How to make juicy Alfredo pasta that melts in your mouth

• Alfredo pasta is a simple dish to prepare even at a professional level of quality.
• Any amateur chef can get in the kitchen with this Alfredo pasta recipe and get a fantastic final product that melts in your mouth.
• Ruhana Ebrahim, food styling expert and recipe developer shared with Briefly.co.za the best cheeses and herbs to use for a creamy and juicy Alfredo sauce.

Alfredo pasta is regarded as a dish that requires not much time to prepare and is delicious. Try to cook this simple cheesy Alfredo pasta recipe and realize how tasty your meal can be.

Tips from a food stylist

Ruhana Ebrahim, food styling expert and recipe developer shared with Briefly.co.za the best cheeses to use for a creamy and juicy Alfredo sauce and herbs and spices that can be added to enhance the flavour:

Shredded mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, Asiago cheese, Pecorino Romano Cheese and Gruyere cheese.

Read also

Learn classic South African Magwinya (Vetkoek) recipes to try at home

Italian seasoning is the best for pasta, you can substitute it with fresh herbs. Such as sage, oregano, and parsley.

Is Alfredo sauce Italian?

While there are many Italian sauces similar to it, the dish named “Alfredo sauce” is almost absent in Italy. They go under “al burro” meaning “with butter.”

The origin of Alfredo sauce is unknown, but some trace it back to a Roman chef named Alfredo di Lelio who was popular among tourists from North America. In 1914, he named a cheese and butter linguine after himself and served it to Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, two Hollywood actors on their honeymoon in Rome. The couple popularised the Alfredo pasta recipe under this name when they returned home.

Is Alfredo a pasta?

Alfredo or al burro refers to the sauce used in the dish. The type of pasta used makes up the first part of the dish name e.g. fettuccine Alfredo.

Read also

Sosatie recipes: How to make the best and tastiest sosaties on Braai Day!

What kind of pasta goes in Alfredo?

Pasta comes in hundreds of different shapes and types. Although they cook and taste the same, they pick up/stick to sauces differently which is where the distinctions stand out the most.

For Alfredo, fettuccine pasta is recommended. It comes in long, straight, flat strands. It is featured in protein-based meals where meat is one of the central ingredients (e.g. bacon pasta).

Tagliatelle is a similar type except it comes in ribbon strands as opposed to straight ones. It can be used as a substitute when fettuccine is unavailable.

How to make Alfredo pasta

The perfect chicken Alfredo pasta recipe is below.

Ingredients

• 200 grams of pasta
• 0.5 kilograms skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (chopped into cubes)
• ¼ teaspoon pepper to taste
• ¼ teaspoon salt to taste
• ½ cups parmesan cheese (shredded)
• 1 ½ cups milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley (chopped)
• 6 tablespoons butter (unsalted)

Read also

Amazing tuna pasta recipes you need to try!

How to make Alfredo pasta

The procedure is broken into three parts:

1. Preparing the pasta
2. Preparing the chicken
3. Preparing the sauce

It is recommended that you run these three processes concurrently so that everything is still hot when mixing. This also means that it will be hot when served without needing to reheat and compromising some of the flavours in the chicken Alfredo pasta.

Preparing the pasta

1. Bring a pot of lightly salted water to boil.
2. Add in the pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente (firm to the bite).
3. Drain the pasta using a colander.

Preparing the chicken

1. In a frying pan over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter.
2. Add in the chicken pieces and sauté until fully cooked or until they are no longer pink in the middle.

How do you make Alfredo sauce from scratch?

The Alfredo pasta sauce is arguably the most important part of the dish but it is very simple to prepare from scratch.

Read also

Amazing tips on how to prepare a delicious chicken breyani recipe

Preparing the sauce

1. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt 4 tablespoons of butter.
2. Add garlic and cook for approximately 30 seconds or until fragrant.
3. Add the shredded parmesan cheese.
4. Add the heavy cream and milk.
5. Stir lightly before adding in the salt to taste.
6. Stir to mix all the ingredients and cook for 10 minutes or until the mixture is heated through.

Final steps

1. Add the pasta and chicken to the sauce.
2. Stir with a pair of tongs and cook until the whole mixture is heated through.

Serve garnished with grated parmesan cheese or freshly chopped parsley.

What goes well with Alfredo pasta?

Depending on how creamy the pasta Alfredo turned out, you can serve it along with your favourite bread. Other serving suggestions have to do with adding colour to the dish since it is mostly bland white.

Apart from a parsley garnishing, you could spring for a side dish incorporating broccoli, green beans, asparagus, eggplants, or carrots. These vegetables could be roasted, braised, or boiled. Mushrooms could also be used as one of the main ingredients during preparation.

Read also

Tramezzini recipe that will make hunger for more

How many calories is Alfredo?

This heavy cream South African dish is not recommended for people who want to achieve weight loss since it is very high in calories. A rough estimate of the nutritional information for the sauce alone without the chicken is as follows:

• Calories: 625kcal
• Carbohydrates: 49 grams
• Protein: 16 grams
• Fat: 40 grams
• Saturated fat: 24 grams
• Cholesterol: 129 milligrams
• Sodium: 513 milligrams
• Potassium: 313 milligrams
• Fiber: 1 gram
• Sugar: 6 gram
• Vitamin A: 1635IU
• Vitamin C: 3.4 milligrams
• Calcium: 311 milligrams
• Iron: 1 milligram

If you are looking to reduce the number of calories in the dish, you can use a larger ratio of milk to heavy cream. You can also look into using different dairy variants if you are vegan (e.g. almond milk and soy milk products), lactose intolerant (lactose-free dairy products), etc.

That concludes our Alfredo pasta recipe. If you find it informative, consider sharing it as widely as possible. Feel free to leave your thoughts and tips for cooking it in the comment section below.

Source: Briefly News