Recreate the magic of the iconic Spaghetti Warehouse at home with this easy copycat Spaghetti with Garlic Butter recipe! This comforting dish features spaghetti enveloped in a luscious garlic butter sauce, richly flavored with Romano cheese and parsley. The cheese and parsley not only infuse the sauce with flavor but also serve as a delightful garnish. This Italian garlic butter pasta dish brings the restaurant experience right to your table.
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What Makes the Spaghetti Warehouse Spaghetti With Garlic Butter So Good?
Cooking a quick pasta dinner doesn’t always mean opening up a jar of tomato sauce. This Spaghetti With Garlic Butter recipe from Spaghetti Warehouse is fresh Italian cooking that takes less than 30 minutes to prepare with a handful of ingredients!
It’s similar to the classic Italian dish, Pasta Aglio e Olio, except this version replaces the olive oil with butter for a richer taste and more luxurious mouthfeel. Combine the butter with freshly grated Romano cheese and chopped flat-leaf parsley, and you end up with a plate of garlic butter noodles you can proudly serve.
Why You Should Try This Recipe
With only five ingredients most people keep on hand, this recipe will save your evening when you want an elegant meal but forget to go shopping.
If you like to plan your meals for the week, pre-making the butter and garlic sauce will allow you to get this restaurant-quality meal on the table in the time it takes to boil spaghetti!
And with so many simple options to customize the base garlic butter pasta recipe, you’ll never get bored.
Spaghetti With Garlic Butter Ingredients
For this recipe, you’ll need these simple ingredients:
- Unsalted butter
- Garlic
- Flat-leaf parsley
- Romano
- Spaghetti Noodles
Ingredient Notes and Substitutions
You can substitute Parmesan cheese for Romano, but whichever you choose, freshly grating the cheese will improve the dish’s flavor.
Don’t be tempted to leave the fresh parsley out. It’s more than a decoration in this dish, and the freshness it brings to the sauce is essential for the proper balance of flavors.
Although this recipe calls for spaghetti, you can use another type of pasta such as linguine, bucatini, fusilli lunghi, penne, egg noodles, or angel hair pasta.
How to Make Garlic Butter Sauce and Spaghetti
To prepare Spaghetti With Butter and Garlic:
- Fill a stockpot or large pot two-thirds of the way with water and add salt to taste. Place the stockpot over high heat and cover.
- Melt the butter in a small saucepan or skillet over very low heat.
- While the butter is melting, finely chop the garlic and flat-leaf parsley. Reserve both.
- When the butter is completely melted, add the chopped garlic and stir to coat. Cook the garlic on as low a flame as possible to reduce bitterness and infuse the flavor into the butter.
- While keeping an eye on the butter and stirring it occasionally, boil the pasta in the salted water to al-dente according to the directions on the packages. When the pasta is ready, reserve a cup of cooking water and drain. Transfer the drained and cooked pasta to a large mixing bowl.
- When the butter is very fragrant and the garlic is golden brown, stir in a tablespoon of the finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. Cook for a minute or two longer.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in a quarter cup of the Romano cheese.
- Pour the garlic butter sauce over the top of the pasta and toss. If the pasta is dry, add a little of the cooking water.
- Plate the pasta and garnish with some of the remaining Romano cheese and chopped parsley.
Recipe Variations
Ask two Italian grandmothers how to cook the same dish, and you will wind up with five different recipes! There are dozens of ways to modify this recipe, and here are a few. Feel free to share your favorite tweaks in the comment section:
- Spice it up. A pinch (or more) of red pepper flakes with the garlic will heat things up quite a bit.
- Use a mixture of olive oil and butter. You’ll get the richness of the butter and the healthy benefits and flavor of the olive oil.
- Let things get a little fishy. One or two fillets of anchovy will give the pasta a unique taste.
What to Serve With Spaghetti With Butter and Garlic
Although most Americans eat pasta as a main course, you can turn this Spaghetti With Garlic Butter recipe into a side dish. Try pairing it with these main courses:
- Eggplant Parmesan. Try this authentic Italian-style version or prepare this Italian-American alternative.
- Chicken Cacciatore. This traditional Italian chicken stew is super flavorful and easy to make.
- Steak Marsala. This uniquely tasty Steak Marsala recipe is a mash-up of Chicken Marsala and Steak Diane.
How to Store Leftovers
Sauced spaghetti will dry out within a few hours, but you can prepare the garlic butter sauce in advance and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Just pour the sauce into a microwavable bowl and allow it to cool to room temperature and solidify. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge for up to three days.
If you don’t wind up using all the sauce for pasta, try spreading it on slices of bread and toasting them for tasty garlic bread!
What Is the Best Way to Reheat Spaghetti With Butter and Garlic?
