The Italian food police have rendered their judgment, and their latest case involves Meghan Markle’s one-pot pasta—an offense they have dramatically dubbed "a crime against spaghetti."
The world has witnessed its fair share of culinary misdeeds before: pineapple on pizza, overcooked risotto, and the horror of ketchup on pasta. But this? This takes the transgression to an entirely new level. The self-appointed defenders of Italian cuisine at Lionfield Music took it upon themselves to try the dish, and their verdict was as lukewarm as the pasta itself. Their final assessment? "Not the worst we've ever had, but we wouldn’t do it again."
The first offense came in the form of nomenclature. She called it “noodles.” Yes, languages evolve and cultures mix, but referring to spaghetti as “noodles” is borderline sacrilegious. One can almost picture an Italian nonna clutching her chest in dismay, summoning the strength to denounce such a linguistic abomination. But the real crime wasn’t just in the name—it was in the method. Meghan simply poured boiling water over dry pasta in a skillet, leaving it to cook without draining. Not a colander in sight. She claimed that retaining all the starch made it “creamy.” No, Meghan. Leaving in all the starch makes it pasty, gluey, and reminiscent of the kindergarten days when we experimented with homemade papier-mâché.
As if that weren’t enough, she introduced charred kale toward the end. Nothing quite captures the essence of authentic Italian cuisine like throwing in a handful of wilted greens from the depths of the fridge. At this point, one had to wonder if she was preparing dinner or conducting a chemistry experiment that had gone terribly, irreversibly wrong. Italians everywhere could only sigh in despair as they watched her drown the dish in excess pasta water, transforming it into something that looked more like a tragic school lunch experiment than an actual meal. The final result was a soggy, identity-confused dish teetering somewhere between soup and sheer regret.
The internet, of course, had no mercy. "That’s not food, that’s punishment," one horrified viewer declared. "With so little water, the dish must be a gluey, sticky, starchy brick," another theorized. Concern for the well-being of young Archie and Lilibet even surfaced, with one person asking, “She gives her kids leftover noodles in their lunchboxes? Where do they go to school?” The overwhelming reaction was one of betrayal, a shared sense of despair among food lovers who struggled to find a silver lining in this tragic pasta debacle.
Was Meghan’s dish a groundbreaking innovation? Not exactly. One-pan pasta recipes have circulated in food magazines for years, and somehow, they always managed to look far more appetizing. But her version struck a particularly painful nerve, uniting culinary purists in a rare moment of universal disapproval. If there’s anything to take away from this ordeal, it’s that Italians take their pasta very seriously, starch should enhance pasta water rather than dominate the dish, and if you’re going to share a recipe with the world, it’s best to run it by those who have been perfecting it for centuries. Above all, Meghan Markle’s approach to cooking appears to be just as polarizing as her presence in the media. Buon appetito—or in this case, buona fortuna.
