Fettuccine Alfredo Recipe

OK, this is not health food, but it’s wonderful! 🙂

Prep time: 15 min.
Cook time: 15 – 30 min.

Fettuccine Alfredo Ingredients:

• 1 Box of dried fettuccine noodles (1 lb. of pasta)
• 4 Tbs. unsalted butter (Real butter! None of that margarine or fake butter stuff! The Parmesan is salty so you don’t need more saltiness from salted butter. Plus you are adding salt to the water that your are boiling the fettuccine noodles in.)
• 1 Cup heavy cream (Yes “heavy” cream. No half and half or low fat stuff, for a nice thick creamy sauce you are going to need the heavy cream. Sometimes you will not be able to find a container that actually says heavy cream. In that case, look for a container that says whipping cream, that is the same thing.)
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (If you use a fresh block of Parmesan cheese and grate that, it’s even better! I highly recommend a block of Parmigiano-Reggiano).
• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup chopped fresh parsley (This is extremely important!)

Fettuccine Alfredo Alternative:

• Add Prosciutto and Peas to the Alfredo sauce… YUM! I have placed a photo gallery of this option below as well as some quick instructions.

See below for VERY detailed recipe instructions

Interesting Note about the spelling of Fettuccine: This is spelled many different ways by many, even nice restaurants will spell this wrong in an effort to make it easy for English speaking people to pronounce it. The most common spelling variations of this classic Italian dish are: Fettuccine / Fettuccini / Fettucine. This might be helpful. Pulled it off of a forum discussion about this subject: “As you can see in the WR dictionary, it’s fettuccine (Two t’s and two c’c). That’s actually the plural of fettuccina, which as a feminine noun becomes plural by changing the “a” to an “e.” OK, well I hope that clears up the spelling of Fettuccine issue. 🙂 So the correct spelling of this special Italian dish is Fettuccine… Capish? This is without a doubt an Italian-American recipe. Now onto the recipe!

Directions:

First
Get a large pot of water boiling for the Fettuccine noodles. Make sure you have a lot of water for the pasta. For good pasta you want to have a lot of water for the noodles to swim in while cooking. You do this first because for the time it will take you to heat up a large pot of water to boiling and cook the noodles will be about the same amount of time it takes you to make the Alfredo Sauce.

Next
While the pot of water is heating up…. Pour 1 cup of heavy cream into nice large non-stick frying pan. Turn the heat onto medium low. You are going to want to cooking this slowly. Simmering at first. Some people like to melt the butter first and then add the cream. I find the Alfredo sauce comes out much creamier and thicker if you heat up the cream first and then melt the butter.

Next
Let the heavy cream get nice and warm to where there is just a tiny bit of steam coming off of it but not boiling.

Next
Add in the 4 Tbs. of “real” butter. Slowly let the butter melt into the cream. Stir frequently while you are letting the butter melt. Again, the cream should not be boiling but should be hot enough to melt the butter. Keep stirring!

Next
Check… Is the water in the large pot boiling yet? If so add the Fettuccine noodles and set the timer to 11 minutes. The pasta is usually ready between 10 – 12 minutes. You will have to taste and see.

Next
Keep stirring the cream and butter until the butter has completely mixed into the cream. Now you can turn up the heat to medium to were the cream is just barely boiling, just a few bubbles here and there. Almost boiling. Keep stirring!

Next
Add in the fresh pepper, stir. Then add in 3/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese. (I Highly recommend a fresh block of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese) At this point your heat should be on medium and the sauce should be boiling just a little bit. You are going to be stirring this for a while now until all the cheese has melted into the sauce and you have a nice thick creamy sauce with all ingredients blended together. Keep heating this until all the Parmesan cheese has completely melted into the Alfredo sauce. It’s going to take a while so be patient. You might be stirring this on low heat for about 10 minutes. Just be sure to not over cook the sauce. If you see it is starting to get too thick turn off the heat.

Next
At this point your noodles should be cooked. Drain the noodles well in a strainer. Make sure you get as much water out of the noodles as possible. One thing I like to do is, instead of just pouring the noodles into a bowl from the strainer which still might have some water in it. I use a pasta spoon also called a pasta server. It’s the large spoon with the teeth. There is a good photo here: Pasta Server. This large spoon with teeth also has slots in the bottom of the spoon. So when you scoop out the pasta it will allow even more water to drain out. So what you want to do is instead of just pouring out the noodles from the strainer to the bowl, scoop out the noodles a little bit at a time from the strainer to the bowl using the pasta server and allow any extra water to drain before you place the pasta in the bowl.

