Greek Spaghetti

This isn’t plain ol’ spaghetti.

I made this meal at the Bryant Ridge Shelter on my recent AT section hike. There were at least 15 thru-hikers at the shelter that particular night, and it’s safe to say that the majority of them were seriously jelly. While one guy was cooking up crawdads with his ramen, I was feasting on Aegean awesomeness.

This is one of those dishes that requires fresh ingredients, and they’re well worth the weight. The packaged ingredients weighed in at 9.2 oz. Add to that an onion, garlic cloves, and a 4 oz. tube of Amore tomato paste, which is the greatest thing since camp shoes.

Everything looked like this prior to cooking:

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz. freeze-dried ground beef

packet of olive oil

packet of ghee

one small onion, diced

two cloves garlic, minced

1/2-1 oz. red wine in dropper bottle (I used 1/2 oz. above and wish I’d used more)

Mini ziploc containing 1/2 TB dehydrated parsley, 1/2 TB Greek seasoning mix and 1/4 tsp. mint

Mini ziploc containing 1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon

6 oz. of spaghetti noodles (I break mine into smaller lengths)

3 oz. of Amore tomato paste

1 packet of ketchup

1 mini ziploc with sauce spices (pinch each of sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, basil, marjoram)

1 packet of honey

AT LEAST one packet of parmesan cheese

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cook the spaghetti and set it aside.
2. While cooking the pasta, splash some water on the ground beef.
3. Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil.
4. Add the ground beef and wine, stir over heat for 1 minute.
5. Add ALL of the spice packets, honey, 3 oz. Amore paste and 4 oz. of water. Simmer for 5 minutes or so.
6. Add the ghee packet and ketchup, stir.
7. Serve over pasta, top with parmesan cheese. If you just happened to bring some extra red wine to have with your dinner, consider yourself blessed.

Right before the end it will look something like this: