Cacio e Pepe is a classic Roman dish that’s both simple and delicious. Even though it’s simple, if you look on the Internet you will find a lot of variations. Although I usually use freshly made pasta, I use dry pasta for this dish because I want the starch of the pasta to concentrate in the water as it cooks. I also use butter in this version, which many cooks don’t. You could add a protein like chicken or shrimp to this dish but then it’s more of a chicken or shrimp dish. The idea of Cacio e Pepe is to let the pasta, cheese, and pepper shine. You’ll see in the video that I add pasta water at the end to make the dish creamier. The pasta and cheese soak up the water so if you want a very creamy dish you may need to add more water than you think. But add a little at a time so you don’t overdo it. – John Hornick
Serves 4
Preparation time: about 40-45 minutes
Ingredients:
8 oz. dry linguine or spaghetti
2 tsp. black peppercorns, freshly and finely crushed
2 Tb. unsalted butter, melted
1 ½ cups Pecorino Romano cheese, freshly and finely grated, plus more for garnish (use the smallest holes on a box grater)
Kosher salt
Peppermill
Hi I’m John Hornick welcome to my Italian faves Series this lesson is cacio a Pepe one cacioe Pepe is a classic Roman dish that’s both simple and delicious even though it’s simple if you look on the internet you’ll find a lot of different variations although I usually use freshly made pasta in most
Of my dishes in this dish I use dried pasta because I want those starch from the pasta to concentrate in the pasta water as it Cooks I also use butter in this version which many cooks don’t you could add a protein like chicken or shrimp to this dish but then it would be
More of a chicken or shrimp dish the idea of Cacho a Pepe is to let the pasta cheese and pepper shine you’ll see in the video that I add pasta water at the end to make the dish creamier the pasta and cheese soak up the water so if you
Want a very creamy dish you may need to use more water than you think but add a little bit at a time so you don’t overdo it so let’s start cooking okay let’s heat our water and uh have about a pot of pasta water here with a strainer and we’re gonna
Just lightly salt it how much probably about teaspoon teaspoon and a half something like that all right we’re going to bring that to a boil and after it gets hot we’re going to Stir It Up because this is kosher salt it’s not as fine as table salt and
I want it to dissolve into the water all right now we’re going to toast the pepper now this pepper was um two teaspoons of whole black peppercorns that I ground in a mortar and pestle you could do it in a pepper mill but you want a coarse grind
Not a fine grind if you grind them in a in a mortar and pestle you’ll get them they’ll be pretty coarse naturally and you know you want to try to crack all of them if you can some of them will be cracked and ground more than others okay
Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to put them in a dry pan okay and spread them out a little bit we’re going to put them on low to medium Heat and we’re going to let them toast in that pan until we get some fragrance
It’s probably going to take about two to three minutes depending on your heat again I want low to medium Heat just uh move them around a little bit okay every um you know every so often during the time that you’re toasting them I can see there’s a couple of whole Peppercorns in
There I’ll probably pick those out later I missed them when I was doing the grinding in the mortar and pestle okay it’s been expense or so they’re getting a nice what’s it smell like toasted pepper smell okay now we’re just going to turn off the heat take this off the heat
All right let’s add our pasta to the water and we’re gonna let that cook until it’s Al Dente you’re gonna have to do it according to your package instructions okay for uh this linguine it is 10 to 12 minutes so I’m going to check it at about 10 minutes and we got
To get the pasta down into water we might have to come back and tend to that a little bit okay because it’s going to have to soften up a little bit before we get in the water you want to keep working on that so you get it all down
In the water we’ll come back in about 10 minutes and check it now while the pasta is cooking we’re going to get the sauce ready for the pasta okay so we’re going to put the cheese into a nice wide Bowl okay then we’re going to add the pepper I
Don’t want to leave any of the pan here so we’ll try to get all that okay and we’re going to add the butter And then we’re going to mix that up then we want to kind of spread this out evenly on the bottom of the bowl and what’s going to happen is this we’re going to cook we’re going to finish cooking the pasta when the pasta is just al dente
We’re going to pick the Pasta up with tongs and we’re gonna We’re not gonna let it drain we’re gonna let some water stay on that pasta right and then we’re going to put that pasta into this bowl with tongue so we’re going to swirl it
Around to mix it up which was going to make kind of a creamy sauce now after we do that if we need to we’ll add a bit more water to make it a little bit more creamy and we’re going to add the pasta water because it has a lot of starch in
It okay so that’s going to be our next step after the pasta reaches the Al Dente Point okay our pasta is Al Dente and what we’re going to do is just pick it up at the camera shut off there pick it up out of the spot and you know don’t
Let it drain so it still has some water on it and grab it with your tongs and put it down into your cheese mixture with the pepper try to get as much of the pasta as you can out of the pot I have a couple here
On the board I’m going to put those in there and the board is clean okay now we’re gonna swirl the pasta around in that cheese and eyes neat I see it needs to be loosened up a bit so I’m going to take some of the
Pasta water just add a little bit to it okay swirl it around some more oh yeah that’s getting a nice sauciness to it okay it’s well mixed there All right now this is ready to Plate up immediately okay I’m gonna add just a little bit more of the pasta water to make it just a little bit creamier Okay now we’re ready to Plate up okay now we’re gonna plate up uh in case you’re wondering I’m actually only making a half amount of what I have in the um in the notes okay but if you’re making for four just make the amount that’s in the notes okay All right now what we want to do is garnish that with a little bit more pepper now I have some that was from the grinding that I did earlier you could use Pepper Mill at this point just a tiny bit okay we’re also going to garnish with a little bit more cheese
And there we have it that’s kacho a Pepe one bowls are pretty hot you can see photos of the final dish at my Instagram which is at Chef’s Apprentice cook like a pro please remember to subscribe to my channel and thanks for watching