The easiest way to reheat the sauce is in the microwave:
- Put the sauce in a microwavable container and cover with a paper towel.
- Heat for 30 seconds at 50 percent power. Stir.
- Repeat until the sauce is hot.
Favorite Pasta Recipes
- Biltmore Chicken Gorgonzola Pasta
- Chicken Pasta Salad
- Greek Pasta
- One Pot Sausage Pasta
- Pasta con Broccoli
- Queensland Chicken and Shrimp Pasta
- Seafood Pasta Salad
- Thai Shrimp Pasta
Popular Spaghetti Recipes
- Jollibee Spaghetti
- Chicken Spaghetti Casserole
- Homemade Spaghetti Sauce
- Spaghetti Casserole
- Olive Garden Spaghetti
Check out my easy pasta recipes and the best copycat restaurant recipes on CopyKat!
Spaghetti Warehouse Spaghetti with Garlic Butter
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound butter
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
- 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley divided use
- 1/2 cup grated Romano cheese divided use
- 1/2 pound pasta
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a small pot over low heat. (If you cook the butter on high heat, it will burn and you will need to restart the recipe.) Add the garlic and simmer on low for at least 20 minutes. Add about 1 tablespoon of the freshly chopped parsley and mix well. About 4 minutes before serving, add 1/4 cup of Romano cheese and mix well.
- Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain the pasta and transfer to a large bowl. Pour the butter sauce over the pasta and mix well.
- Place the pasta onto plates, and garnish with the remaining Romano cheese and chopped parsley.
Made this tonight for dinner, was super easy & absolutely Delicious! This is a Winner, will be using this recipe for many years to come.
This was a pretty good copycat pasta dish you can make at home. I’ve used grated Parmesan-Romano cheese and had issues putting it in the sauce. But it came out pretty decent to have any night. Next time, I’ll make sure I’ll add the sauce in before I serve it so it would be less clumpy.
Love this….I sometimes add some fresh mushrooms and red pepper flakes.
My recipe gotten from Old Spaghetti Factory in Des Moines, Iowa called for water, basil, garlic, parsley and Parmesan. The problem is I think my recipe got discarded when I was caring for my husband and my girls discarded all of the loose sheets in my recipe binder. They were helping to move us, but oh, I lost so many regularly used recipes. Does anyone have this recipe. It was gotten in the late sixties. Thank you
Oh gosh this brings back memories of the 60’s when I was a teenager and my Dad used to cook a very similar dish that we all loved to eat. The only problem was he always seemed to cook it when I had a date that night and could not eat it! Seems like he put more garlic in his dish, but it was really good.
I love recipes like that, they always bring back great memories.
Stephanie! The nostalgia ❤️❤️❤️ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE grilled chicken breast and angel hair pasta recipe request! I ised to order this and happily sit in the trolley car with a lot of loved ones who are no longer here. I have tried tried and tried to recreate and I can’t seem to get the chicken/ char taste quite right!
Thank you for your suggestion.
Steph,
We made this last eve and it was extremely good. Added 1 heaping tbl of Italian garlic spread to the butter. It was a nice touch for garlic lovers.
I am glad you liked the recipe. It is a nice simple recipe. I bet it would completely delicious with some homemade pasta.
Nice dish, easy to make with a subtle but yummy flavor! I love that it uses ingredients I pretty much always have on hand.
I am with you on that one 😉 I generally have those ingredients too.
Is the Spaghetti Warehouse anything like the Spaghetti Factory? I love their Brown butter and Mitzritha (spelling ?) cheese. Do you have that recipe?
Made this twice now it is an easy sauce that taste amazing very good
I made this the other day with penne pasta and it turned out very good! We will definitely make this again!
As far as Spaghetti Warehouse copy, I disagree with the Romano cheese. I used one Tbs and didn’t add anymore to the finished dish and it was still fairly overpowering. We’ve been eating that garlic butter sauce (added with mushrooms) at SW for over 30 years.
Made this for dinner last night, family really enjoyed it. Take your time and add the cheese a little at a time and it won’t clump together. Very flavorful and extremely easy!
Made this tonight and got great reviews from the whole family. Thanks!
I made this sauce…and the cheese became extremely gooey and then balled up , when dropped into the butter, garlic parsley sauce. The flavor was good but I must have done something wrong….
What type of cheese did you use? did it come already shredded, or did you shred it yourself? Sometimes in cheese that is already shredded agents are added to make the texture of the cheese not combine well together
this was wonderful! i cooked it tonight!
This is almost like the spahetti with hot and naked sauce that I make from Spaghetti Works. Awesome recipe. A must try for those who like garlic and of course, butter!
please respond with your recipe for hot naked from Spaghetti Works…. I have been trying to get this one right for awhile and can’t quite do it.
Yes! Would love to have that recipe. I’ve been looking for it!!