Tonite we tried making pasta alfredo for the first time. We used the (recently trending?) bowl method so we
- Cooked the pasta (about ~8oz of cellentani/cavatappi)
- Scooped it all directly from the water into a big metal bowl
- Added about ~3tbsp butter, cut into separate pads
- Stir/shook it all til the butter melted (I thought we did it pretty vigorously!)
- Slowly added in ~1c of parmesan that we’d grated ourselves while continuing to stir & shake
- Noticed that the cheese was becoming a bit stuck together/gloopy despite adding it slowly
- Tried adding some more butter & pasta water while stirring and shaking
- Put it back in the (empty) pasta pot to try to use some of that residual heat to melt the cheese more, still stirring/shaking
Putting it back in the warm pot did seem to help the cheese melt a bit better, but it still ended up kinda gloopy/cheese stringy rather than a creamy sauce, even after we added a bit more butter & reserved pasta water.
We still added some pepper and ate it, along with the chicken we’d made to add too, it wasn’t a bad meal overall, it just wasn’t the creamy sauce we were going for.
Do you think maybe we lost too much heat while waiting for the butter to melt? Or did we need a specific kind of parm rather than just a regular one that we grated ourselves? Or our stir & shake wasn’t vigorous enough despite our best efforts?
I know you can’t say for certain, but any tips to help improve our chances of success next time would be so appreciated! Thanks! :)
Sounds like too much fat and heat, and not enough starch, to me.
Personally I think cheese and starch emulsifies better over high heat, the bubble action in the pasta water actually helps create more agitation and a creamier emulsion. So personally I like to do it in the pan over heat. Also adding more butter won’t necessarily help, I think additional fat can be counterproductive sometimes. Just my take though!
Parmesan, in particular, is a really hard cheese to emulsify, mainly just cause it’s dry. “Traditional” Alfredo (as in from the original restaurant that gave it it’s name), was made with young parmesan. To be parmesan (well, Parmigiano Reggiano), it has to be aged at least 12 months, but at least where I live, it’s usually sold aged at least 24 months. This means drier, and even more difficult to emulsify.
If you can get really young parm, use that, and also make sure to grate it really finely. I often get lazy and grate it on my box grater, and it won’t work well. It only works well if I use a microplane.
If you care about traditional ingredients, but not methodology, you can pull some pasta water off to the side, and keep it hot, but not boiling, and stir in the parmesan bit by bit. It helps greatly if you add sodium citrate to the water before adding the cheese. After the cheese has turned into a sauce, you can throw in some butter.
Parmesan doesnt really “melt” since it is too low moisture. To make a sauce, you are basically trying to dissolve the proteins into a liquid, which takes some time, and you can’t rush it by cranking up the heat.
Ah okay, that makes sense. The parm we got was marked “aged over 10 months” and it did seem a bit less dry than some of the more aged ones we’ve used in the past. We did just use the smallest side on the box grater though, not a microplane, so it’s definitely possible that it needed to be more finely grated. And that’s a great tip about just doing it w the pasta water at first, then adding in the butter, that sounds like a safer way to do it. And I’ve heard folks talking about using the sodium citrate in cheese dishes before but I’ve never actually tried it… Thanks so much! :)
I’ve never heard of it being made with pasta water, but with the traditional Cream / Parmesan / Butter recipe, I cook it in a wide saute pan or skillet (12+ inches).
The other thing is that I use grated, not shredded Parmesan. If I only have shredded, I put it in the food processor for a couple of minutes to crumble it.
I start with the butter and cream, and bring it to a simmer and stir to melt the butter. Then add the Parmesan and stir for 30 - 60 seconds until it starts to melt, then add the cooked pasta to the pan and stir to coat.
I think this works well because the pan is shallow, so it cooks quickly. It’s also the way I was taught in a restaurant I worked at many years ago, and we made it to order, and had variations (chicken / shrimp / primavera) where the ingredients were cooked in butter in the pan first, then the alfredo was built in the pan on top of whatever was there.
