Macaroni with Tomato Juice
Cooking

Macaroni with Tomato Juice

June 7, 2018 /

I was home today by myself, everyone else was out of town. With no one coming home for supper, I decided to make one of my favorite dishes from my childhood. Macaroni with tomato juice is a major comfort food for me. When I was a kid, my mom did a lot of canning from the garden. Tomato juice is one thing that she never had to buy, she always had it canned and ready to go. She used it in a lot of recipes like chili, vegetable soup, goulash, and macaroni with tomato juice. I know a lot of people use tomatoes, but Mom always made macaroni with tomato juice. It is one of the first dishes I taught myself to make after we were married, but it took me a long time to get it right since I didn’t have a recipe.

Macaroni with Tomato Juice

One thing I always had trouble with was the seasoning, I had trouble getting it to taste right, it tasted flat. Finally, I learned that you need to salt the water when you boil the pasta or it will never be right. It is amazing the difference it makes when you salt the pasta water. That took care of the seasoning problem, the other problem I had was the macaroni got mushy when I simmered the dish to thicken the tomato juice. I fixed that by under cooking the macaroni in the water and letting it finish cooking in the tomato juice.

Macaroni with Tomato Juice

A bonus is that it is a very inexpensive dish since all you have to buy is a package of macaroni noodles and a can or bottle of tomato juice. I have always been a little picky with the brand of tomato juice that I would use. For some reason the store brands never seemed to taste right, I actually have always preferred Campbell tomato juice. I tried the tomato juice from Aldi about a year ago and liked it, so that is what I buy now. If you like saving money, you might like my post about What’s the Deal at Aldi?

Macaroni with Tomato Juice

So now that I have solved the problems, I can share this recipe for my favorite old fashioned comfort food. My husband likes to add cheese, but not me, I want it just like Mom made it. Just 4 simple ingredients if you count the salt and pepper. Since I am the only one home, I have leftovers for next week which will come in handy since we have a busy week planned with VBS and a babysitting course for my daughter. I love having leftovers, do you?

Macaroni with Tomato Juice

Macaroni with Tomato Juice

Ingredients

12 oz macaroni

46 oz tomato juice

2 tbsp salt

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Place cold water in a large pot and bring to a boil, add 2 tbsp salt and pasta to the boiling water, stir to make sure pasta doesn’t stick together. Cook pasta a little less than al dente. Drain off the water and add tomato juice, 1 tsp of salt and the pepper. Bring back to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer until the sauce has thickened and the macaroni is al dente, about 15 minutes.

Did you grow up eating macaroni with tomato juice? What is your comfort food? Leave a comment and let me know.

You might like a couple of other recipes from my childhood like Simple Tuna Salad and Sweet Rice.

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