World's Best Fettuccine Alfredo | Cooking Italian with Joe

hey guys welcome to my kitchen we got a big day today today we're making fettuccine alfredo one of my favorite Italian dishes cream butter cheese absolutely one of my favorite recipes and one of my favorite memories of Italy and my aunt my aunt's recipe so we reproduced that recipe for you today so I'm real excited to share it with you so that being said let me go over some ingredients again it's not this is not a low-calorie recipe by any means okay guys but something you can have occasionally in the house with your family it's

absolutely delicious so that being said we're gonna start with two cups of heavy cream we've got a pound of Italian 100% semolina flour fettuccine okay and that's gonna be the dried pasta so I'll talk about that a little bit we've got a quarter cup of onion 2 cloves of garlic a pinch of nutmeg absolutely delicious you know when I share nutmeg with you guys a lot of times people get a little nervous with nutmeg we're not adding nutmeg so you can actually taste the nutmeg what we're actually doing is we're adding nutmeg to enhance the

flavour of the cheese's cuz Alfredo is gonna be filled with a lot of cheese which we'll talk about we've got two egg yolks only and we've got a half a cup of parmesan and a half a cup of romano cheese and we've got one stick of butter we're gonna use some olive oil salt and pepper and so forth so let me show you guys how to get started and to make it just absolutely delicious discs okay so that being said let me turn on my heat now I've got a larger pan over here so let's

start mixing this up so real simple we want to create a base for the alfredo all right so we're gonna take some olive oil now we're gonna make enough to make enough sauce for a pound of pasta so we're gonna bathe the bottom with olive oil and we're gonna do that because we want to bring in our onion and our garlic and the onion and the garlic are gonna give your base flavor now some advice on that when you're cutting up the onion you want it to be really small cuz you don't want a big

piece of onion in your alfredo sauce so cut it up or minson if you will really small same thing with your garlic and now what you're gonna do is you're gonna let this heat up and you're going to go a little bit beyond the sweat the sweat means it's going to give off some of its moisture but you want to go a little bit beyond that as I say almost to the point of caramelizing or caramelizing because remember when you're when you caramelize something it's gonna bring out the sugar so it brings out a different

flavor a deeper flavor to it okay guys welcome back now if you take a look in here what I want you to see see we went beyond the sweat stage when you hear that you're just giving off moisture and what you're gonna notice is the garlic and the onion if you push on it it's more than soft it's really mushy because again when you get that in your Alfredo you don't wanna you don't want to bite into it like a strong onion or something that's raw or shouldn't even feel crunchy the second thing the reason

that we do this technique is all the flavors from the onion and the garlic they're gonna infuse themselves in the oil and the oil becomes part of that sauce so you've got some wonderful flavors now we want to start to enrich this up okay so we're gonna add some butter so this is unsalted butter and you know the reason you want to use unsalted is you can kind of control the salt better I will tell you in a lot of these dishes when you're starting to use Romano Parmesan cheese and other ingredients they're filled with

a lot of salt so the concern is sometimes it might taste too salty so I always put salt in myself with a pinch and then add it if we need it so I'm gonna just start to melt this down okay guys what we've got going here is the butter just finished melting okay so we want to put you know my advice always use fresh pepper when possible so I'm gonna hit about 12 cranks of this thing get some nice fresh ground pepper and again we're gonna get some flavor from that not of that so that'll

be great second thing we want to do is add some salt so again I use the gray sea salt you'll notice it it's more briny it's not as salty if you will is a process salt so we're gonna use about a half of a teaspoon or maybe a touch more and we're gonna mix that up we're gonna add some nutmeg so the nutmeg we just want to sprinkle across now there's a reason I'm doing it in this order once everything's mixed in there your pepper you're not Megg your salt your garlic your onion your butter

and you've got all that flavor infused within that olive oil that bath the olive oil then we want to add the alcohol okay and the alcohol again is gonna allow some of those other flavors to get extracted so we're going to add about a third of a cup of white wine oh that smells good and you're gonna see as a low boiling point so you see how the alcohol is just starting to bubble off so mix it right in now we don't want to add any cream until the alcohol is burned off because a lot

