RECIPE: Seafood Spaghetti Tacos (Soft & Crunchy)

My kids are HUGE iCarly fans. Anyone who has ever watched the show has at least heard of Spaghetti Tacos. Carly’s brother, Spencer, considers it his specialty. I was thinking of something fun and creative to make for the kids for dinner one night so I settled on this dish because I knew they would be excited to be eating something they’ve seen so many times on the show! I improvised a little and made my own version as I normally do when experimenting with a dish inspired by someone else. It was actually VERY good and the kids ate every bit of it — Zoe even finished off the meat that was left over!

INGREDIENTS:

• Thin spaghetti noodles
• Spaghetti sauce
• Ground beef (about 1.5 pounds was enough for me and six kids to each have one taco and there was meat left over)
• Mild taco seasoning
• Shredded cheese (I used shredded Parmesan for mine but the kids wanted the shredded Mexican blend)
• Shrimp (cooked, peeled, deveined, & frozen) – OPTIONAL

COOKING INSTRUCTIONS

Preparing the spaghetti tacos is VERY quick and simple and requires only a few steps:

1. Brown the ground beef in a skillet and drain the excess fat. Add the taco seasoning to the ground beef according to the package instructions.
2. Boil the spaghetti noodles until they are tender and drain the excess water.
3. IF you opt to use shrimp on your spaghetti tacos (which I did) I suggest you use a bagged, frozen, ready-to-eat shrimp that has already been cooked, peeled, and deveined. Thaw them according to the package instructions then warm them up in butter and a little seasoning.
4. Mix in about 1/3 of the meat into the spaghetti sauce then add just enough of the sauce to the noodles to make sure they are coated well.
5. Spoon the seasoned meat into the taco shells (or flour tortillas if you’re doing soft tacos) then follow with a layer of the spaghetti noodles. Cover that with a thin layer of spaghetti sauce, as pictured below.

Once you have the basics in the taco shells, dress your spaghetti tacos how you prefer them - on the show, they use lettuce and tomatoes for garnishments… however, for my kids, I simply topped it with shredded Mexican blend cheese and a couple of shrimp. I did the same for my own except I topped them with shredded Parmesan.

The kids absolutely LOVED them :)