Cheese a tad clumpy at tippy-top, but i was rushing to get the picture. Easily fixed, in any case.
Tonight we have a treat espéciale — a pasta dish, the simple-to-delicious ratio of which will have you questioning everything that you’ve been doing with your life. Although it has a reputation for being difficult to get right, its simplistic glory is that which few other pasta dishes can touch. It comes together in under fifteen minutes, meaning that “there’s always time to do it right the second time.” And, it’s so damned good that you won’t mind a bit. And, it requires no setup, whatsoever.
My goal here is to lay out the proper method for creating this marvelous dish. I’ll discuss why it goes wrong for many people, and explain how to avoid the pitfalls. I promise you that, once you understand the how and the what to do, it’ll become one of your don’t have to think about it goto meals. And it’s so damned good that, whether you fuck it up or not, you’re going to enjoy the meal.
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Cacio e Pepe means “cheese and pepper”. It’s an Italian dish traditional of the Roman region. Aside from pasta, the ingredients are pretty much just that: cheese and pepper. It is so basic that i consider it cucina povera, or “peasant cooking”. One doesn’t require any special gadgets (although i will recommend some specific simple implements) or even any more space than one’s stove top.
Before i get into the recipe, i want to touch upon what cacio e pepe is not. Put aside any thoughts about cheese sauce. There is no bechamel involved with this, no flour, no cream. This is not macaroni & cheese. Upon looking online for information about making this dish (I’d tried making it once, long ago, but was tripped up by what i’ll call the “clumping problem”, and which i’ll get to) i’d hoped to find some insight into the proper methodology — the secret to getting it right. Instead, i’d encountered recipe after recipe that included all manner of ingredients and instructions that were manifestly wrong.
One recipe, published by Salon, was declared an authentic rendering courtesy of an Italian couple who own a restaurant somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. That they were said to have been from the North of Italy was the first hint that this was going to be a dead end. Sure enough, the recipe called for tossing garlic, shallots, and cream (among others) into a fricking blender. There will be none of that! (Months later, the same website posted a recipe for an abomination called “Cacio e Pepe Pie” that was baked in the oven. I don’t know what is the Italian for “that’s not cricket!”)
What follows may seem rather drawn-out but i assure you that the length of this post does not correlate with the time required to prepare this dish. (I’d toyed with the idea of calling this “Cacio e Pepe: The Long Read”.) I cannot properly explain how to do it without also going into why, if for no other reason than to dispel any notion that I’ve lost my mind. If this is looking good to you already, please hit the rec button now so more people might see it before it scrolls into archive oblivion. You can always unrecommend if all the rule-breaking makes you anxious or simply pisses you off. :-)
Let’s begin with the formal ingredients, so that you can quickly come to your own conclusions when encountering one of the many not-even-wrong claims found online.
- A hefty amount of dried spaghetti
As i understand it, the traditional pasta for this is bucatini, which is like a thick, hollow spaghetti. However, that may be hard to come by, and spaghetti will work just fine.
Fresh pasta would probably be great but i don't recommend it for beginners because it cooks so fast. I would like to try it sometime, though.
If you do have bucatini, i suggest adding slightly more pasta water at the end, as quite a lot of it will be slurped up that hole in the centre.
- At least a cup of loosely packed Peccorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano
Trust me on this: you want quite a lot of grated cheese. It is, after all, the main ingredient of a dish with surprisingly few of them.
Feel free to mix two or three of these. Traditionally, this dish is made with Peccorino Romano, but this may not always be easy to come across. I've found that substituting Parmigiano-Reggiano is just as delicious. I've used both 100% of each, as well as a mix of the two. I love it every which way.
That's not to suggest that these are interchangeable cheeses. Parmigiano and Padano are made from unpasteurised cow's milk; whereas Pecorino Romano is made with goat's sheep’s milk, which gives it a slightly funky flavour. (Pecorino means “ovine”.) The first two are similar to each other but the latter is quite different. However, each works well with this dish. If you do pass on the Romano, though, i encourage you to pick some up sometime and try this as it was meant to be made.
Feel free to use a wedge of "parmesan" in place of Parmigiano. The former is simply the generic version that is made all over the place. But, please don't try this with one of those cheap pre-ground products you find in a plastic shaker. Besides being a generally inferior cheese — if it’s even "cheese" at all — they generally contain an "anti-clumping" product, aka filler. I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't work out for this recipe. (When i was a kid, i’d sometimes forego the beef and tomato sauce my father had made in preference for butter and heaps of Kraft “parmesan”, which would result in a dry, almost gritty meal. I loved it, but … well, it wasn’t cricket, and not what we’re aiming for.)
