Yōshoku (Western-style Japanese Dish)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Richard Ishikawa says

    March 15, 2022 at 5:25 pm

    Made it using prosciutto slices, and pork broth instead of water. Added a little sugar for more sweetness to offset the tartness of the ketchup. Used pioppino mushrooms as well. Pretty delicious and so simple versus traditional Italian spaghetti using complex Italian herbs. Nice wabi-sabi pasta meal.

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      March 16, 2022 at 9:19 am

      Hi Richard, thanks for placing it as a ‘wabi-sabi pasta meal’. Very well put.

      Reply
  2. kym K🈚️🈵 says

    October 9, 2021 at 6:56 am

    Hi, Yumiko,
    I love the idea of using green capsicum but why not also use red capsicum, the flavour of red is more intense. And instead of bacon, why not try speck. I know it’s still bacon but speck has a more meater taste, plus you can cut into squares chunks.. Also red onion instead of white, the flavour becomes more milder. I think that using these other ingredients makes this dish more colourful, thus making it more enjoyable to eat because we eat with our eyes first.. Me using this term the more colour we see in food our mind gets tricked into believing it’l taste better.. All of you who read this, try this out.. Cook this same dish, but just make it like Yumiko’s recipe. Then make it with all my ingredients. using as much colourful ingredients you can think of but remember it must still be a pasta dish, just put more colour into it.

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      October 9, 2021 at 9:01 am

      Hi Kym, you can of course use other ingredients. Green was used for the very same reason as your comment. Add a contrasting colour to the dish.

      Reply
  3. Poornima says

    September 22, 2021 at 10:38 am

    Lovely recipe really😍👍

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      September 22, 2021 at 11:20 am

      Hi Poornima, thank you!

      Reply
  4. Caz says

    May 30, 2021 at 3:13 pm

    Hi there~ I made this recipe today with some left-over cold poached chicken. It went down a treat. I used some romano cheese instead of the parmesan (because we have access to a great locally made cheese brand and it is cheaper than parmesan for me to buy. [Plus it had the added bonus of having dried chilli flakes added to it . I am a spice nut!] It’s great to see Recipe Tin featured as the featured site on Pinterest today. Well done, ladies! Cheers from the West, Caz.

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      May 31, 2021 at 9:28 am

      Hi Caz, thank you! I’m glad you liked the Japanese pasta. a bit of chilli flakes totally make sense!

      Reply
  5. Eileen says

    October 19, 2020 at 5:16 am

    I prepared this recipe, doubling it for three of us. I omitted the mushrooms and inadvertently forgot to include the butter. However, the dish still turned out well, and the little bit we ate for lunch the next day tasted even better! This recipe is a keeper! Thank you.

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      October 19, 2020 at 9:46 am

      Hi Eileen, it great to hear that Napolitan was even better the next day. Great for bento box!

      Reply
  6. Catherine Hogan says

    September 9, 2020 at 12:43 pm

    I had my doubts about this recipe. But since I was craving a quick pasta supper and had all the ingredients on hand, I went ahead with it. Used a slice of bacon cut into bits for the meat part. It was so delicious! I regretted that I hadn’t doubled the recipe so I could eat it all again for lunch tomorrow. I can easily make it again since I have sauteed mushrooms and sauteed bell peppers and more bacon in the freezer. I will be making this often. Very clever of someone to come up with this.

    Reply
    • Yumiko says

      September 9, 2020 at 3:36 pm

      Hi Catherine, that’s funny. I am glad that it turned out to be a surprise for you!

      Reply

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Hi, I’m Yumiko!

I was born and raised in Japan and migrated to Australia with my family in 1981. I got tired of my kids constantly asking me for their favourite Japanese recipes, so I decided to collate them in one place so they can help themselves - and now you can too! Read More…

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