It’s the beloved Italian dish that tastes delicious but is frustratingly difficult to cook.
At first glance Cacio e pepe looks like a simple recipe containing only three ingredients – pasta, Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper.
Professional pasta chefs and Italian grandmothers have the ability to turn out a smooth, creamy sauce time and time again.
But as anyone who has tried to make it will know, the cheese will often clump when added to hot pasta water, turning it into a stringy, sticky mess.
Now, Italian scientists reveal how to make the perfect Cacio e pepe – without any of the dreaded clumps.
‘We are Italians living abroad,’ said Dr Ivan Di Terlizzi, from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, said. ‘We often have dinner together and enjoy traditional cooking.
‘Among the dishes we have cooked was Cacio e pepe, and we thought this might be an interesting physical system to study and describe. And of course, there was the practical aim to avoid wasting good pecorino.’
So, will you give their recipe a try?
For those looking to make Cacio e pepe at home, the team provided a scientific recipe for making a perfect sauce, based on their experiments and results. Pictured: Their final dish
Most people attempting to create the dish will collect their drained pasta water before stirring in the cheese.
While fatty substances like cheese cannot mix with water, the starch from the pasta helps bridge that gap.
In tests, the researchers discovered that a 2-3 per cent starch-to-cheese ratio produced the smoothest, most uniform sauce.
And the best way to ensure this proportion is to make your own starchy water, rather than relying on drained water from pasta, they said.
They recommend using powdered starch like potato or corn starch, and weighing out a quantity that is 2-3 per cent of the amount of cheese being used.
‘Because starch is such an important ingredient, and the amount of starch can sharply determine where you end up, what we suggest is to use an amount of starch which is precisely measured,’ Dr Di Terlizzi said.
‘And this can only be done if you have the right amount of powdered starch in proportion to the amount of cheese that you’re using.’
Once the starch is added to the water, the authors’ instructions say to blend it with the cheese for a uniform consistency, before adding the sauce back into the pan and slowly heating it up to serving temperature.
The researchers said their method is ‘particularly useful for cooking large batches of pasta, where heat control can be challenging and requires extra care’
How to make the perfect Cacio e pepe
For two hungry people:
Ingredients
– 300g pasta (tonnarelli is preferred, though spaghetti or rigatoni also works well)
– 200g cheese (traditionalists would insist on using Pecorino Romano DOP)
– 5g powdered starch (potato starch or corn starch)
– 150g water
– Black pepper (toasted whole black peppercorns, which are then grounded, are best)
The Italian researchers sat down to enjoy their meal after painstakingly researching how to create the best version of the dish
Step 1: Dissolve the powdered starch in 50g water, heating the mixture gently until it thickens and turns from cloudy to nearly clear.
Step 2: Add 100g cold water to this mixture to cool it down.
Step 3: Using a blender, add the cheese to the starchy sauce.
Step 4: Add a generous amount of black pepper to the mixture.
Step 5: Meanwhile, cook the pasta in slightly salted water until it is al dente and leave to cool for a minute. Save some of the pasta cooking water before draining.
Step 6: Add the sauce back into the pan, stir in the pasta and heat it up very slowly to serving temperature.
Step 7: You can adjust the consistency by gradually adding the saved pasta water as needed.
Step 8: Garnish with grated cheese and pepper before serving.
The cheese and black pepper pasta dish is traditional cuisine in Rome. According to legend, it first appeared centuries ago among shepherds (stock image)
This brings the researchers to another key element of the perfect Cacio e pepe sauce – heat, or rather, a lack of it.
They warned too much heat denatures the proteins inside the cheese, causing it to stick together and leading to the dreaded clumps.
Instead, the authors advise letting the starchy water cool before mixing in the cheese and bringing the sauce up to temperature as slowly as possible. Then, the final steps are to mix in the pepper and pasta, and eat.
Writing in the journal Physics of Fluids the team said: ‘A true Italian grandmother or a skilled home chef from Rome would never need a scientific recipe for Cacio e pepe, relying instead on instinct and years of experience.
‘For everyone else, this guide offers a practical way to master the dish.
‘Preparing Cacio e pepe successfully depends on getting the balance just right, particularly the ratio of starch to cheese.
‘The concentration of starch plays a crucial role in keeping the sauce creamy and smooth, without clumps or separation.’
They said their method is ‘particularly useful for cooking large batches of pasta, where heat control can be challenging and requires extra care’.
According to traditionalists, only Pecorino Romano DOP can be used for the dish. Others, however, argue that some types of parmesan are acceptable (stock image)
The team also included researchers from the University of Barcelona, the University of Padova and the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria.
For future work they plan to look at other recipes including pasta alla gricia, which is Cacio e pepe plus cured pork cheek.
‘This recipe seems to be easier to perform, and we don’t know exactly why,’ co-author Daniel Maria Busiello said.
‘This is one idea we might explore in the future.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .