Is there anything worse than when you psych yourself up for an incredible tasting pasta dish, only to be let down by the cheese clumping in the sauce?!
A clumpy pasta sauce will ruin the smooth and velvety texture that is required for the majority of pasta recipes out there. It will make all the hard work you spent making the dish seem wasted and leave you feeling hard-done-by!
If that sounds like a problem that you are experiencing – You are in luck!
We have compiled the 3 best ways to keep the Italian cheese in your pasta sauce from clumping and achieve the perfect saucy consistency you are after.
Make Sure You Have Liquid in Your Cooking Pot
If you go ahead and throw your grated cheese into a pot of cooked dry pasta, then you are going to have a bad time.
Upon hitting the cooked pasta, the cheese will turn into a clumpy, un-appealing mess that will not resemble a sauce in the slightest!
In order to avoid this monstrosity, make sure you have some liquid in your cooking pot. This liquid can either be heavy cream, melted button, seasoned pasta water or began eggs. It’s just important to have some form of liquid to ensure the cheese melts evenly across the whole pasta surface area.
Are You Grating Your Cheese Right?
Any old grated cheese will do for a pasta dish right? Wrong.
Usually, when pasta recipes call for a cheese to be added to the dish, it’s normally hard cheese such as parmesan or pecorino.
After we’ve bought our wedge of hard cheese, we reach for our trusty box grater. Next, giving a quick thought as to who in the world is using the weird graters on the side, we begin using large grating sheet side of the grater.
STOP!
If you grate your cheese too thick it will be more likely to clump due to the larger surface area it takes up within the pot. More surface area = more potential to clump.
In addition to this, a larger piece of cheese will be more likely to melt unevenly during the cooking process and you could even be left with half melted cheese!
So, in order to avoid this issue – Make sure your cheese is finely grated and is consistent in its size.
Stop Adding all of the Cheese in at Once!
A mistake that is so easy to make.
We’ve all done it. You’ve had a hard day at the office and all you want to do it enjoy a tasty, cheesy pasta dish as quickly as possible.
So you make the fatal mistake of throwing all of the required cheese into the pot in a single movement.
Come on now. You are better than that.
If you add your cheese in a bit at a time, you can stir the pasta consistently to ensure the cheese melts evenly throughout the dish.
This method really gives the flavours of the cheese time to explode into the entirety of the dish and you will be left with incredible tasting pasta from the first mouthful, to the very last.
Andy
Ever since I started cooking I’ve been fascinated by how different people’s techniques are and how they best utilise the ingredients around them. Even the person living next door will have their own unique way of frying an egg or cooking a salmon fillet.
This fascination led me on a journey across the globe to discover the countless practices and traditions the world of cooking has to offer. I thought you’d enjoy and find value in sharing that journey with me so I created Cooked Best!