Super Creamy Cacio e Pepe Pasta

This extra creamy cacio e pepe will make you think you are in Italy!

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How to make it

First, start off by melting some butter in a pan with plenty of freshly cracked black pepper. Black pepper is a key flavor in cacio e pepe and toasting it in butter helps coax out it’s spicy floralness – the heat of the butter will draw out flavor and the pepper will infuse the butter with all that goodness.


After the butter is melted and the pepper is toasted, it’s time to add our thickening agent, flour. Stir the flour in completely making sure there are no lumps. At this point, our goal is to coat eat flour granule with fat so that the flour easily combines with the milk to create a smooth sauce.


Once the flour is cooked into the fat, it’s time to gradually add the milk. Adding it in slowly will help prevent lumps. Don’t worry if the sauce clumps up right away, just keep whisking over low heat.


When all the milk is incorporated, it’s time to add the cheese. Take the sauce off the heat and add the cheese in batches. The residual heat of the sauce will melt the cheese. The sauce will probably look kind of lumpy, but don’t worry, we’re going to smooth it out with starchy pasta water. At this point, if you want to cool down the sauce and pop it in the fridge in a container, you can do so. If you do, you can have almost instant cacio e pepe pasta any day of the week.


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Cacio e Pepe Pasta Recipe


Ingredients

Instructions

1. In a skillet, melt the butter and add the pepper, letting the pepper infuse the butter as it melts. Stir in the flour and cook for about three minutes, until completely smooth and incorporated. Pour in the milk in a thin stream while whisking. It might start out lumpy, but keep whisking and it will smooth out into a thick paste. Stir in the pecorino in batches, and remove from the heat. The sauce will be very thick.

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2. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta according the packaging or until it is al dente.

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3. Take 1/4 cup of the hot starchy pasta water and stir it into the cacio e pepe sauce, whisking over medium low heat until smooth and glossy. Add the drained pasta, stirring in extra pasta water as needed until the sauce coats the pasta. Enjoy with extra pepper and crushed red peppers, if desired.

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