- Lots of freshly ground black pepper
Kernels of the stuff, and a grinder or mortar to work with it, not something out of a shaker. This is not a dish for finely ground "table pepper"! It would probably burn immediately and taste revolting. You might carefully sneak it in right at the end but you wouldn't be getting away with anything. I am certain that it would utterly ruin your meal. This is a practical consideration, not snobbery.
I can't believe that someone might try this with margarine! Or, anything other than butter. We're only going to use a small amount, and it's crucial. Butter. Just don’t use too much, or it will overwhelm the flavours. (I speak from experience. It didn’t ruin anything but it was noticeable.)
- A tiny amount of olive oil
Less than a glug. One wants just a thin coating of the pan to help keep the butter and pepper from burning. If the pepper is swimming in the stuff you’re doing it wrong.
Other than a generous heap of salt for the boiling pasta, that's it for ingredients. (Please don’t salt the finished product! The cheese will be salty enough.) No herbs; no vegetables; no meat. Just cheese and pepper. This dish is truly a wonder that somehow transcends the sum of its parts.
The essential method for preparation is to toast freshly ground black pepper, add a little butter, then add a small bit of starchy pasta water. In this “sauce” the pasta is quickly tossed, followed by more tossing with cheese. That’s it! You will be surprised at how quickly this meal comes together.
What follows is an order of operations that is intended to clarify and correct the instructions that i’ve found in every recipe that i’ve come across. (Over and above the superfluous ingredients.) To that end, i want to discuss the why, in addition to the how.
Which is important, because we’re going to be breaking some rules.
Wait — wat?
To begin, place your pasta in a sauté pan, pour some water in, and place on high heat.
That’s right, we’re starting with a bang. Not only will we not be first boiling the water, but we also want to use just a fraction of the amount of water one would normally consider the mark of a sane and socially adjusted individual. The reasons for both of these decisions are related: starch. This is one of the most important aspects of making this dish successfully. We want the water to be more starchy, not less, so we both use as little as we can get away with and we allow the pasta to soak in that water for as long as possible.
In the photo above, i’ve poured around 2 ½ cups. Yes, really. I was going to say to use 3 or so until i looked at the pic again. This was probably one of those times that i came up a bit short. Essentially, you want a whole lot less than the 6-8 liters that your package directions advise. Go with 4 cups and you should be ok.
Tip: Boil a cup or two of water in a kettle or small pot beforehand so that you’ll have a ready supply of hot water if you begin running out. It’s gonna suck a little if you need to refresh the pot from the tap because it’ll throw off the timing as the water comes to the boil again. #BeenThere
When i was seeking out the secret to making this dish, i kept coming across some version of, “set aside [x amount] of the pasta water”. Recipes for many pasta dishes contain something like that, the reason being that you’ll stir a little into your ingredients to both add some moisture and gel things up a bit. The purpose in this recipe is no different, save for the fact that we need the water to be as hot as possible. Rather than setting some aside we’ll be adding the water straight from the pot to the sauté pan.
Wait — the water started in the sauté pan! Also: wtf is up with the sauté pan?!
OK, we started with a bang but i need to back up a moment. We started with a bang because, the day that i set out to prove to myself that i’d cracked the secret to this, it was with utter glee that i began by pulling out my sauté pan, dropping a heap of pasta in, and held it all under the tap. No lie, i was grinning as i did this. And it worked!
The sauté pan [hereafter “pan”] you see above is much deeper than it appears. It’s practically wok-shaped. But you could get away with using a traditional shallower pan. What’s important is that it has enough side to allow you to contain the pasta as you toss it. And, to boil it in, of course.
The other reason that i chose this one is that it has a hefty, solid copper base. This both tempers heat transfer and slows its loss. This will be important in the next steps. The pasta is first mostly cooked in the pan, then transferred to a pot to finish. As this is happening, we’ll get to work on the business end of this thing. Because we start in the pan, it will be warm enough to accomplish each of the final steps.
So, yeah — keep a small pot handy.
we boil
After you put your comically small amount of cold water and dry pasta on the cook, add a good amount of salt and “stir” the pasta up some. Because it’s cantilevered over the rim like that, this means giving it a good poking to mix up the strands. Keep doing this while the pasta remains too stiff to be fully immersed so that it won’t glunk up together. Having this happen sucks because it throws off the timing of everything to come. You could be banging away at it to get it to separate right up until the end. And quietly cursing. And still not being able to avoid having glunked up spaghetti in the end.
But we’ve got some free time at this point while the water comes to a boil. Poke away at the pasta some and then get your cheese(s) of choice out and grate … like, a lot. A cup, at least. A couple of handfuls.
