How can go wrong with spaghetti and meatballs? It’s a rich and filling dish with plenty of tomato flavoring and the perfect balance between protein and carbs. The flavors are complex enough to make this a popular meal for adults, yet also one that picky kids will eat without a problem.
Interestingly, spaghetti and meatballs isn’t an Italian dish. It’s considered Italian-American cuisine instead, as it was made in America by Italian immigrants using some approaches from their homeland.
Of course, the origin doesn’t entirely matter. The dish is clearly well received and continues to be popular (it’s even occasionally served in Italy to appease American tourists). You can even tweak it in a variety of ways, like using different types of meat, adding cheese into the meatballs, or boosting the flavor with ingredients like chili flakes or Worcestershire sauce.
Then there’s the question of what to serve with spaghetti and meatballs, as the dish is almost a complete meal on its own. The best sides for spaghetti and meatballs are often things like a salad, beans, or grilled veggies, which give you the vegetable element. However, you can also turn to options like garlic bread or Texas toast if you want a comforting side.
What To Serve With Spaghetti And Meatballs (12 Sides To Try)
Side Salad
It’s hard to go past a simple salad, especially when serving a rich and flavorful meal like spaghetti and meatballs. The salad gives you plenty of fiber and nutrients, while the texture is an excellent contrast to your pasta.
The dressing on the salad is important too. Many salads use a vinaigrette-based dressing, which helps to cut through the rich flavors of your main meal. Doing so refreshes your palate with every bite, allowing you to fully savor the flavors of the pasta sauce and meatballs.
Plus, salads can be varied in endless ways. You can easily change the type of green or use some exciting mix-ins, like feta cheese, walnuts, or apple slices. Why not experiment and see what you come up with?
Quick And Easy Italian Chopped Salad
This Quick and Easy Italian Chopped Salad takes just 10 minutes to prepare but is absolutely loaded with flavor and includes plenty of briny notes. There are typical salad ingredients in the mix, like romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and cucumber, along with less common additions, like artichokes, banana peppers, and chickpeas.
The combination of ingredients also makes this a heartier salad than normal. This is perfect for balancing your salad with the spaghetti and meatballs.
Caesar Salad
A Caesar salad is a surprisingly popular option with spaghetti and meatballs. This is partly because the salad offers a nice balance of tangy and savory flavors, which contrast well with the richness of your spaghetti and meatballs.
You’re also getting an interesting carry through of flavor, given that parmesan cheese often features in the salad and the main. Besides that, Caesar salad is more decadent than a regular salad, making it perfect for a special meal.
That said, there’s one adjustment to consider. Caesar salad is often made with chicken, which makes it more filling than a regular salad and almost a meal in its own right. You won’t need the extra protein with spaghetti and meatballs, so it’s best to skip the chicken entirely.
Vegan Kale Caesar Salad
This Vegan Kale Caesar Salad changes things up in a few ways. First, it uses crispy chickpeas rather than croutons, which makes the salad healthier. The flavor profile is different too, as the recipe uses a tahini dressing rather than a traditional Caesar dressing.
The recipe also swaps out romaine lettuce for kale. Doing so increases the nutrients and gives you a more robust salad in the process.
The final product is quite different from a conventional Caesar salad. Yet, the combination of ingredients and flavors works incredibly well.
A Grilled Vegetable Platter
Sometimes the coolness of a salad is the perfect contrast to your hot spaghetti and meatballs. Other times, you will want a warm side instead (especially during winter).
A grilled vegetable platter is a great option here. This type of platter means you don’t need to choose a single type of grilled vegetable. Instead, you can experiment with a variety, which gives you plenty of different flavors and textures.
You can get pretty creative with this approach by experimenting with different seasoning combinations. Even options like curry powder, everything bagel seasoning, or a citrus and herb marinade can work well. Of course, you’ll also need to think about how the flavoring matches that of your bagels.
Grilled Broccoli With Lemon And Parmesan
This Grilled Broccoli with Lemon and Parmesan shows how easy it is to make your grilled vegetables stand out. It’s also a simple recipe, as it just relies on broccoli, olive oil, lemon, and parmesan cheese. The lemon is one of the best features and adds plenty of bright vibrancy to the meal.
The flavor combination isn’t limited to broccoli either. You could do something similar with most other grilling vegetables, such as eggplant, asparagus, or zucchini.
Garlic Bread
Now we come to garlic bread. It’s an odd side in one sense, as spaghetti and meatballs is already a carb heavy meal. Why add even more carbs?
