CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
1
These 6 supposedly highly rated (Google) are all described below on or adjusted to a 1 pound each shrimp (except a couple are 12 ounce) and 1 pound fettucine basis.
I see butter, as low as 1 Tbs, then 8 Tbs, then 12 or more Tbs.
I see heavy cream as low as zero, then 8 oz, then 12 oz. Some of the lower cream recipes as low as zero heavy cream (Serious Eats) add only extra pasta water.
Parm as low as 4 oz to as high as 12 oz. Some of the lower amounts of parm use additional cream cheese, as much as 4 oz.
Anyone have any favorite Alfredo recipes? Either links or just general descriptions are great!
From Ina Garten and Rachael Ray are usually reliable for these types of recipes ā 2-4 tbsp butter, 1-1.25 cups heavy cream or half & half, 1 cup parmesan.
Masterclass says you can leave out the cream for the Roman version, and the butter for an easy American one.
Just depends on how rich you want it, and what else youāre using in it. If youāre using half & half, you may want more butter to add more richness, and less if youāre using heavy cream.
probably want to research what āAlfredoā actually is . . .
itās cheese melted into butter.
ratios, cheese type . . . all subject to HUGE variable āāāopinionsāāā given the totally unproven documentation of what Alfredo intended for his wifeā¦
any recipe fixated on āper poundā of shrimp, etc., should be immediately trashed.
Alfredo sauce is not a function of how many shrimp/etc are in play.
first learn to make āthe really good Alfredoā type sauce - then do the deduction how much you need for the āto be saucedā entree.
1 Like
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
4
@HappyOnion - the recipes were not fixated on any particular amount of ingredient X (say, butter) per pound of shrimp or pasta. But in describing, e.g., butter āas low as 1 Tbs, then 8 Tbs, then 12 or more Tbsā, where a small serving recipe used 8 oz pasta, I grossed up the butter to be on a par basis with the more common larger serving recipes using 1 pound pasta.
Interesting point about the origin, and (in reading further) how it changed once it came to US.
TBH I donāt think Iāve ever used an actual recipe for Alfredo, cacio e pepe, or similar dishes ā of course, I donāt tend to use many actual recipes for most of my cooking
With such few ingredients & the experience of decades of cooking, I find winging it and going by looks/sounds/texture produces great results.
That said, looking forward to seeing which version you settle on!
Maybe part of the confusion is between American vs Italian Alfredo? They are different dishes. So it depends on which youāre going for.
4 Likes
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
7
The one I mentioned being cream-free was from serious eats, which was supposed to be a more Italian version. The others were variations on what US folks are more used to.
[edit to add]
I found it interesting that as Iāve done more reading, a couple of sources say that despite the originating restaurantās fame through the 1920s, Alfredoās original sauce is little to be found in Italian restaurants. Something about maybe pockets here or there. And of course, still on the menu at Alfredo alla Scrofa.
@linguafood - Daughter 3 was home and she handled the sauce while I did the shrimp (black tiger were back at Aldi!) and pastas (hers is GF). She just kind of winged it, but we ended up with about equal masses of cream & butter and about half their mass of grated parm, with her doing S&P and grated garlic to taste. It was very good.
I was surprised when I took some Prairie cousins for dinner in an Italian neighborhood in Toronto, one of them gravitated to the Alfredo with chicken at an old school Italian restaurant
Those Aldi BTS are fab! Once Iām through with the 2lbs of BTS from Samās Club ($1 less than Aldiās price, even! ) Iāll stock up on those again.
Most welcome. The Masterclass page is somewhat useful in laying out the different types.
I find the āstandardā American- style Alfredo almost too heavy to consume (and it sits heavy afterwards too), but if you start with bechamel itās not going to be Alfredo, per se, more like mac & cheese.
Itās hard to really go wrong here because the copious amount of fat saves you (and no clumping bec the cheese melts into the liquid first, as opposed to cacio e pepe).
Note also that some recipes call for garlic and others skip it. I havenāt tasted garlic when Iāve had it outside, but itās a nice addition at home (also nutmeg).
Not exactly a recipe but I saw a Mark Wiens video of how they make it at Alfredo alla Scrofa in Rome, which is where it was invented. Itās only butter, fresh fettuccine, pasta water, and parm. They added truffles on top in the video but I donāt think thatās traditional
Cream in alfredo sauce reminds on recipes of cream in carbonara sauce (which tend to be heavily americanized recipes) - yes, it is edible (barely) but has very little to do with the origin of the recipe
Dunno. Growing up in Germany I ate at plenty of Italian restaurants that added cream to their carbonara, so Iām not sure itās just an American thing.
It might be because we have different very strong family connections to southern Europe but growing up we never had carbonara sauce at home or at restaurants with cream in it. There were cream based sauces in restaurants which had some resemblance of carbonara but they were always named differently to not associate them with carbonara. Not sure in which city you grew up but in a large city like Hamburg there were way too many Italians living that no Italian restaurant could serve carbonara with cream and donāt have strong pushback - it is really something you will never find in Italy as it makes the sauce to heavy for carbonara or alfredo and pasta dishes in Italy as much (or even more) about the pasta as about the sauce (thatās why they are also never so terrible over-sauced like here in the US)
In the Rhineland. Itās too long ago for me to remember whether Italian restaurants in the area bothered to write ācarbonara e pannaā or some such, but I ā having zero family connections to anywhere outside of Germany, really ā didnāt come across the āproperā carbonara until much later in life.
This was in first generation Italian-owned restaurants, and no doubt they were catering to the public they were serving. Maybe Rhinelanders are particularly fond of creamy dishes?
) Iāll stock up on those again.
(and no clumping bec the cheese melts into the liquid first, as opposed to cacio e pepe).