This step is the only one that could be done as mise en place. Again, this recipe has no setup requirements. However, if i know that i’ll be making this, i’ll sometimes grate the cheese well beforehand so that it comes up to room temperature. As we’ll see, the speed with which the cheese melts is key. However, i have literally stood up, gone into the kitchen, and been eating this less than fifteen minutes after i’d even considered it. This is a great meal for those moments when you’ve just realised how late it’s become, or have utterly destroyed whatever was the original plan for dinner that night. In a pinch, it’s a cinch.
The other thing that i always do at this stage is to fill up my pepper grinder. Failure Experience is a great teacher. I don’t just give it a shake. Fill it up, every time.
As the water heats up, the pasta will begin to soften. This will happen soon enough. There’s no need to worry that it’ll be half-cooked, so to speak. As one end softens, push the other down into the water. Keep poking at it to keep it from glunking.
Why not just snap the spaghetti in half?
You could, but this is going to be one of the few spaghetti meals where twirling the pasta on your fork works like gangster. Allow one end to soften a bit and you’ll find that it isn’t long before you can push everything in.
Have you ever eaten spaghetti that the sauce refuses to stick to? Or, it just cannot be twirled properly on a fork? It could be that there’s not enough starch left on the pasta. Ordinarily, we don’t want there to be much, but we don’t usually want none, either. Rinsing the pasta after it’s cooked (yes, some people do that) is a sure way to achieve this disappointing effect. Ditto, adding oil to the water.
Or, if the pasta cools too much, the sauce won’t absorb into it, lessening any cling that it might have had. When it is al dente it is still cooking — still pulling in moisture.
Note how little water this is cooking in.
Keep in mind that it’s so little water that it’ll boil quicker than you’re used to.
I should pause here to discuss the implements — other than a pan and a pot — that i’d mentioned above. First, obviously, is a wooden spoon. Or, something like a wooden spoon. Preferably, a wooden spoon.
The other important device is some kind of tongs. We’re going to be lifting the pasta from the pan to the pot, and then back again, so choose accordingly. Tongs will also aid in tossing the pasta at the end.
Next, i use a large serving spoon to move water around. I have a proper ladle but feel that it might encourage adding too much water at the end. The one i use holds around 3 tablespoons. Keep that in mind as i count “spoons” in what follows.
Before long, the pasta will have softened enough that you can begin to properly stir it. Keep moving it about from time to time. When it’s beginning to approach the point where it can be bent back on itself, spoon some of the water into the pot and set it on high heat. Yes, we’re removing water here! That’s both to protect your pot and not burn the pasta in the next step. Add at least a half cup or so.
The Transfer
Unfortunately the timing of next step is not something that i can easily quantify. At this point, the spaghetti should still be minutes from being done, but able to fit snugly in the pot, essentially. Say, around a minute after it first becomes pliable enough to bend backwards. Hold the pot and quickly scoop up the pasta and place it into the pot. Don’t worry about stragglers as you’ll next carefully tip the rest of the water into the pot. As it comes to the boil in the pot to finish cooking, keep stirring the pasta. This is especially important because you may have so little water left at this point that the spaghetti isn’t completely submerged.
It’ll be fine!
Wait — there’s hardly any water in the pot!
This comes to another thing that i can’t quantify. We’re supposed to have a stupidly small amount of water. And, you’ll see that the level will rapidly diminish from this point on. But, we’ll also shortly be removing a spoon or two of it. That extra water we’d boiled earlier is our reserve, to keep us from boiling dry if we’d started with too little. Spoon some of that into the pot if things begin looking dicey. But it’s ok if the pasta is not completely submerged. Just keep stirring it, don’t allow the pot to boil too dry, and enjoy the giggly thrill of breaking all the rules.
the pepper
After you’ve poured the water and any stragglers out of the pan, turn down its heat to low and set it back down to allow it to dry. Now, if you’re cooking with gas, you might want to turn the heat off, as you know that the heat will come back fast later. Depending on the pan, you may not need to have the heat on at all again. We want the pan to remain quite hot, but not so much that things burn in the next steps.
Which brings us to the next vague timing, as i’m unable to say this with accuracy. You could start on the pepper right away, but only if you’re very careful about not allowing it to burn. This really depends on the pan that you’re using, and the heat source. OTOH, our pasta is quickly approaching al dente, so … variables.
As the pan dries, i stir the pasta for a minute or so, then add a thin skein of olive oil to the pan. I must emphasise that we’re not frying pepper here, we’re toasting it. In fact, you can skip the oil altogether. It simply helps to avoid burning the pepper and butter.
So, let’s add pepper! How much? More!!
Let’s be clear that we’re not seasoning a salad here. We’re going to add several times more pepper than seems reasonable. Like, six or eight times how much you’d add to a post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich with mayo on sourdough.1 For example.
Looks crunchy, but it won’t be. Unless you burn it. Don’t burn it.
