Don't Eat Garlic Toast On The Side, Make It Part Of Your Next Spaghetti Dinner

Few meals are more reliably delicious than spaghetti with garlic bread. But that garlic bread does tend to get the short end of the stick as a mere sidekick. The crispy, buttery vehicle for pungent garlic is a dish so many of us love and crave in and of itself, so why not look to recipes where garlic bread is the star? 

Instead of leaving your garlic toast on the side of the plate, you can combine everything into one perfect bite — over and over again — by making 'garlic bread spaghetti tacos,' or, essentially, a sandwich with the garlic toast as the bread and the spaghetti as the filling. This is a new, fun twist on an iconic meal — a handheld one at that — and it unites all those tasty elements so nothing is an afterthought. If you've ever tried to scoop up spaghetti and sauce with garlic bread, this is for you. It's also a great way to make use of leftover pasta.

Making this simply requires making garlic bread, pasta, and putting them together. Use one of the best breads for garlic toast so it's substantial enough to hold spaghetti without falling apart. Think hearty sourdough or baguettes. If you're buying pre-made garlic bread, Texas toast is a solid choice — you may want to split slices in half lengthwise so the sandwich isn't too tall. For the easiest taco-shell shape without folding bread slices, use sourdough hot dog buns, broiled and brushed with garlic butter.

If you like cheese on your pasta and/or garlic bread anyway, that will prove extra helpful for keeping pasta in the middle of the garlic bread. Mixing shredded mozzarella into the spaghetti will make it ooey, gooey, and more stuck together so it doesn't just slide out of the toast. You can also go a step further: use entire mozzarella slices, and fry the whole assembled sandwich up on the stove like spaghetti and garlic bread grilled cheese.

Of course, you can get more creative and customize these any way you like. Add Bolognese sauce or crumbled meatballs or sausage, throw in chopped cherry tomatoes and onions, sprinkle in basil. You can even change the entire pasta filling — why not try pesto pasta or fettucine alfredo? Any pasta you love can easily benefit from this clever upgrade.

"One of my favorite childhood memories was my mom ... making spaghetti tacos for me and my brother," says a commenter on Arianna Lerner's Instagram about the dish. Another exclaims, "This is an upgrade to my spaghetti sandwiches I'd make growing up and I must try!", while a third commenter theorizes spaghetti garlic bread tacos could "potentially cause world peace." On Reddit, a user recalls, "I used to make these with leftover garlic bread and spaghetti. My family thought I was crazy, but they were the best!" Of all the ways to make spaghetti, this might be our new favorite — let's make garlic bread the star for a change.