Make This Simple but Classic Fettuccine Alfredo Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is classic alfredo sauce made of? ›

Real alfredo sauce is made with 3 simple ingredients: butter, Parmesan cheese and fresh fettuccine pasta. There is absolutely no cream in this dish (cream is common in most American-style alfredo sauce recipes). Make this dish with my fresh homemade pasta, fresh sourdough pasta or store-bought fresh pasta.

Extra seasonings and spices will go a long way in adding flavor to a boring jar of sauce. Some of my personal favorites include salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, dried basil, oregano, onion powder or seasoned salt. Start with small amounts (1/2 teaspoon at a time) and add as needed, in order to avoid over-spicing.

The original fettuccine Alfredo

The real Alfredo sauce is delicious because of its simplicity. The only ingredients are butter, Parmesan cheese and pepper. That's it! You'll find neither heavy cream nor parsley in the original recipe.

Fettuccine Alfredo, it turns out, is 100% Italian. To be fair, the original recipe is quite different from whatever you may find in the States. Italians have been eating Fettuccine Alfredo for over a century…

The alfredo sauce, which now catered to American tastes rather than Italian, evolved to include ingredients like flour, cream, milk, and shrimp or chicken. To this day, di Lelio's original recipe only contains three ingredients: fettuccine, young Parmesan cheese, and butter.

What Makes Alfredo Taste Alfredo? The key to Alfredo sauce's unique flavour is the combination of butter, cream, and Parmesan cheese. The butter and cream create a rich, velvety base, while the Parmesan cheese adds a tangy, salty flavour.

But it also evolved in its new environs: American cooks added heavy cream or half-and-half to thicken and enrich the sauce. To each their own, but no authentic fettuccine Alfredo recipe should include cream (because it dulls the flavor of the cheese).

Add Cheese

The key ingredient in Alfredo sauce is cheese—generally Parmigiano Reggiano—and lots of it. To thicken Alfredo sauce, simply add more cheese than the amount called for in a recipe until you achieve the consistency you want.

Fresh parmesan cheese grated off the block is one of those key ingredients. This will create a smooth textured sauce rather than a grainy one. Butter: Both unsalted or salted work for this alfredo sauce recipe. If using salted butter, then just adjust the extra salt you use or omit it entirely.

One of the main reasons that store-bought alfredo sauces fall flat is for a lack of spices. Basic alfredo doesn't have much more than pepper, salt, and maybe garlic, and adding additional seasonings has the potential to turn a bland sauce around.

How to make alfredo better? ›

Milk, heavy cream, or sour cream.

You will get a creamier texture and a bolder flavor. If you want, you can also add some romano cheese to balance the nutty taste of the other dairy ingredients. Chicken broth: another way to improve a jar of Alfredo sauce and give it a rich flavor.

One of the things that makes it so great is its use of heavy cream. While this might seem like a standard inclusion in an Alfredo sauce for most Americans, it actually makes this dish distinctly different from its Italian counterpart.

Moreover, Italians are not thrilled that this recipe is so strongly associated with Italy, as it is not a traditional dish and there are recipes much more authentic, more representative and more identifying of the Bel Paese. Indeed, no real Italian restaurant has this pasta on the menu.

Classically the sauce is made with butter, grated parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper. Hot starchy pasta water is also added when tossing it with pasta to bring about more creaminess.

You'll need just five simple ingredients to make this basic Alfredo sauce recipe: butter, heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, garlic, and fresh parsley.

WATER, HEAVY CREAM, PARMESAN CHEESE (PASTEURIZED AND PART SKIM MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES), MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, SALT, FLAVORED BUTTER (BUTTER [CREAM, SALT], NATURAL FLAVOR), SUGAR, ENZYME MODIFIED EGG YOLKS.

Ingredients. WATER, CREAM, BUTTER, PARMIGIANO REGGIANO P.D.O. CHEESE (COW'S MILK, SEA SALT, RENNET), VEGETABLE OIL (SUNFLOWER AND/OR SOYBEAN AND/OR CANOLA OIL), MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, PECORINO ROMANO P.D.O.

Fettuccine Alfredo, minus the spectacle, has now become ubiquitous in Italian-style restaurants outside Italy, although despite its worldwide renown, in Italy this dish is usually still called simply fettuccine al burro.