Penne alla Vodka – Millennial’s Most Popular TikTok Pasta

Recipe First – Click Here –

Maybe it’s because there is booze in it, maybe because it is absolutely delicious and simple Italian cooking; either way we gave the social media pasta a try and the results were awesome.

I followed the recipe reasonably similar, but brought in some elements of what I had seen in other videos and techniques.

Like most other Italian recipes starting with onion and garlic. Don’t be worried about brown bits forming on the pan, also called fond, that will be released when a liquid, especially an acid is added. This Maillard reaction forms a lot of complex flavours and is similar to caramelization, though happens at a lower temperature and to proteins instead of sugars — A nice article on the subject.

After 1 minute in the pan I added the crushed red pepper to give some heat to the finished dish. The tomato paste is then added and mixed until it darkens in colour.

Above you see my extremely average spatula skills moving the tomato paste around to make sure there is even cooking and that the sugars in the tomatoes don’t burn.

As the fond is released and the alcohol burns off the base of the dish is basically finished. If you taste your sauce and there is even a hint of ‘vodka taste’ you did not cook the sauce down long enough. The vodka acts as a combining agent and gives a silky texture to the sauce.

Hint: One thing that is not showing in the image above is the tempering of the heavy cream. When adding a milk or cream to a sauce a few things can cause the dairy to separate (this will usually not effect the flavour but can effect the texture and can look unappetizing); high heat and high acidity are the major culprits. With the alcohol and tomatoes added, both acidic, this can cause a problem. The best way I have found to make this less of a worry is to temper the cream before adding it to the sauce. I do this by adding a few table spoons of pasta water to the cream before adding to the sauce. This brings it up to temperature and lessen the chance on the dairy separating.

After mixing the cream in, the pasta (using heavily salted pasta water) is added to the sauce. Usually pasta water is added at this point to enhance flavour, thicken the sauce, and help with the sauce sticking to the pasta. But, because I added a reasonable amount of water to the cream I skipped this step as I did not want to add too much salt, and the sauce was the perfect thickness.

Seasoned and served:

Flavour was deep but also extremely simple. I commented to Nic that I now understood what a lot of pre-made pasta sauces are trying for as far as cream, acidity, flavour, and yumminess (scientific term). Took about 40 minutes to make (take into account that I am dreadfully slow when it comes to cooking speed). Turned out great and would make again and again.

Cole Rating 10/10