Chicken fettuccine alfredo is a classic American-Italian Dish that
everyone loves and I'm going to show you how to make the ultimate version.
Now I have to tell you before we go any further, I have to preface this by saying
this is by no means an Italian recipe, certainly not an authentic Italian recipe,
a traditional fettuccine Alfredo, when it was invented in Rome, it was just literally pasta
with butter and cheese and that's literally it and if you go to a restaurant in Italy,
most of the time they don't even have something like this on the menu,
maybe in some tourist areas they do, but certainly not with cream,
But this is very much an American-loved dish and I get comments and questions every day asking me
to update my fettuccine alfredo that I did like 15 years ago, well maybe 13 years ago,
so I figured it was time to redo it, like I said, not authentic by any means but it is delicious.
Okay, so sometimes a creamy fettuccine slaps.
Let's just be honest with you. Let's start with the chicken, now what's really important
is that the chicken is sort of pounded nice and even, I'm going to cook the chicken whole,
like whole breast instead of cutting it up because I think it's just better presentation.
To a skillet, I'm going to add just a tiny bit of butter, about a tablespoon of butter,
because I'm making half, I'm making like a half a pound of pasta,
not a whole pound so I'm just going to use a tablespoon.
And then you're gonna use some garlic and herb seasoning, make sure that that chicken
is really well-seasoned, a little paprika just for color, for some reason this paprika is more
orange than red, um but you know still good, no problem. And I'm just going to hit it with
a touch of salt from over top, sort of press it down flip it over and do the same thing.
I'm adding just a little drizzle of olive oil to the butter because the olive oil
stops the butter from burning, which is really nice and helpful.
That's going to be the base of some good eating. Add your beautifully seasoned chicken,
I'm actually just gonna do two and then I'll keep that one for something else.
That's perfect, and you're just gonna go ahead and let that saute until it's pretty
much fully cooked through, and because we pounded it so it's nice and thin and even,
it won't take more than maybe about three minutes or so on each side.
In the meantime, make sure your water is coming up to a boil for your pasta
and I'm going to go ahead and smash and mince a few cloves of garlic.
Oh look how gorgeous. That is beautiful.
Cook that all the way through then remove to a plate and just set it aside until we need it.
Just a smidgen more of butter, not much at all.
Chicken is resting, now you see all those bits in there? Those are all delicious things, okay,
that's all delicious flavor and we don't want to lose that. That garlic is already super fragrant,
which we love. To which we are going to go ahead and add some heavy cream.
It's like a pool, looks like a lot but remember this is a very creamy and luxurious dish.
While that happens, gonna go ahead and add your pasta to your boiling water.
I'm gonna go ahead and get that down in there.
That water really evaporated but it's okay
and now just go ahead and let that heavy cream just boil and reduce while the pasta
is cooking, and about I'd say halfway through I'll show you my next step.
It's been about four minutes so now what I'm gonna do, I'm going to add some cream cheese,
and reason why I add cream cheese is because I feel like the cream
cheese just helps that cream sort of adhere to the pasta really well.
It makes a difference, trust me, I know you might not think that it does but it really does.
You know me, I wouldn't do an extra step unless I felt like it was worth
it. A good pinch of salt because we haven't seasoned this yet and it's quite rich and it
does need a bit of salt, and then you're going to add some freshly grated parm.
Beautiful. Pasta is cooking really nicely, I just, my cream cheese is at room temperature
but I just cut it into little cubes because it makes it easier to melt.
And I'm just going to whisk this in, and until the pasta is ready I'm just going to
keep this on simmer so that it keeps thickening up and reducing a little.
I'm gonna tong the pasta directly into that sauce,
now you'll notice that my sauce is not bright white, that's because my sauce has
flavor. Okay? That's because we've got those drippings from the bottom of the skillet,
that's because we've got those spices. That is all called flavor, okay, if it's too bright white
then it's got nothing in there, you know? Mix that all together, very Saucy just how I like
it. I like to let it all cook together, because what happens is the pasta will absorb that sauce
and then you'll end up with a really dry fettuccine alfredo, which we don't want.
And now what I'm going to do is, I'm going to take chicken breast,
I'll just start with this one here, it's so juicy oh my goodness.
And we're just gonna cut it, you can add it right in and mix it all together.
For presentation purposes, I'm just going to go ahead and fan it on the very top, I'll show you.
A little bit of that, you can take a little bit more of your seasoning if you want to,
I'm also going to add a little bit of parsley when I do go to serve it, a little bit of hot
pepper flake if you like a little bit of heat, which we do. A little bit more cheese on top,
and listen, I call this not authentic, but authentically
delicious. And when you go to serve it you know you're just gonna have to..
Look how creamy that is like honestly we did not skimp on the richness,
we did not skimp on the flavor, look at those ribbons I just need to dive in! I'm starving.
Hot! Oh no!
Worth whatever I scorched in my mouth.
My goodness gracious mm-hmm, that's like a must-have,
a must make, a must-have. You will love it, it's a necessity at this point,
it is phenomenal. Laurainthekitchen.com for the written recipe, hoping you enjoyed spending time
with me. Make this this week, it's outstanding and I will see you in the next one, bye!