of times the alcohol can curdle your cream so you don't want to you don't want to do that obviously so and you see how it started to make a sauce it's just getting like a little bit thick and that nice Oh tight a smell in here is absolutely delicious so that's your base of your alfredo and now it gets really easy now we're gonna add our cream and once I had the cream that's what I'm gonna put the pasta in because we're running right down about eight ten minutes before this dish is done so once

you stop the bubbles and you're gonna see now the alcohol is off right so we're safe to put the cream in now my advice when you add the cream just add it slow and we've got two cups of heavy cream in here all right when the cream starting to bubble now what we're gonna do is we're gonna work a little bit of that moisture out of the cream all right guys welcome back what I want to do is show you just a little bit of information on fettuccine so what we've got here is a fettuccine

now this is a durum flour this is semolina flour and that's a that's a specific variety of wheat and it gives you a hearty err flavor it's got a much higher protein content for your flour and what you'll notice is the the true Italian aisle fettuccine or the true Italian pasta it'll be pushed through what they call brass dies and not to get too crazy here but you'll notice it has like almost like if you look at like frosted glass it has that little extra almost like non polished surface on it and you want that

because what the Italians want to do is they want to have a little bit of an edge to the surface of the pasta so when it cooks and you pull it out it has it gives it the sauce surface to stick to so that's what's really important it's really important for the Italian so when you get a higher-end pasta and you're looking for something specific for maybe a special occasion you want to spend a little extra money that's why you always want to get that type of pasta all right now you want your water at

a vigorous boil here which is what we've got and we're gonna add the pasta now some people will tell you to add you know butter or an oil to the pasta when you're cooking it but not a good idea because what that does is that actually seals the porous nature of the pasta and it doesn't allow the salt or different flavors to get in the pasta so just get in a rapid boil then when you pull it out you can always throw a little butter or a little oil on there if you have to in

this case we're gonna go right from this pan to the other okay you know to see how this is bubbling so this is starting to thicken and you notice when I draw it you see how it starts to get just a little thick it's just adhere to the bottom of the pan oh that's beautiful look at that see how it's getting then be a nice thick sauce and that's what you want you don't want a watery sauce because if you have a watery sauce it's not gonna stick to the pasta right you want it to

adhere to the pasta almost like a like a thick gravy and you've got the onion the garlic and my aunt used to make a pasta alfredo all the time and I'll tell you her sauce was delicious so a couple of the secrets if you will to her sauce once she'd always cook it down like I'm showing you to she's always gonna add an egg yet about 1 egg yolk to 1 cup of cream is the general rule and 3 always going to add a little pinch of nutmeg which we did and again you won't taste

the nutmeg just like you won't taste the wine in this dish but it just brings out it enhances the flavors of all your other ingredients which is delicious so what I'm gonna do here now is I've got two egg yolks alright so I'm just take a fork and I'm gonna get that creamed if you will and while that's nice and creamy so nice and creamy the egg yolk is now what I want to do is I'm going to take the yolk now this is warm so I don't want to pour it all in it'll curdle

and cook right there I want to stir it and slowly drizzle it in to the cream that way what will happen is it won't it won't cook sometimes you can try to temper it in this case it's such a small amount and now that will fully incorporate itself right within the cream absolutely delicious it thickens it up gives you that beautiful flavor of the alfredo I'm gonna check our pasta here while that's going and again we're gonna let this come right to a bubble so you're gonna let your alfredo sauce come right to a bubble

and here with the pasta what you want to do is you see how a couple of them I don't if you can get that you see how they're sticking together so that's what's great about a pasta fork but you always want to make sure you're paying attention because you don't have a cluster of pasta they're not going to cook so stir it up if you get any of those sticking together use that fork it'll break it right up beautiful and again you got about eight to ten minutes all Dante means hard or semi hard if

you will so it's gonna mean that it's chewy you want it you want a bite to the pasta you don't want it mushy and the other reason you want to have the pasta water really hot is remember pasta is essentially flour and water so if you mix the pasta and the water isn't hot what'll happen is it starts to make the pasta mushy because it has to cook longer so just like you'd sear something you almost sear the pasta is what you're doing so all right guys so if you look right in here you see

