Alfredo sauce

My Alfredo sauce recipe is a rich and creamy white sauce made with garlic, butter, heavy cream, and parmesan.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:

This rich and creamy sauce can be used in so many dinner recipes to add flavor and richness, plus it is incredibly quick and easy to make.

• Only four ingredients are needed
• The garlic is cooked low and slow into the butter to really infuse the incredible flavor into every bite
• The infused garlic will also turn a beautiful golden brown and give your finished alfredo sauce a gorgeous color 
• This recipe will make enough sauce for one pound of dried pasta and the recipe can easily be doubled if you need more

HERE'S HOW TO MAKE IT:

My recipe is quick and easy and involves just a few steps.

• You will start by cooking minced garlic with butter over a very low heat. By cooking the garlic and butter over a very low temperature, you're able to extract all of that wonderful flavor from the garlic without it burning. That intense flavor carries through all the way to the finished sauce.
• Next you'll add heavy cream. Not all of it. You will reserve some to stir in at the end.
• You want this cream to come to a gentle simmer in the garlic butter. Mercy.
• To finish the sauce, you'll remove it from the heat add the parmesan and some additional heavy cream.

COOKING TIPS:

• Quality ingredients. The higher quality ingredients you use, the better your sauce will be. Make sure the garlic is fresh and, if possible, grown locally. Kerrygold is my butter of choice, but there are so many great ones available. Be sure to buy real authentic parmesan cheese imported from Italy.
• Press the garlic. When garlic is minced through a garlic press instead of chopped, you expose the maximum amount of surface area. That means you'll extract the most flavor from it.
• Grate the parmesan yourself using a microplane. You can certainly use shredded parmesan, but it will not melt properly due to the large size of the pieces and anything that has been added to the cheese to prevent sticking. I highly recommend grating from a block of cheese using a microplane grater. It will make the parmesan melt instantly.
• Reheating. This alfredo sauce will thicken as it cools. If it cools too much, it will get too thick. If it gets too hot, it will separate. The trick is to keep it just warm enough. This sauce must be reheated gently either on the stove over low heat, in the microwave on 50% or lower power, or by adding super hot, freshly drained pasta to your sauce.
• Substitutions. Many readers ask if whole milk (3-4%) or half and half (10-12% fat) can be used in place of heavy cream (38-40% fat). The answer is YES, although I don't recommend it because you will have a thinner sauce. If you need to make a substitution and feel that the final sauce is too thin, you can always stir in a bit of mascarpone or cream cheese at the end to thicken it.