Next
Once you have all the noodles added to a large bowl you are now going to mix in the Alfredo sauce. Slowly pour the sauce which should still be very warm from the frying pan into the noodles. Don’t pour all of it in. Start with about 3/4 of the sauce. Now add in the fresh chopped parsley. Mix everything well. Then add in a little bit more pepper (to taste, I like a lot), then add 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese and mix it up well. Now check the consistency of the sauce and noodles all mixed together. If it is not too creamy and there is no extra sauce puddling on the bottom of the bowl you can add the rest of the Alfredo sauce to the bowl. Then mix some more.

Next
Now it is ready to serve. You want to plan this out well. When you make Fettuccine it has to be served immediately after you have mixed it and everything is hot. This is extremely important. Cold Fettuccine is just not good and it cools off fast. So make everything else you are going to make first and have everything ready. It takes about 10 minutes to get the water boiling for the noodles and another 10 – 12 minutes to cook the noodles and then you mix everything and your done. So plan accordingly. I warned you, if you serve cold Fettuccine Alfredo to your guests it’s not my fault!

Next
I like to serve this with a nice Italian Salad, Garlic Bread and Chicken Cutlets as you can see in the photos I have for this recipe. EnJoY!

That’s it! You’re done….. Easy as Pie!

Here are some helpful links for learning more about Fettuccine Alfredo

This is very interesting. – ALFREDO SAUCE: MYSTERY SOLVED!

There are many variations of Fettuccine Alfredo. 100’s of ways you can make this dish. What I have put in detail above is how my grandmother made it and how I ate it growing up so to me this is the correct and only way to make it 🙂 However, you can experiment and try all the many ways to make this lovely Italian dish! Just google this phrase here “fettucini alfredo recipe variations” and explore the many possibilities! Have fun!

You can find many Fettuccini recipe variations on she CookEatShare site!

Fettucini Aalfredo and Chicken Cutlets Photo Gallery

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Fettucini Aalfredo with Prosciutto and Peas Photo Gallery

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Here are some photos of finished Fettuccine Alfredo along with Chicken Cutlets. My favorite food combination ever!

Fettuccine Alfredo, Chicken Cutlets and Garlic Bread, one of my favorite combinations… This is extremely yummy stuff! One note about these photos, this was a last minute thing. I had a friend of mine and his boys come over to hang out while our wives were up on the mountains of North Carolina. So we didn’t bother to clean anything up and you will also notice the lack of vegetables with this meal 😉 Well, there is fresh parsley in the fettuccine and in the garlic bread so this was a well balanced meal 🙂

Fettuccine Alfredo Alternative: Fettuccine Alfredo with Prosciutto and Peas

Make the Fettuccine Alfredo as noted above with the following revisions:
Before you make the Alfredo sauce you will want to prepare the Prosciutto and Peas.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 lb. very thin sliced Prosciutto (sliced into small strips also called Julienned)
• (3) cloves garlic (chopped fine)
• (2) shallots or Scallions (chopped fine)
• (2) tblsp. olive oil
• (1) frozen small peas (thawed)
• Fresh parsley
• Fresh basil

Heat up the olive oil in a skillet and saute the garlic. Then add the chopped scallions and prosciutto. Saute for about 8 minutes. Do this while the Alfredo sauce is simmering. When the sauce is finished add in the garlic, scallions and prosciutto. Dish this out of the skillet while leaving the olive oil. You don’t want to add olive oil to the Alfredo sauce. Then add the thawed peas and continue to simmer the alfredo sauce until the peas are warm all the way through. Add in some fresh parsley and basil. Now mix this with the fettuccine noodles and serve. Top with more fresh parsley and cheese. YUM! In this photos below you can see I served this with Chicken Cutlets and fresh garden tomatoes with basil and olive oil. A marvelous combination!

For this past Father’s day my two teenage boys made this meal for me as a Father’s day present. It was wonderful!
I have placed some photos of the final dish below.