Hong Kong Baked Spaghetti
By Michael · from our van kitchen
Baked spaghetti is one of the classic dishes you find at a Hong Kong style cafe. Rina has ordered it when we eat out: baked chicken with tomato sauce over spaghetti, with cheese on top. In early 2026 I made it in our van at a campground in Florida, the first time I tried it with this sauce.
I wasn’t sure it was going to come out any good. It did, so here’s the recipe. You can watch me make it, the cooking starts around 50:30.
One grocery run, two meals
The night before, we made a Russian borscht soup in the pressure cooker. The vegetables are exactly the same for this pasta: celery, tomato, tomato paste, onion and carrot, plus the sauces you see in the recipe. So it’s basically one time buying ingredients for two meals.
At the store I was looking for plain tomato sauce and tomato paste, without the extra herbs. Then you need Worcestershire sauce, which I had to walk around the store to find.
The sauce is a little sweet
The ketchup is there for the sweetness, along with the sugar. When we gave the sauce a quick taste before it went in the oven, it was pretty good and a little sweet.
The cornstarch in the marinade is there to help tenderize the chicken, and it came out really tender.
What the family thought
I asked Rina to rate it from 1 to 10. She said 9.5. Spencer said 10. Rina and I finished the whole pan. The one thing we’d change: next time we want to add mushrooms.
Our pan isn’t a real baking dish, it’s more like a loaf pan, but it worked out really well. It filled up a lot more than the small single-portion ones, and it was the perfect portion for the three of us: five drumsticks and the pasta.
A bigger batch, a second time
I made it again later for a big family dinner at a lake house in the Poconos, with pork chops and chicken, and a much bigger sauce. Two things I did differently that time are worth knowing. I only cooked the spaghetti for about 5 minutes, even though the package said 6 to 7, because it goes in the oven afterwards and doesn’t need to be fully cooked. Then I rinsed it in cold water and added a little oil so it stopped cooking. I also tossed in two bay leaves while the sauce simmered.
One more tip from that night: if someone can’t have dairy, take out a portion before the cheese goes on.
Ingredients
Chicken
- 5 chicken drumsticks, cut into fillets
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- Half a tablespoon of sugar
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce (I used Maggi seasoning)
- A little bit of oil
Vegetables
- 1 carrot
- Half an onion
- 1 tomato
- A bit of celery
- Garlic, minced
Sauce
- Leftover tomato paste (I had about half a can left)
- Crushed tomatoes
- Chicken stock (chicken bouillon and hot water)
- About 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- About 2 tablespoons sugar
- About 4 tablespoons ketchup
- About 2 tablespoons soy sauce
To finish
- Spaghetti, broken in half
- Shredded cheese (a cheddar and mozzarella blend)
Steps
- Cut the chicken drumsticks into fillets. Add the cornstarch, sugar and soy sauce to help tenderize it, mix it in, then add a little bit of oil to lock in the flavor. Let it sit while you prep everything else.
- Cut up the carrot, half onion, tomato and celery, and mince the garlic.
- Start boiling water for the pasta. Heat a pan on medium heat (with a stainless steel pan, do the water test first), add a little oil and cook the vegetables for a few minutes until they soften. Add the garlic once they start getting soft.
- Make a bit of chicken stock with chicken bouillon and hot water. You'll use it in the sauce.
- When the water boils, add the spaghetti. I broke it in half because our pot isn't that big, and set a timer for 12 minutes.
- Take the vegetables out of the pan, add a little more oil and cook the chicken for a few minutes. Put the vegetables back in and keep cooking them together for about 6 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste and mix it in.
- Build the sauce: crushed tomatoes, the chicken stock, oyster sauce, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, ketchup and soy sauce. Mix it all in and let it boil for about 15 minutes. Mine was ready at about 12 to 13 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to about 425°F. Put the cooked spaghetti on the bottom of a baking pan (I used a loaf pan).
- Turn off the heat. Lay the chicken over the pasta, then pour the rest of the sauce on top.
- Sprinkle a bunch of cheese over the top and bake it in the middle of the oven for about 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling.
Amounts are what I said in the video. Where I didn't measure, it says "to taste". Cook it your way.