Ohh okay! Maybe I’ll just try that more “traditional” method next time, your explanation of it sounds less difficult than I thought it’d be haha. I like that your way would use all the flavor that’s still in the pan from our chicken, too! Thank you for sharing your experience! :)
This is like a really bastardized? (I can’t think of a better word, it’s too harsh) cross between cacio e pepe and buttered noodles? Basically the sauce broke.
Maybe it lost too much heat. You may also need more starch? How much water did you use when cooking the pasta.
Also the way it glooped up feels like the cheese melted before actually being emulsified.
Yeaaa I think you’re right that I didn’t start with enough pasta water so it didn’t come together properly when I added the cheese! Another commenter shared a more “traditional” method, I think maybe I’ll try it that way next time. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
you could theoretically reduce the pasta water before adding it. I use wide shallow pans for pasta for this exact reason
Poor Alfredo, noone asked him if he wanted to be emulsified :(
I know nothing about this method, and maybe the other answers will solve it. My question is: what kind of parmesan does this call for? I always grate mine fresh, and sometimes a recipe doesn’t quite turn out because the author intended you to use the shelf-stable canister stuff.
Good thought, thank you, this method definitely called for grated parm (not the shakey canister kind), but I think maybe I didn’t have enough pasta water to start with, and I kinda suspect my temperature may have not been quite right as well. I’m probably going to try the more “traditional” version next time, I didn’t realize this method was kinda unusual! Haha. fingers crossed
Not a pro, but I usually add cheese off the heat because too much heat can make it separate into squishy gloops and watery whey.
Oh! So maybe it still had too much heat when we added the cheese then!
The butter melted within about ~30-45 seconds and I thought we needed to hurry, so the pasta had only been out of the water for a minute or so before we started added the cheese… It was definitely giving squishy gloops and watery whey! Haha.
Do you usually wait like 2mins or more before adding the cheese? Thank your for sharing your experience!
I usually cheat a bit and make the sauce separately in a small pot on low heat. Still using just the traditional ingredients - cheese, butter, pasta water and then toss the pasta in the sauce. Not as showy as tossing all the ingredients together directly with the pasta, but I’m not trying to impress anyone and it’s a little less picky about technique and needing to work quickly while the pasta is hot enough to melt it all together.
Ohh, okay! So you think it’s possible we did lose too much heat while trying to do it via the bowl huh? It’s funny it sounds like if it’s too cold or too hot it’ll make it gloopy/stringy! Haha.
Yea, I definitely don’t care about impressing anyone/showiness, just going for yummy & easy, heh, and if doing the sauce in a separate lil pot’s working well for you, I’ll probably try that out next time! fingers crossed
Thank you for sharing! :)
How much pasta water did you add before you started putting the cheese in?
Hmm when we started adding the cheese, it was just the carry-over pasta water from scooping it out of pot (and the melted butter), so probably just like a 1/4 cup or so? Then we ended up adding about 3/4 of a cup while mixing in the cheese after realizing it was getting gloopy.
Should we have added more pasta waster before the cheese?! I will feel so silly if it turns out that’s all we needed to do, because the big pot of pasta water was right there… Haha.
Yeah, more before the cheese. That might be the problem.
It’s the starch in the water, blended thoroughly with the liquid fat, that creates the emulsion. Once the fat/water emulsion exists, the cheese can melt into it. (it’s also how ayonnaise is made - except, obviously, egg instead of cheese.)
If the cheese has already begun to clump, it’s too late. At that point, if you add heat or starch, the cheese can’t slowly melt into the emulsion - chemical reactions in the cheese have already begun to take place.
(Science!)
If you struggle to get it right with pasta water, you could also try mixing in powdered starch before you add the cheese. That will let you experiment with more predictable quantities of starch. It’s less traditional, but it’s easier to control.
Ah yea, that makes sense. If I try using this method again I’ll def keep this in mind! Thank you! :)