*crack* *crack* *crack* *crack* *crack* that pepper, then keep going. You should begin to smell the heady but sharp aroma very quickly as it toasts. This is why we need to have that pan retain some heat. But, it mustn’t be so hot that the pepper burns!
Now, as the pasta … have you been stirring the pasta?! Keep a close eye on the pasta at this stage. Not only do we want to avoid boiling off the pot and burning it, but also overcooking it. We’re shooting for molto al dente here — almost still toothy, if that makes sense. But plain old al dente is fine. Just don’t wait until it’s entirely cooked, but don’t rush it so that it’s underdone.
Keep that in mind to gauge when you need to do the next thing: add butter to the pan. Doing so will slow down the pepper toasting. But not completely. We’ll give the butter and pepper a stir or two, then add some pasta water, which will render things safe from burning.
If the butter sizzles, your pan is hot enough. If it sizzles a lot, be quick with spooning water to stop it from browning. We don’t want browned butter. If the water boils a little when you add it, we’re still on the right track for pan heat.
So, melt butter, stirring into the pepper. Then, add two spoons of the starchy pasta water and give it a stir. Immediately, everything will begin to look muddy, and a little gross. Hopefully, that’s due to the pepper, and not burnt butter. It should also be somewhat obviously starchy. And, rather unappealing as a “sauce”, I know. We’ve got this! It’s going to be awesome. (I’m sorry that i didn’t think to get a pic of this.)
You might want to increase the heat just a little at this point, depending on your setup. Just as long as there’s water in the pan to stop any burning. Avoid burning at all costs.
we toss
Lift the pot and quickly transfer the spaghetti back to the pan. Try to do this in two or three bunches. Don’t worry about stragglers. Don’t try to shake the water off. Do not pour the contents into the pan. The object is to have some water left in the pot, where it shall remain.
Next, using your wooden spoon and tongs, toss toss toss toss the pasta. As you do so, the muddy puddle in the pan will begin to disappear. We’re coating the pasta with the buttery toasted pepper. The starch is allowing it to be taken up. Additionally, some of the water is being absorbed into the still not fully cooked pasta.
But don’t dwell on this. Toss it once or twice and, if necessary, fish out any stragglers left in the pot. Then toss for 30 seconds to a minute. Not too long, though, as we mustn’t allow everything to cool off too much. This is why the pasta water comes straight from the pot, and not some vessel you’ve set aside several long minutes ago.
the cheese
Dump some of the cheese in and then toss the pasta some. Repeat. I usually do this in two goes, then sweep whatever is left into the mix. The idea is to quickly toss everything so that the cheese is distributed and melts quickly. It, too, will begin to coat every delicious strand of spaghetti. But keep tossing. Probably the biggest fail with this dish is clumpy melted cheese due to everything having cooled off too much! This is why the steps i’ve outlined are so important. We don’t drain the pasta first; it has to be transferred wet and piping hot.
Coming together now.
If you do begin to see clumps, simply keep tossing. Fold any cheese clumps into the interior of the mound of pasta and the heat should take care of it. Toss it some more and tip into a bowl that’s been warmed with hot tap water. (Or, that reserve.)
And we’re done! I told you that it was a quick meal.
Photos can’t do justice to how delicious this is. Some people add extra cheese after serving but it really shouldn’t be necessary. The pasta is absolutely coated with the stuff. The black pepper, surprisingly, is spread out to such an extent that you’ll wonder whether you left too much back in the pan. It, too, has been magically taken up to spread throughout the pasta. It’s thick and sticky enough that it’s easily twirled into — probably too-big — delicious mouthfuls, but not so thick that one needs a knife to dig it out. This is a remarkably non-messy dish, so you can easily eat it sat back on the couch. It should be almost creamy but not at all splattery.
And that is how one makes cacio e pepe the right way. You could start the boil in the pot, heating the pan empty, but using my method allows the pan to become good and hot, then cool just enough to allow everything to come together without burning. Setting a dry pan to heat up on its own, so to speak, risks allowing it to become much to hot, imho. Again, all of this depends on the hardware that you have available. Use these directions as a guide for making any adjustments as required, with an understanding of where and how and why to adjust.
Now, recline yourself and enjoy the satisfaction of idly sucking cheese and pepper from your teeth as you drift off into starchy sleepies.
How little water are we using? This is what was left in the pot after removing two spoons of it to the pan, plus whatever came with the pasta. In the photo below, what water remained in the pot had become a gelid mass by the time that i’d eaten my meal and returned to the kitchen. Starch! It’s what makes this meal.
Starchy leavings. This is why we don’t tip the pasta back into the pan, no matter how little water remains.
1. I’ve been vegetarian since 1989 but i’m not above agreeing with how freaking delicious some things are.
