Meals · Pasta & noodle bakes

Spaghetti aglio e olio

Name: Spaghetti aglio e olio
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 17 min
Yield: 3 servings
Ingredients: 400 g dry spaghetti pasta, cooked al dente, water saved; 1/4 cup olive oil; 6 cloves garlic, sliced paper-thin; 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes; a big handful fresh parsley, chopped; 1/2 tsp salt; 1/3 cup grated parmesan

Rome's midnight pasta: garlic gilded in olive oil, chili flakes, parsley and the pasta water that binds it. Four pantry things, fifteen minutes, and it's a proper dinner.

Time: 17 min (5 prep + 12 cook)
Servings: 3
Per serving: 732 kcal
Protein: 22 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

400 g dry spaghetti pasta, cooked al dente, water saved944 g
1/4 cup olive oil60 g
6 cloves garlic, sliced paper-thin25 g
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes2 g
a big handful fresh parsley, chopped15 g
1/2 tsp salt3 g
1/3 cup grated parmesan (optional)30 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Start the garlic in the cold oil over medium-low and let it turn pale gold slowly — this is the entire flavour base, and brown garlic is bitter garlic.
Add the chili flakes for the last 30 seconds.
Tip in the drained pasta with a ladle of its water and toss hard over the heat until the water and oil emulsify into a light sauce that clings.
Parsley, salt, and parmesan if using (Rome says no; most kitchens say yes).

How is this a whole meal from four ingredients?

It's the technique dish: the starchy pasta water plus oil makes a genuine emulsion, the same physics as a butter sauce. Learn it here and you'll see it hiding in half of Italian cooking.

Why this score

easy to overeat

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

12% of kcal

58% water

9 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2196 kcal goes into the pot, 1079 g of ingredients comes out as ~1084 g of food → 203 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 203
Protein: (12%); 6 g
Fat: (32%); 7 g
Carbohydrates: (56%); 28 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 271 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More meals

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.