Chicken Alfredo

Before You Start

Grate the Parmigiano yourself. Pre-grated cheese is coated in anti-caking starch that turns the sauce grainy.

Off the heat before the cheese. This one rule is the difference between a sauce and a bowl of oily strings.

Halving the breasts horizontally is what stops the outside drying before the middle cooks.

Cooking Chicken Alfredo

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1. Pat the cutlets dry and season both sides with the salt and pepper. Dry chicken browns; wet chicken steams.

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2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high and cook the cutlets in two batches, 3 to 4 minutes a side, until deeply golden and cooked through. Set them on a board to rest.

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3. Meanwhile cook the fettuccine in well-salted water until 1 minute short of the packet time. Reserve 400 ml of the water before draining.

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4. Turn the heat under the chicken pan to medium-low, add the butter and garlic, and cook 1 minute until fragrant but not coloured, scraping the browned bits off the base.

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5. Pour in the cream and simmer 2 minutes until slightly thickened.

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6. Take the pan off the heat entirely. Add the Parmigiano in three handfuls, whisking each in completely before the next, then the nutmeg.

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7. Add the drained pasta and 150 ml of the reserved water and toss hard for a full minute. The sauce will look thin and then suddenly turn glossy and clinging — keep tossing until it does, loosening with more water if it tightens.

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8. Slice the rested chicken across the grain, fold half of it through, and pile the rest on top with the parsley and more Parmigiano.

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Why It Works

Alfredo splits when the cheese is added to a sauce that is too hot or too thin, because the fat separates out of the melted Parmigiano. Taking the pan off the heat and adding starchy pasta water fixes both problems at once: the temperature drops below the splitting point and the dissolved starch acts as an emulsifier, holding fat and water in suspension. Cooking the chicken first and building the sauce in the same pan means the fond — the browned residue on the base — dissolves into it.

After You've Cooked It

Refrigerated for 3 days. Reheat gently in a pan with a splash of milk, stirring — a microwave splits it.

Swaps and Variations

• In a sauce, full-fat crème fraîche can usually take the place of the double cream; single cream is thinner and more likely to split if it boils, so keep it below a simmer.
• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

What to Serve Alongside

• A cold, unoaked Chardonnay
• Garlic bread
• A sharp green salad

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Ciabatta, Citrus Fennel Salad, Fave e Cicoria.

Questions and Answers

Nutrition per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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