Short Spaghetti aka Goulash Recipe

Delicious, easy and budget friendly lunch or dinner recipe! This goulash is ready in less than 30 minutes and great served with a salad, veggies and buttered bread!

Short Spaghetti aka Goulash

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This recipe was revised, photographed and updated on 6/9/20. You can find the original recipe here.

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This "short spaghetti" is another favorite meal from when I was a child. 

Most people call it goulash, slumgullion or chop suey, but my family had their own names for common pasta dishes.

We not only called this short spaghetti, but we also called spaghetti, long spaghetti and mac and cheese, cheese spaghetti. Not sure where those names came from, but my grandparents, aunts and cousins all used those same names.

When other kids mentioned goulash when I was little, I swore to them it wasn't ever called goulash and it was short spaghetti. They probably thought I was crazy since I now know we were the only people who called it that.

Instead of elbow macaroni, we use Creamette's Ready Cut Spaghetti pasta for this recipe. I wasn't able to find it for many years after my Mom always used it, but now it's back on the shelves locally and it's the only noodle I use when making this meal.

My daughter requests this for dinner weekly, so we make this easy recipe often!

I love adding a little bacon grease to the onions when cooking. I feel it adds so much old school flavor to the meal. You can definitely use butter or olive oil instead if you prefer.

What is in Short Spaghetti?

• Ground beef: One of my absolute favorite meats to use in recipes! I buy 90% lean ground beef in bulk at Sam's Club, then package into 3/4 pound packages with freezer paper for our meals.

• Onion: The onion is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium. It's relatives include the garlic, shallot, leek, and chive. Onions contain antioxidants, red onions have the highest antioxidant amount.  Onions produce the chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide. This irritant floats up from the chopped onion and causes tears. Chill the onion prior to chopping to reduce irritation. 

• Ready Cut Spaghetti: From the Italian word for "strings," these round thin strands are versatile and great tossed with almost any pasta sauce of varying thickness including tomato or cream sauces, broth-based sauces, olive oil tosses and meat sauces.

Other ground beef recipes you may like:

• Slow Cooker Creamy Cheeseburger Soup
• Cheesesteak Casserole
• Sweet Potato Beefy Shepard's Pie
• Mexican Impossible Pie
• Ground Beef and Green Bean Stroganoff
• Cincinnati Chili

This recipe is ready in these steps:

• In a skillet, melt the bacon grease
• Add the diced onion, and saute
• Increase heat, add the ground beef
• Cook until no longer pink 
• Drain excess grease 
• Reduce heat, then add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato juice, salt and pepper
• Simmer, then add the cooked spaghetti 
• Heat through and serve

Full recipe below

You can add or substitute with the following ingredients:

• minced garlic
• ground pork
• flavored diced tomatoes
• V8 juice
• ground turkey
• elbow macaroni
• ground chicken

Looking for more red sauce pasta recipes?

• Cheesy Beef and Kale Penne Pasta
• Chicken Parmesan Pasta
• One Pot Sausage, Sun Dried Tomato and Basil Pasta
• Pasta Pomodoro
• Baked Ziti
• Tomato Basil Shrimp Pasta

What to serve with this recipe:

Mini Garlic Monkey Bread

Roasted Mushrooms with Garlic Paprika Butter
Buttery Garlic Bread

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did! Thanks for stopping by!


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Short Spaghetti aka Goulash

Yield: 6 servings

Author: Hot Eats and Cool Reads

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon bacon grease, optional
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 3/4 pound ground beef
• 1- 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1- 15 ounce can tomato sauce
• 2 cups tomato juice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 12 ounces ready cut spaghetti, cooked al dente according to package directions

Instructions:

1. In a large skillet, melt the bacon grease over medium heat.
2. Add the diced onion, and saute for 5 minutes. 
3. Increase heat to medium high, add the ground beef. Cook and break into small pieces with a meat chopper until no longer pink. Drain excess grease. 
4. Reduce heat to medium, then add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato juice, salt and pepper.
5. Simmer for 10 minutes, then add the cooked spaghetti. 
6. Heat through and serve!

Notes:

We love the flavor the bacon grease adds to this recipe, but feel free to use butter or olive oil to saute the onions. Elbow macaroni also works great instead of ready cut spaghetti.

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