Yet garlic bread is simply stunning. Its flavor and texture work well with almost any main dish, even one that’s already packed with carbs.
The effect is partly because garlic bread is comforting. It’s one of those classic feel good foods that’s great for lifting your mood. And, why not? Meals don’t always need to be healthy.
Garlic-Swirl Rolls
These Garlic-Swirl Rolls are the perfect alternative to traditional garlic bread. The scroll structure provides plenty of surface area for the garlic butter, while the size of the rolls makes them perfect for a dinner party.
Interestingly, you can use floss to help cut the dough into the desired shape. Doing so is much more effective than using a knife and makes your meal prep much easier. Just make sure you’re not using mint dental floss, or the rolls would taste strange indeed.
Once you’ve tried the recipe, you could easily tweak the flavor profile by adding extra herbs. For example, one commenter on the recipe made the rolls using dried Italian herbs rather than parsley. Adding cheese would work well too.
Sautéed Mushrooms
Mushrooms are another fantastic side to consider. They’re nutritious and add a delicious earthy umami flavor to your meal.
There are also plenty of types to choose from, which all have their own distinct features. You can even forage for mushrooms yourself – just make sure you know what to look for, as it’s easy to end up with poisonous mushrooms instead of safe ones.
Sautéing mushrooms is an easy and delicious way to cook them. You’re simply using a little fat and frying the mushrooms in a pan. Doing so is fast and always gives you delicious mushrooms. You can then serve these alongside your spaghetti and meatballs or even mix them into the meal.
Sautéed Kale With Mushrooms And Tomatoes
This Sautéed Kale with Mushrooms and Tomatoes recipe is more complex than mushrooms. Yet, the style is perfect and gives you an all-in-one side that’s hard to pass up.
The kale in the recipe is fantastic, as this boosts your nutrient intake and helps balance the heartiness of your meatballs. There’s also onion and garlic in the mix for flavor, plus the mushrooms and some tomatoes.
Honestly, this recipe would be stunning for any meal that requires a warm vegetable side. You can also play around with it, like by using a different type of green instead of the kale.
Green Beans
Green beans are a popular vegetable, partly because you can make a delicious side using these and some seasoning ingredients – no other vegetables needed. The beans are also versatile, as they can be cooked in plenty of ways and with a variety of seasonings.
Besides, you don’t need a complicated side with spaghetti and meatballs. The meal already has plenty going for it, so why not pair it with something simple and delicious – like green beans?
You can even cook green beans from frozen, so they’re perfect when you don’t have fresh veggies in the house.
Lemon And Garlic Green Beans
These Lemon and Garlic Green Beans have been sautéed in butter and garlic, which gives them a fantastic flavor profile. They’re then topped with lemon juice, parmesan, lemon zest, and some toasted almonds.
The combination of lemon, parmesan, garlic, and almonds, makes these beans much more interesting than they’d normally be. But, it’s still not a complicated recipe. You should be able to get it on the table within half an hour or less.
Eggplant
Eggplant is another delicious vegetable to consider. It’s useful because it has a different flavor and texture than many other vegetables. Eggplants aren’t even that difficult to cook, as you can steam, grill, roast, or stir fry them.
If you haven’t cooked eggplant before, it’s worth finding a good recipe. This way you don’t need to stress about the cooking time, temperature, or other ingredients.
Crispy Baked Eggplant Parmesan
Isn’t this Crispy Baked Eggplant Parmesan stunning? The crispness is one of the most attractive features, as it’s surprisingly difficult to create eggplant parmesan without making it soggy.
It’s a delicious recipe, as it contains parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, eggs, mozzarella, and plenty of herbs. The flavor profile is exceptional alongside spaghetti and meatballs, especially if you serve cheese with your meatballs.
The baked eggplant parmesan would also be perfect for picky eaters who don’t want plain vegetables as a side. But, don’t worry, the eggplant parmesan dish is still pretty healthy.
Texas Toast
Have you heard about Texas toast before? It’s notable because it is much thicker than regular toast and is typically buttered and then grilled, making it crispy and oh so delicious.
Many versions of the dish rely on garlic butter, which gives you something a little like garlic bread. You can also make Texas toast with cheese for even more decadence.
Texas toast works as a side for the same reason as garlic bread. It also has the benefit of being easier to make, especially if you buy thickly sliced bread from the store.
Texas Toast Garlic Bread
This Texas Toast Garlic Bread provides all the details for making the most delicious cheesy garlicky Texas toast you can imagine. The dish takes less than 15 minutes from start to finish, which is fantastic for how tasty this side is.
