Spaghetti All'Assassina Is a True Killer, But Not in the Ways You Think

Show me a person who hasn't seen the viral juggernaut that is spaghetti all'assassina, and I will show you a person who's probably been resting...six feet under. Its most recent boost in international fame can be attributed to being featured on an episode of Stanley Tucci's 2022 CNN show, Searching for Italy, but it's not a particularly new pasta dish. Most accounts place its creation sometime in the late 60s by the chef Enzo Francavilla at a restaurant in the capital city of Bari in Puglia—you know, the heel of the boot.

I'll admit, there are some interesting things about this pasta, its unorthodox preparation method high among them, but I'm also going to go out on a limb and wager that the thing that has most captured the minds of digital scrollers has little to do with what it is and more to do with the name. There's a 13-year-old boy living inside each and every one of us who can't help but be enthralled by the idea of ninjas and assassins and mafia hitmen, especially when it's mysteriously tangled in a pile of spaghetti. The words themselves slip off our tongues like a knife slipped into the back of an unsuspecting victim: spaghetti all'assassina.

Most will say that "assassin" refers to the chile heat infused into the tomatoey sauce, delivering a decent punch with each bite, but I'm going to tell you the truth: It should refer to the violence your pan and kitchen will experience when you cook this recipe. And this is where I'm going to break with almost everyone else who has written about this dish before, because as much as I appreciate what spaghetti all'assassina is, I'm going to admit that making it at home is a literal pain in the assassina.

But that's just me. If you have the mentality of an assassin, you're probably ready to spread plastic tarps all over your kitchen to collect the oily gore and fill buckets with lye to strip the evidence of your wrongdoing from your skillet. In which case, this may just be the perfect dish for you.

What's the Big Deal With This Pasta Anyway?

"Butiamo la pasta!" is a common phrase in Italian households, often hollered shortly before dinner. It means, "let's toss the pasta," as in, let's toss the pasta into the water. Think of it as Italy's version of ringing the ol' cowbell, a signal to diners that they should be be ready to eat, because once the pasta goes into the boiling water, it waits for no one.

But when it comes to all'assassina, "butiamo la pasta!" needs to be changed to, "bruciamo la pasta!"—burn the pasta. That's because spaghetti all'assassina, which is sometimes also called spaghetti bruciati ("burnt spaghetti"), is charred and crisped in the pan.

The method involves cooking the pasta in a diluted spicy tomato sauce, the sauce added risotto-style in small increments; in between those additions, the water cooks off and the pasta and sauce are allowed to scorch against the surface of the pan. That's largely what makes this dish interesting, since normally one tries not to burn the pasta.

The finished pasta and sauce are quite different from a traditional plate of spaghetti al pomodoro. It's drier—the unavoidable result of letting enough water in the sauce cook off so the real browning and crisping can occur—and it's oilier, because when you reduce a sauce that much, the oil inevitably breaks out. The pasta itself is in spots soft and tender and in others crispy and blackened. The effect is intriguing, no doubt, and delicious in its own way.

The Challenge of Making "Killer" Spaghetti

One of the first things I did when beginning work on this recipe was find a video of it being made at its origin in the kitchen of Al Sorso Preferito. The cook, capped with a goofy toque that looks like it came straight off the head of Chef Boyardee, is clownishly sloppy, sloshing tomato sauce from a ladle into a huge skillet with little care for whether it stays in the pan or not. Then he raps the ladle against the side of the skillet to shake off excess sauce—directly onto the stovetop—before dropping the spaghetti into the pan, except strands of it fall outside too. The man has turned fucking up the food into an art.

Then I got to work trying to make it myself, and everything about that chef's I-don't-give-crap approach began to make sense, because there's no point even trying to be fastidious when cooking spaghetti all'assassina. Murder is messy business, after all.

Let's start with the spatter. My god, the spatter. To burn the pasta while it's in a sauce, you have to cook it all down over high heat until almost all the water has steamed off. At that point, the tomato sauce and pasta starches begin to fry in pooling oil, then darken, crisp, and scorch. But cooking down a tomato sauce until the oil separates and starts to fry things is not a gentle process. The oil pops and spits as the last isolated remnants of H2O violently explode up and around, spraying your stove, your kitchen, and you with tomato-and-chile-stained grease. The floor under your feet becomes slick, and smoke hangs in the air.

Then there's the pan. I don't care how well seasoned your cast iron is or how perfectly you can fry an egg on your carbon steel—if your goal is to burn pasta and sauce the way one needs to for all'assassina, you are guaranteed to fuse a thick pad of carbonized crud onto the skillet. It will require a long soak followed by scouring with steel wool, and when you're done, you can kiss that years-old patina of perfect seasoning goodbye.

