How to Make Easy (and Advanced) Vodka Sauce | Basics with Babish

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Recipe: basicswithbabish.co/basicsepisodes/vodka-pasta

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– [Babish] This episode of Basics is sponsored by Viator, your destination for tours, things to do, day trips and more. There’s over 300,000 travel experiences to choose from from simple tours to extreme adventures and cool stuff in between. There’s something for everyone. Every experience has a detailed description and reviews from real travelers

So that you know what to expect and can book the best trip possible. Book your experience now with the link in the description. All right, so before we get into pasta alla vodka, I wanted to take a look at the alla vodka of it all. Namely, is this stuff doing anything for flavor? So I started simmering some until its fumes no longer burst into flames when exposed to fire indicating that the alcohol had cooked off

So I could see what zero proof vodka tastes like and the best way I could describe it would be water that at some point had been in the same room as a potato. So if you cook off the alcohol, this is doing little to nothing for flavor. Some people say it’s an emulsifier

Which is totally unnecessary in a tomato sauce and others say it’s actually for the bite of the alcohol which you should add at the very last minute so it doesn’t cook off so that’s what I’m gonna do in our first up factory standard, timeless, classic,

On the table in about 15 minutes pasta alla vodka. First off, I’ve got a wide shallow pot of heavily salted water that I’m gonna bring to the boil set next to my very largest fry pan. About the only prep we need to do is finely dice half an average sized onion,

Peel a couple cloves of garlic and that’s it. We’re headed back over the stove top where we’re heating two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in our large saute pan and starting to cook our pasta already. That’s how fast this dish is gonna come together.

Once the oil is shimmering, we’re adding the onion and cooking for three to four minutes until translucent then we’re crushing in our two cloves of garlic and letting that saute for about 30 seconds or until fragrant then we’re adding about a half teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes

And three ounces or a little more than a third of a cup of tomato paste, cooking that for about two minutes until the tomato paste starts to darken in color then we’re bringing down the heat a little bit and adding three ounces of heavy cream and one ounce of the titular vodka,

Just stirring that together and allowing it to cook for no more than a minute so that the booze doesn’t cook off and once your pasta is about a minute shy of your preferred level of doneness, it’s headed straight into the saute pan where it’s gonna finish cooking in the sauce.

Adjust the heat as necessary so that it’s not simmering like crazy and then a quarter cup at a time, we’re gonna start adding our reserved pasta cooking water. This is gonna make the sauce smooth and glossy as we continue to cook it for no more than another minute

Then if you be so bold and if you’re wearing clothes that you don’t care about, you can optionally toss your sauce to make it lighter and creamier at the expense of your kitchen’s cleanliness. Now, we’re gonna kill the heat and immediately add one ounce of freshly grated Parmesan.

If you need a visual reference, one ounce equates to a roughly one inch square cube of cheese. Stir this stuff in definitely off the heat, maybe give it another toss and you can adjust the thickness of the sauce with pasta water if necessary and that’s all there is to it.

15 minutes might be too generous amount of time. Plate it up, maybe with a little bit of extra Parmesan grated overtop and you got yourself a big old bowl of creamy, comforting, craveable goodness. There might be nothing better in the world that you can can do with 10 minutes and 10 ingredients.

In fact, there’s not much of an argument that can be made for a more complex version. Let’s take this from mm, that’s good to a wordless, breathless table full of compulsory eye rolls and lip smacks. There are some fun ways in which we can layer and complexify the flavors.

First, in a wide shallow pan, I’m heating about a quarter cup of neutral flavored oil over medium high until shimmering and then adding four ounces of diced pancetta which I’m gonna fry until lightly browned and crisp, about three to five minutes, draining on paper towels and reserving the oil

Leaving me not only with a crunchy, meaty garnish for later on but some deeply flavored oil and fond in which I can build a sauce. In about a quarter cup of the reserved fat, I’m sauteing the same finely diced half onion, about three to four minutes until soft and translucent,

Crushing the same two cloves of garlic and this time, for heat, I’m gonna use two teaspoons of crushed Calabrian chilies and instead of just tomato paste, I’m gonna use three tablespoons of sun-dried tomato paste, both of which are gonna bring a wider array of flavors to the party.

Let those guys get some heat for about 30 seconds and then we’re gonna add eight ounces of tomato puree and because we want the tomato flavor to be cooked down and concentrated like that of tomato paste, we’re gonna send this for about 30 to 45 minutes

Until we’ve made our own sort of homemade much more flavorful and complex, less harsh tomato paste. Then from there, it’s pretty much business as usual, get your pasta cooking, add your one ounce of vodka and three ounces of heavy cream when it’s very nearly almost done.

Give it a stir and start adding your pasta. This time, I went with mezzi rigatoni so it looks fancier. I don’t know but whatever pasta you wanna use, you generally wanna go with something ridged so that it hangs onto the sauce. As before, we are glossifying

And adjusting our sauce’s consistency with pasta water then this time, I’m adding a half ounce each of Parmesan and Pecorino Romano. Don’t be afraid to continue adjusting with pasta water if things get too gloopy. Plate it up, this time with our reserved crispy pancetta bits, bunch more cheese, I mean, obviously,

And an optional smattering of fresh herbs, basil or parsley. And there you have it, my ultimate alla vodka sauce. Rich, creamy and positively loaded with layers and layers of flavor but is it worth the additional time and effort? Yeah, if you’ve got the time, this is a noticeable improvement

Over the already amazing original but you could also utilize any part of it that you like, the pancetta, the different cheeses, the sun-dried tomato paste, the fancier pasta shape. You might say that the pastabilities are endless. Sorry. Thanks again to Viator for sponsoring this episode.

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