Notably, the toast ends up with a soft crust, while most garlic bread recipes have a crisp crust instead. Somehow the soft crust makes the entire recipe taste so much better (the cheese on top doesn’t hurt either).
Sautéed Spinach
Sautéing spinach is a fast and easy way to make spinach more digestible and improve its flavor profile. This is also a versatile approach, as you can serve the spinach as a side on its own or use it as part of a more complex side dish.
Like many sides on this list, you can make this one as simple or as complex as you like. For example, some people add lemon juice and garlic to boost the flavor profile. Herbs and spices work a treat as well.
You can also experiment with the fat you use for sautéing. Olive oil is a popular choice, as it helps to keep the spinach tender, but you can also use butter, which adds a delicious flavor to the greens.
Sautéed Spinach And Onions
This Sautéed Spinach and Onions recipe gives you two veggies for the price of one. It uses just a handful of other ingredients, including garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. But honestly, you don’t need more than this, as spinach and onions are both delicious.
You’ll need a lot of spinach to make the recipe work well (around 8 cups!). This is because the spinach loses so much moisture when it cooks. Once sautéed, the 8 cups of spinach don’t look like much at all.
The recipe also provides ideas for making the spinach even more exciting. This includes adding lemon juice or perhaps some red pepper flakes. Courtney also mentions that high heat is essential. This is what stops the spinach from becoming soggy and makes the side perfect.
Roasted Broccoli
We can’t forget about broccoli, can we? It’s such a classic side, one that many of us have eaten for years.
Like most vegetables, cooking technique makes a huge difference here. Broccoli can easily end up overcooked, mushy, and unappealing unless you’re careful. Steaming or roasting the broccoli is often the best approach, as this helps it retain some of its natural tenderness.
Don’t forget about herbs and spices either. These are an easy way to make your broccoli more exciting. You could also cover the broccoli with cheese sauce (not the healthiest approach, but the flavors would work perfectly with your spaghetti and meatballs).
Asian Roasted Broccoli
This Asian Roasted Broccoli shows how you can make broccoli truly flavorful. It uses plenty of interesting ingredients, like soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili paste, ginger, garlic, and toasted sesame oil.
The trick is to mix most of the ingredients together and coat your broccoli florets using the mixture. Then, the roasting begins. The end result is delicious broccoli that you could easily eat on its own.
Roast Veggies
What could be simpler than roast vegetables? Roasting helps to crisp and caramelize the veggies, bringing out some of their natural sweetness that’s less noticeable otherwise.
Roasting is also one of the easiest ways to cook vegetables, as you just need to cut them into similar sized pieces, season them, and place them on a baking sheet. You can even roast a variety of vegetables at once, giving you plenty of different flavors.
Sheet Pan Roasted Veggies
This Sheet Pan Roasted Veggies recipe shows just how easy roast veggies can be. The original version relies on sweet potatoes, broccoli, asparagus, and cherry tomatoes, although you can easily modify it to focus on your personal favorites.
A crucial aspect of the recipe is the use of two roasting steps. The first takes around 20 minutes, then you take the pan out of the oven, add the softer vegetables, and roast once again. Doing so ensures that all ingredients are cooked to perfection.
The recipe also features a large section of tips, including some familiar and some less well-known ones. These tips are the secret to making perfect roast vegetables every time. There are even some ideas for variations, like seasonings you can use or what you can drizzle over the vegetables once they’re cooked.
Cucumber Salad
Finally, we have cucumber salad. This is an excellent alternative to all the hot vegetable sides we’ve been featuring. It’s also low in calories and easy to make, which are other reasons to try this salad for yourself.
Most versions of the salad are simple, often just relying on cucumber, red onion, and a light dressing. Other recipes play with the ingredients and flavor a little. Some are even made using a cool and creamy dressing, creating an excellent contrast with your spaghetti and meatballs.
Irish Clementine Cucumber Salad
This Irish Clementine Cucumber Salad is a fantastic way to impress guests. It contains many more ingredients than a traditional cucumber salad, including greens, clementines, avocado, onion, and goat cheese. In fact, the cucumber isn’t even the star texture or flavor.
Despite the many different ingredients, this recipe isn’t difficult to prepare at all. You could easily make it in half an hour, then serve it alongside your spaghetti and meatballs.
The honey white balsamic dressing in the salad is especially good. You might even prepare the dressing and use it on a completely different salad.
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