how nice and creamy that is I added the egg and again you won't even taste really an egg if you will but it gives you that consistency thickens it up all the smell is just absolutely delicious so creamy all right so now the the best part we're gonna add our cheese's so we've got a heavy half a cup here if you will of parmesan and we've got a heavy cup of Romano so remember the Romano is gonna be from the goat cheese and you're gonna get a creamier texture with the parmesan the parmesan is much

more creamy now this is warm it's not hot it's it's almost on the verge of being hot so we're gonna mix this in and that's threaded on the cheese and we're gonna let that cook until it's creamy until the cheese loses its shape you see how the cheese is starting to loose its shape and when it loses its shape it's essentially done growing up as a kid I always share these stories but I don't care what the event was you always had something to eat you know to make you feel better so it's he passed

away if something good happen it's cool if he got to fight the school if you lost your lunchbox I don't care what the situation was my mother or grandmother would always be there to sit down and give you some homemade treat absolutely great great memories beautiful and that's why I love sharing this with you best way to make a friend is the throw a nice plate of fettucini alfredo in front of him I'll tell you that I don't care who they are so our sauce is done right now it's absolutely perfect so stir that and

just keep stirring it I like to keep it nice and hot before I put that pasta in there and if you find that it's a little thick in this case we won't run into that situation but if you ever find it's a little thick you never want to add water to anything so you'd always ask you'd always add your pasta water because it's already got a lot of the starches and the flavor of the fettuccine from it homemade pasta is different you know you make a homemade pasta it cooks quicker it's not as durable in

the sense of its flavor it's not as hearty in the sense of its texture but it's much more porous so when a homemade pasta is going to absorb a lot more of the nutrients and certainly a lot more the flavor so you'll find homemade pasta is often used traditionally in different dishes hard pastas Oh beautiful or often use in a simple sauce okay guys here we go I'm not gonna lie to you I've been tasting the fettuccine as it's been cooking so I'm gonna pull it off the heat I'm gonna set it right next to

my sauce and you can strain it but in this case I'm just gonna use that pasta fork and I want to stir it in quick here because I don't want it all sticking together so all right and I've got about another half a pound coming out of there so whoa look at that I'll tell you just the pasta if you guys listen to some of my other videos which are right on our website on our YouTube site channel which is cooking a talent show you're gonna see that oh that's beautiful a good pasta will hold

up on its own on its own so the flavor of the pasta itself just if you have it plain nothing on it it should taste really really good so when I make my home any pots I was like to add egg to it certainly gives it a lek stress waiver and so the recipe I gave you will give you a good enough sauce for a good pound of pasta look at that oh that's good cuz with this type of sauce or an alfredo you're gonna see that you're gonna put this pasta in a dish you're

gonna add a little sauce with it as well it's gonna actually bring in a little sauce so we are set so I'm gonna put this in one of our big dishes okay for serving and it is gonna be awesome all right guys look at that I just pulled it out of the pan okay so a couple things we're gonna just top it with a little cheese and you're gonna top each plate with a little cheese as well all right and then to finish it off it'll tell you parsley which gives it just almost like a

Hennis beautiful almost like a hint of citrus all right and then I'm gonna delve in here a little bit and get a little bit in a plate so when you plate it I like that if you put the if you put that parsley on top you're gonna get a couple of green bits in there right away and again you're gonna top it with a just a pinch of fresh cheese and maybe another just a pinch of parsley hoho oh is that awesome or what this reminds me of my my aunt right here boy I am

right home look at that okay just the flavors just to smell the onion the garlic I'm not gonna lie to you my mouth is watering here so you know I'll show you how to be a true Guinea here hold on a second let me grab this is how the real guineas do it here you take that spoon you put it right in there all right mmm oh my god that is absolutely delicious you know the cream the butter that onion garlic olive oil wine the egg that pinch of nutmeg oh my god guys I'll tell

you that is an absolutely phenomenal recipe certainly to share with your family your friends you can make it for a formal gather you make it something simple or something to share on a nice cold day like today thanks for letting me share my heritage in my traditions with you guys don't forget to like our Facebook for weekly updates on videos and recipes and don't forget to subscribe to our You Tube anytime we come out with a new recipe or a new video you'll get emailed and notified don't forget to visit our website we've got all

kinds of great materials and products to sell including our olive oil in the meantime guys enjoy our recipes enjoy time with your friends and family Bon Appetit