There are, broadly speaking, three ways to make alfredo sauce.
The first is the original Italian way: butter, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and pasta water. That’s it. Three ingredients, decades of technique, and the kind of confident simplicity that only works when every component is perfect and the person making it has done it a thousand times. I am not that person. I have done it zero times. Moving on.
The second is the American chain restaurant way: make a béchamel (butter, flour, milk), then stir cheese into it. This is what Olive Garden does. It’s a cheese-flavored white sauce. Mac and cheese in a costume. The flour is the thickener. The cheese is a guest star. It tastes like what most Americans think alfredo is supposed to taste like, because it’s what we’ve always been served and nobody told us there were other options.
The third way is the one I stumbled across in this recipe, which is neither explicitly Italian nor American and makes no claims to being either. The ratings and reviews speak for themselves. Cream. Butter. Cheese. Melt them together. No flour, no roux, no pasta water emulsion technique I’d need to practice for a year. Just dairy being dairy. The cream and the cheese ARE the sauce. Nothing is thickening it except the cheese itself, nothing is diluting it, and nothing is standing between you and all that sweet sweet dairy goodness.
Is this authentic alfredo? Absolutely not. A Roman nonna would take one look at the ruokakerma and escort me out of her kitchen. Is it better than Olive Garden? I think so. Not because I’m a better cook than Olive Garden’s kitchen staff (I’m almost certainly not) but because removing the flour removes the thing that was muffling the cheese. When the sauce is just dairy, you can taste the dairy. There’s nowhere to hide, so the ingredients have to be good. Finnish dairy, conveniently, is good.
A brief aside about my husband, who was sent to the supermarket for pre-grated Romano cheese and came back with a wedge. Same product. Wrong format.
This is consistent with his general shopping philosophy, which operates on a matching system I do not yet fully comprehend, but which has previously produced: salmiakki sprinkles when asked for celery seed (first-letter sound matching?), Philadelphia cream cheese when asked for sulatejuusto (wrong product, right category), and vanillin sugar instead of vanilla sugar (twice, the first time could have been an accident but the second time was just hubris).
I had to hand-flake an entire wedge of Romano with a vegetable peeler. The result — shaved Romano, which melts in ribbons rather than uniformly. Arguably, this produced a better texture in the sauce than pre-grated would have. His mistake improved the dish. I have not told him this. Refer back to the shopping hubris bit.
Right, yes, the alfredo. The actual cooking is almost anticlimactically simple, which is the whole point. Boil the pasta. In another pot, melt butter into cream. Add garlic powder. Add both cheeses: Parmesan for umami depth, Romano for sharpness. Stir until melted, toss the cooked pasta in, done.
The whole thing takes less time than the pasta does to cook. The sauce is ready before the fusilli is. You’re standing there waiting for noodles while a pot of melted cheese and cream sits on the back burner looking smug.
I used fusilli instead of fettuccine because that’s what was in the pantry, and because fusilli’s spirals catch the sauce in every curl and crevice in a way that flat noodles simply don’t. Fettuccine is traditional. Fusilli is better. I will not be taking questions.
My son, whose established food type is “cheese delivery system with carbs” (see: carbonara, mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, cheese on crackers, cheese on cheese), is the one who keeps requesting this and always comes back for seconds. He has tried asking for it for breakfast before.
My husband noted that there was chicken on top and proceeded to eat two portions as well, because the man will not accept a plate without visible protein. That’s a whole other story and a whole other post.
The leftovers, reheated for Sunday dinner and Monday lunch, were happily received each time like Broadway encores. There’s a reason alfredo is the cornerstone of entire restaurant chains.
The Recipe
I used To Die For Fettuccine Alfredo from Allrecipes as my base, with a few modifications: fusilli instead of fettuccine (because that’s what was in the pantry and the spirals catch the sauce better), ruokakerma instead of heavy cream, and Oivariini instead of butter.
The cream sauce is theirs. The shopping incident is mine.
Notes
- No flour. No roux. This is the whole point. The sauce is cream and cheese, full stop.
- Two cheeses: Parmesan for umami depth, Romano for sharpness. Both are doing different jobs and both are essential.
- Oivariini works beautifully here. The rapeseed oil portion makes it softer and easier to melt than straight butter. If you don’t have it, regular salted butter is fine.
- This serves 4-6 generously. It’s a lot of pasta. This is intentional. Leftovers are the point.
- We add protein on top depending on what’s around — chicken, sausage, whatever needs using up. The sauce is the constant; the toppings are the variable.