Holiday Fettuccine Alfredo Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What can I add to fettuccine Alfredo to make it taste better? ›

You could just add garlic powder, sure, but quickly sautéeing fresh garlic while your pasta cooks is a great way to layer flavor. Resnick likes to add spinach as a way to cut the richness of the sauce. Add a tablespoon or so of olive oil and a few cloves of minced garlic in a sautée pan over medium heat.

In Italy, Christmas Eve is often a day when no meat is eaten. So a pasta dish such as fettuccine is a traditional option.

- Add chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, basil, or thyme to the Alfredo sauce for a burst of freshness and color. Simply stir the herbs into the sauce just before serving. Easy!

Inspired by the movie, The Holiday, this Christmas Fettuccine is exactly as I'd imagine it to be in the movie – perfectly creamy, rich, restaurant-worthy, classic Fettuccine Alfredo.

Seasonings, spices, and fresh herbs: this is definitely a great way to give your Alfredo sauce a more personal flavor. The most obvious choice is black pepper, but you can also add parsley and thyme, or dried herbs like oregano.

Extra seasonings and spices will go a long way in adding flavor to a boring jar of sauce. Some of my personal favorites include salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, dried basil, oregano, onion powder or seasoned salt. Start with small amounts (1/2 teaspoon at a time) and add as needed, in order to avoid over-spicing.

In Italy, Christmas Eve dinner is traditionally lighter with no meat and a lot of seafood, while the Italian-American meal has evolved into much more of a feast. Bring on the sword fish, tuna, salmon, octopus salad, smelts, calamari, spaghetti with clam sauce and the famous Italian classic—salted cod, known as baccalà.

An Italian Christmas Eve—only fish, please!

According to tradition, the meal for Christmas Eve, La Vigilia, doesn't have any meat. It's all fish and vegetables.

Dutch Christmas dinners usually consist of venison, goose, hare, or turkey with plenty of vegetables and Kerstbrood (Christmas bread). The Dutch also celebrate by eating gourmetten, a hot plate on which diners place a set of mini pans containing their choice of meat or vegetables.

Stir in big handfuls of spinach, Kale mushrooms, zucchini, onions, broccoli, spinach, squash, or grape tomatoes after the pasta is cooked. You can also substitute zucchini (zoodles) for the pasta.

How do you make Gordon Ramsay Alfredo? ›

Heat the cream and butter in a saucepan over medium heat until the butter is melted and the cream is hot but not boiling. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, until fragrant. Remove the saucepan from the heat and whisk in the Parmesan cheese until well combined. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Add Cheese

The key ingredient in Alfredo sauce is cheese—generally Parmigiano Reggiano—and lots of it. To thicken Alfredo sauce, simply add more cheese than the amount called for in a recipe until you achieve the consistency you want.

Ask most people what Italians eat for Christmas, and they'll almost always say panettone; it's one of the few specialties that have started to influence Christmas celebrations in other cultures.

Christmas pasta almost always has some sort of meat in it. Throughout Italy, but especially on tables in Emilia-Romagna, one finds the incomparable tortellini in brodo—meat-stuffed circles in a golden broth of beef and capon. In the south of Italy, there's pasta al forno, or baked pasta.

Christmas Eve in Italy is traditionally a day when no meat is eaten, so there are many seafood pasta recipes, especially in southern Italy's so called Feast of the Seven Fishes.

Add a few dashes of garlic powder to your simmering sauce, or a clove or two of fresh sauteed garlic, to brighten up the Alfredo and make its flavor pop. You can also sprinkle in some fresh or dried herbs, like oregano, thyme, or basil, to add complexity to the sauce.

Here are some simple tips to enhance the taste of dry pasta: Add salt to the cooking water: While boiling the pasta, add a generous amount of salt to the water. This will help season the pasta from within, making it taste better. Use a flavorful sauce: A delicious sauce can elevate the taste of the pasta.

The original fettuccine Alfredo

The real Alfredo sauce is delicious because of its simplicity. The only ingredients are butter, Parmesan cheese and pepper. That's it! You'll find neither heavy cream nor parsley in the original recipe.