senephia on How to Make the Perfect Creamy Alfredo Sauce

weren’t any foreign words in the recipe that needed translating, so I decided to give it a try.

As you can see in the photos my pile of ingredients was a modest one--I halved the recipe since I didn’t have a lot of people to serve. I still ended up paying around $15 for everything once I was done. Part of that is because I opted for organic when I could, and the other part is because here in Alaska EVERYTHING costs an arm and a leg extra because of shipping costs.

I went heavy on the onion and garlic--you can never have too much of those, right? I chopped those up ahead of time, then grated the romano cheese while my butter was melting. Oh, and I decided to cook it all in a cast iron skillet because if there is at least one thing I know in the kitchen, it’s that cast iron makes everything better.

The process itself was pretty dummy-proof; the only way to mess it up would have been to have the heat up too high or to walk away and let the sauce burn on the stove. I think I actually started with the heat too low once I added in all the cheeses and cream; once I’d stood there stirring for about ten minutes and realized not much was happening, I turned the heat up to medium low like the article says and things started cooking. As much as I love cast iron I’ve burnt things in the past because once the skillet heats up it takes awhile to cool down--I think being cautious was a smart choice.

Once I got the heat to about the right temperature the sauce smoothed out very quickly. I could still see tiny chunks of solids, though, mostly the chopped onions and garlic. What the heck were those supposed to do--vaporize? But the sauce was still too thin, almost dripping off the spoon instead of flowing off like a nice thick alfredo sauce should (I’m totally guessing at that, but it sounds good, right?), so I kept on stirring.

…and stirring…

…and stirring. I forgot to look at the clock, but it felt like a good solid half an hour of stirring. Finally it was thick enough that I could almost sculpt it around in the skillet before it slumped back into place. I switched the stove off and kept stirring. Since cast iron retains heat, there was still a chance of burning it.

The sauce was still bubbling by the time I just couldn’t stand to stir any more, so I just went ahead and poured most of it onto some noodles I’d prepared and then put the rest in a storage container. I’m hoping it freezes well.

Chicken is supposed to be the meat of choice for alfredo sauce, but I didn’t have any thawed out. I almost put some fish in--yuck!--but finally opted for the slightly less yucky choice of turkey sausage pieces. I also added some tomato chunks because I’m pretty sure they do that in Italian restaurants, and it sounded good.

Best of all? The sauce tasted great. Guess I am a cook after all!