LoneGanselCacio e pepe (Roman pasta with pepper and cheese)
RÅSSWhat’s your recipe/technique for this? Whenever I make it I can only ever succeed in clumping up the pecorino (although I have to use gluten free pasta which maybe contains less starch than regular pasta). Doesn’t stop it from being very tasty but I want to be able to do it properly!
The gluten free pasta is likely it. I use a ton of pasta water when making these dishes and the cheese disolves into the sauce.
Try mixing in a little potato starch slurry into the pasta water after the pasta is cooked and see if that helps.
Thank you for the comment! This was what I was trying to comment but couldn’t find the right words.
Starched pasta water is like a secret roux that underpins Italian pasta dishes. You can swap that starch for another, but skipping the starch entirely breaks the sauce.
My wife and I had the same issue when we started out. We’ve solved it two different ways.
Option 1: Use 3 parts pecorino romano, 1 part parmesano, mix in a bowl and then slowly add to pasta while vigorously stirring (pasta should be very hot still to melt cheese)
Option 2 (my personal preference): Combine a bit of cacio y pepe recipe with a bit of carbonara recipe :)
Mix your cheese with egg (we use 3 eggs + 1 yolk, 3oz pecorino romano, 1oz parm) until it’s a slurry. Add pepper to the mixture. Then add to pasta and stir vigorously.
You're missing the main ingredient to make it creamy: cooking water.
You need to mix the cheese with one ladelful of water (picked when the pasta is almost ready so there's some gluten in it).
Then drain the pasta and stir it in the sauce.
If you don't do that there's pretty much no way to avoid clumps.
Exactly this. The cheese/pepper/water mix should have the density of thick yogurt, or peanut butter: in between so dense that will completely cling to your fork and so runny that will completely drip out of it.
There’s the OG way of putting the hot pasta into a hollowed out cheese wheel, or for the majority of us… use a microplane with a block of cheese to get thinner slices that melt easily
I’ve noticed adding just a little olive oil to the grated cheese while you mash, before adding the pasta water seems to help the cheese from clumping. Especially if you’re doing larger servings.
Give this video a watch!