That's all well and good for a restaurant that has all'assassina on the menu. They have a dishwashers with thick rubber gloves pulled up to their elbows who can clean the pans between each order. What you have to do is ask yourself whether you feel like dealing with all this mess in your own kitchen. Some will say yes, so let's proceed to the cooking details.

The Right Tool for the Job

Most of the process of making spaghetti all'assassina happens in the pan, so let's talk a little more about the pan. Most say that for a proper all'assassina, you need to use an iron pan. I tested this, cooking batches in carbon steel, stainless steel, and nonstick, and found that my pasta browned and crisped most easily in an iron pan like carbon steel or cast iron. But as I mentioned above, you will pay the price with that pan.

As for stainless steel, it sticks too much, burns too hard, and is the worst of all to clean. I don't recommend it.

That leaves nonstick. Many say that nonstick is the worst of all options, since the pasta and sauce don't scorch correctly in it. On one level, they're right—nonstick is the least effective at creating those crispy bits. But I gotta tell you, it's maybe the only one I'd consider using at home since it's the only pan that cleans up easily after the cooking process.

Another issue: the size of the pan. To make assassina without a pot of boiling water, you need a skillet large enough to accommodate the full length of the spaghetti, which means one that's at least 12 inches in diameter. Any smaller and the spaghetti won't lie flat, which means it won't properly simmer and cook evenly in the small additions of sauce.

There is one workaround, which involves par-cooking the spaghetti in boiling water for only a couple minutes, just long enough to soften the spaghetti just enough that it begins to bend, at which point you can get it into a smaller skillet and force it to yield to the pan's shape. Par-cooking in water is even what the cook at Al Sorso Preferito does in the video I watched. I've also seen interviews with the creator of the dish, Enzo Francavilla, that suggest he's always done it this way.

I tried this also in my testing, and it works, though I still found using a smaller skillet leads to crowding in the skillet and less ideal results. Whether you par-cook in boiling water or not, making all'assassina simply works better in a bigger pan.

Ingredient and Process Notes

Spaghetti all'assassina is based on a relatively simple set of ingredients: spaghetti, a basic spicy tomato sauce made with chiles and garlic, and olive oil. Because the sauce is added incrementally to hydrate and soften the pasta, more water is necessary than will end up in the finished dish, so the tomato sauce needs to be diluted with extra water at the outset.

Towards the end, you have to allow the pan to get even more dry so that you can fry and blacken the pasta while occasionally scraping the pan with a thin spatula and rotating the pasta around so other bits can get their turn to crisp and scorch.

Some restaurants in Bari have adopted a final step of topping the pasta with a generous dollop of creamy stracciatella, the strands of cream-soaked mozzarella that fill balls of burrata. It's not traditional to the dish, but I think it works well. The fresh and tender cream-soaked cheese mingles with the spicy burnt pasta in a welcome and merciful final touch, like the kiss an assassin lays on their victim just before sending them off to eternity.

In a 4-cup measuring cup, dilute tomato passata with water to total 2 1/2 cups. Season sauce lightly with salt.

In a 12-inch cast iron, carbon steel, or nonstick skillet (see headnote above to decide which you want to use), heat oil with garlic and chiles over medium-high heat until sizzling and garlic has turned light golden; remove garlic with a slotted spoon, if desired. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 30 seconds, then pour in enough diluted tomato sauce to just cover the bottom of skillet, increase heat to high, and bring to a boil.

Add spaghetti, spreading it out to cover skillet bottom, sprinkle lightly with salt, and cook until liquid is mostly absorbed. Add more tomato sauce to just cover spaghetti and continue to cook, using a thin metal spatula (unless using a nonstick pan, in which case use silicone) to occasionally rotate pasta top to bottom and while moving it around to prevent excessive adhering of strands. Continue to cook the spaghetti in this way, cooking sauce down between additions before adding the next, until pasta is al dente, about 10 minutes (cooking times are approximate and will depend on how much sauce is added in each increment and other factors); continue to stir, scrape, and toss spaghetti occasionally throughout this process while allowing sauce to reduce and pasta and sauce to brown lightly in spots.

Once pasta is al dente, allow sauce to reduce one final time, and continue to cook over high heat until browned an lightly charred; scrape and toss pasta and allow to brown and char again. Once pasta is nicely crisped and charred in several spots, toss one final time with a glug of fresh olive oil, and season with salt to taste if necessary.

Transfer to plates and serve, topping with stracciatella, if desired.

Notes

In pace of tomato passata, you can also use a blender to puree a can of whole peeled tomatoes with their juices, then dilute 1 1/2 cups of that with water to equal 2 1/2 cups diluted tomato sauce.

Special Equipment

12-inch nonstick, cast iron, or carbon steel skillet

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