Pasta is like ramen noodles but you have to buy the sauce separately. Also, you can’t cook them with boiling water straight from the kettle. On the plus side, they come in shapes, and anyone who says that alphabet noodles are only for children is lying.

Core Ingredients

• Any shape pasta
• Any sauce

Preparation

• Bring water to a boil in a pot.
• Add the pasta to the boiling water.
• You can add salt to the water if it makes you feel like a fancy Italian person with their life together. We’re not entirely sure what the salt does.
• The package tells you how long some corporate chef thinks that shape takes to cook. We’re not beholden to their capitalist opinion, also we forget what time we added the pasta anyway. Taste it and make up your own mind. Try not to scald yourself on the water.
• Alternatively, you can tell if it’s done by taking out a noodle and flinging it at the wall. If it sticks, you’re good. Also, flinging pasta at a wall is a good way to get out your frustrations. Remember to pick it off the wall later before it becomes a permanent fixture.
• If you find a stirring spoon at the bottom of your drawer that has a hole in it, the purpose of that hole is to measure out a serving of pasta. The hole is a lie. You can have as much pasta as you want. You can make leftovers for later. You can eat them all in one sitting anyway.
• Keep the water hot. Simmering if possible? Stir occasionally.
• If you have a colander, drain it into a colander. If you’re not that posh, use the pot lid or a slotted spoon. It might seem like a good idea to use a plate. We speak from experience when we say that you will scald yourself and you may break the plate. It is not actually a good idea.
• Put pasta on a plate or in a bowl. Or back in the original pot to save on dishes.
• Add the pasta sauce out of the jar to the pasta and stir through in a hopeful attempt to warm it.

Variations We can’t imagine adding all these variations to the same bowl of pasta at the same time. Maybe we’re just not creative enough.

• A can of crushed tomatoes is technically sauce. It might not have depth and nuance of flavour or a photograph of someone wearing an apron on the front, but that’s why God gave us hot sauce and Italian herb mix.
• Olive oil makes great pasta sauce. Surprising but true. Particularly good with other stuff, like salt, or Parmesan cheese, or chili flakes.
• Add cheese. The really cheap powdered Parmesan will survive the apocalypse. We have never seen it go bad. If you’ve got cheddar cheese, it’ll taste better grated than in chunks you pulled off with your fingers, but the nutritional content is the same. You could put cheese singles on instead if you hate yourself.
• Nutritional yeast does some of the things that cheese does if you’re vegan or lactose intolerant, and it lasts forever. If you’re on medication— for depression, chronic pain, diabetes, or anything else—check to see if your meds are compatible with nutritional yeast before you eat it.
• Salsa is basically pasta sauce, use that.
• True facts: Many types of canned soup make delicious pasta sauce. Tomato soup & milk & cheddar cheese is highly traditional. So is cream of mushroom soup & a wee bit of milk & crushed up potato chips on top.
• Seeds and nuts. Pumpkin seeds are fully amazing in pasta. So are sunflower seeds, and they’re even cheaper. Pine nuts are traditional in pasta, but they’re way more expensive than sunflower seeds. Honestly any nut or seed has potential.
• Add raw garlic.
• Add olives. Green or black, from a jar or a can—olives are delicious.
• Hummus also makes an excellent pasta sauce.
• If you’re looking for a low-carb alternative, you can buy spaghetti squash and zucchini cut into noodle spirals in the frozen veggies section.

Mid-Tier Pasta Types

• Mix cooked pasta with tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and black pepper. The goal is to mix things together—only the pasta needs to be actually cooked. You can also add feta cheese if you’re not vegan.
• On grocery day, buy some tortellini from the fresh pasta section. Get a nice pesto in a jar instead of the cheapest tomato sauce you can find. You can serve this to a guest and they’ll think you put in effort. Which you did.
• Honestly any fresh pasta is posh and tastes great.
• Potato gnocchi is a fancy pasta hack. It costs slightly more, and cooks a bit faster, than other types of dried pasta. It stores in your pantry as long as you like, and it tastes good prepared with the same sauces you’d use for anything else. People who don’t realise these important gnocchi facts will be impressed when you serve it to them. Plus you can start a philosophical debate over whether gnocchi counts as pasta, which is sure to liven up your dinner conversation.

God-Tier Ingredients If you want to add stuff to the sauce, you’re looking at heating it separately before you add it to the noodles, either on the stove or in the microwave. Is it worth it? Only you can decide.

• Add wine. Red goes great in tomato sauce. White goes great if you’re using Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup as a sauce.
• Add frozen veg. Surprisingly tasty choice: frozen spinach. But only if you can buy frozen spinach as small chunks in a bag. The frozen spinach block takes forever to defrost—you’ll give up on eating by the time it’s cooked.
• Adding avocado or canned pumpkin to your sauce makes it richer and creamier.
• Add fresh veg. You’ll probably have to cut it up. And cook it in the sauce, not just warm it up. I’m not sure this really counts as depression cooking anymore.
• Canned beans, drained and rinsed. Chickpeas are a personal favourite here.

Pro-tip: If you find the Alphagetti in the can a little bland, you can kick it up a notch with your Sriracha.

They even come shaped like penguins, if you know where to look.

We are reliably informed that salt makes (most) things better.

Then you have the choice of Mild, Medium, Spicy, and, if you can find it, Ruin Your Exit Hole. Choose wisely.

Vinny from Sushi and Sea Lions recommends this when you’ve suffered a crushing financial loss in your unfulfilling career as an emergency services manager for a soul- sucking electric company.

This is mainly an excuse to open a bottle of wine.