Fettuccine Alfredo
Before the cream and the garlic crept in, Alfredo was three ingredients: pasta, butter and Parmigiano, whipped together into a sauce by nothing but starch and vigorous tossing. It takes fifteen minutes and tastes like a restaurant dish.
Photograph credit: Fettuccine by Popo le Chien · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Before You Start
Grate the cheese on the finest holes — a microplane, not a box grater. Coarse shreds refuse to emulsify.
Use a bowl, not a hot pan. Residual pan heat is the number one cause of a broken, oily Alfredo.
Buy real Parmigiano-Reggiano with the rind stamp. Pre-grated cheese contains anti-caking cellulose that makes the sauce grainy.
Cooking Fettuccine Alfredo
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Bring 3 litres of water to a rolling boil with the salt. Fresh fettuccine cooks in 2 to 3 minutes, so have everything ready first.
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Put half the butter in a wide, warmed serving bowl and let it begin to soften.
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Cook the fettuccine until barely al dente, then lift it directly into the bowl with tongs, carrying plenty of clinging water with it. Reserve 300 ml of pasta water.
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Add the remaining butter and toss hard until it melts and coats the strands.
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Add the Parmigiano in three handfuls, tossing furiously and adding splashes of hot pasta water between each. The sauce should turn from grainy to glossy in about 90 seconds.
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Season with white pepper, adjust with more pasta water until it flows like double cream, and serve at once.
Related guide: Ingredient substitutions.
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What's Going On Here
Parmigiano-Reggiano is roughly 30% fat and 30% protein; melted into starchy water below 65°C / 149°F it forms a natural emulsion that behaves exactly like cream. Push it hotter and the proteins tighten and the fat splits out, which is why the pan comes off the heat first.
After You've Cooked It
Best eaten immediately. Leftovers keep 2 days refrigerated; revive in a pan over low heat with 3 tablespoons of milk or water per portion, stirring constantly until it loosens.
What to Serve Alongside
- An unoaked Chardonnay or Soave stands up without competing
- Add blanched asparagus or peas for colour and bite
- A bitter espresso afterwards is the traditional Roman full stop
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Ciabatta, Citrus Fennel Salad, Fave e Cicoria.
Still Wondering?
Why did my Fettuccine Alfredo turn oily or grainy instead of creamy?
The cheese seized rather than melted, almost always from too much heat or too little starchy pasta water. Take the pan off the heat before adding the cheese, add it gradually while tossing, and loosen with more of the reserved pasta water rather than trying to fix it with more cheese, which makes a seized sauce worse.
Fettuccine Alfredo Nutrition Facts
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. Sodium is not given, because the salt for the cooking water is in the ingredient list but most of it is poured away with the water, so no figure from the list would be honest. How the figures are worked out.
Vegetarian when made with a hard cheese made without animal rennet in place of the parmigiano-reggiano.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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