Why traditional Cacio e Pepe is so hard to perfectly execute

cacio e pepe what looks like a simple yet luxurious three ingredient pasta dish that could be perfect for your weeknight can actually turn into a nightmare really fast the cheese may stick to the pan or the fat separates out making the pasta a greasy and stringy mess instead of that creamy sauce we were hoping for [Music] so in today's video we're gonna break down two different approaches to making cacho a pepe in order to find the best way to make it at home now i'll list out the pros and cons to each method but more importantly we're gonna do a deep dive into the food science behind them which caused me to have this entire revelation so i hope it does for you too you'll have to decide for yourself at the end of the video after seeing both methods in action but i'll give you a little spoiler up front of what i think even though the first version takes the least amount of time uses the least amount of ingredients and dishes all things i normally want when i'm cooking at home i think it is by far the worst version that you could try to make at home so let's break it down kachowi pepe is a classic roman pasta dish meaning cheese and pepper and the traditional version quite literally sticks to those ingredients so for this we have 224 grams or a half pound of bronze cut spaghetti 80 grams of freshly grated pecorino cheese some black peppercorns salt for the pasta water and then lastly we will be using the pasta water itself to create the sauce so let's make this to start fill a pot with water set it over high heat and add a big pinch of salt and then just toss in the pasta and bring that all up to a boil and cook it until al dente according to the package meanwhile added some peppercorns into a pan and toasted and then crushed those up and grated the pecorino romano cheese before mixing those two together in a bowl now when the pasta is just about done reserve some of that pasta water into another bowl or cup and let that cool for just a minute or two then add the slightly under done spaghetti to a skillet where we will finish it so after the pasta water has cooled just pour some of that into the cheese mixture and mix that all together until it becomes this kind of sludgy sauce and if the cheese becomes stringy during this point that means the water is too hot food science on that coming in just a minute with the heat off pour that cheese mixture over the spaghetti and start to mix it together now turn the heat to very low and slowly cream the pasta with the cheese sauce until it is thickened to your liking and just adding more pasta water if it gets a bit too thick of course serve this on a plate and add a little more freshly grated pecorino cheese and toasted black pepper over the top so if we take a look at the metrics for this recipe you may be thinking ethan why do you think this is the worst version to make at home i mean that seemed pretty easy and low stress and i would tend to agree but that's after i did all the research and understand all the food science behind this dish that i was able to make it look fairly easy but in short here are some of the cons that this method has when compared to method number two so first it's harder to execute the sauce correctly which because of that it needs to be served at a lower temperature it doesn't scale well for more than one to two servings and the leftovers don't heat up great and method number two actually solves all of these potential issues now we'll get there in just a couple of minutes but first i want to answer why is the traditional version so much harder to execute in the first place so the goal of a successful kachoi pepe is to create an emulsion between the cheese and the pasta water that is flavored with the black pepper and this emulsion is what makes up our creamy sauce now the first time i tried and maybe you too making that traditional version it didn't come out with this nice creamy and emulsified sauce in fact it either scorched the bottom it got super stringy and clumped together or that fat kind of separated out making it all greasy now these mistakes sure they're still edible but they're very disappointing when you were hoping for a nice and creamy peppery pasta sauce so how do we ensure that we get the smooth cheesy sauce and not the stringy one well it really all comes down to controlling one variable heat [Music] heat heat heat heat this is the single most important variable when it comes to cachio e pepe and it's the single variable that makes the traditional version so much harder to execute because essentially we have the smallest temperature window to achieve a successful outcome with the sauce so before we get deeper into specific temperatures in the food science behind this you may have seen or heard tips and videos or recipes for cachoei pepe like get the real pecomarino romano cheese grate the cheese very fine use two separate pans use brown cut pasta cook the pasta in a small amount of water and use corn starch or xanthan gum in the sauce now all these are great tips and keep them in mind as we go through the science because guess what one thing all of these tips have in common they are all techniques used to control the variable of heat [Music] specifically the most important temperature to regulate in kachoi pepe is two food first is the melting point of the cheese which as noted in on-footed cooking is around 180 degrees fahrenheit for hard-aged cheeses like parmigiano-reggiano and the pecorino that we are using today secondly it's the temperature that protein denaturation starts which again from on food and cooking is around 140 degrees fahrenheit so let's do an experiment to show this first and then we can talk through it here are two bowls of water mixed with pecorino cheese and as you can see they are drastically different the only thing i changed was how much heat i applied so i added a spoonful of water to each pot and to one i brought up to a boil and the other i painstakingly kept around 160 degrees fahrenheit to each of those i added 40 grams of grated pecorino cheese and stirred them in together now the boiling water quickly denatured the proteins in the cheese where they then coagulated into this stringy mess the 160 degree water on the other hand still denatured the cheese and was stirred in but it did not coagulate in fact we actually have a semblance of a sauce i mean mix that with some hot pasta and we're good to go so hopefully this experiment showing two extremes kind of got those gears turning because understanding what happens when cheese melts is where i think it really started to click for me remember our sauce graphic from earlier well cheese on its own is already a semi-solid emulsion made up of water fat and proteins but when cheese is heated those three components begin to split again from on food and cooking it is noted that first at around 90 degrees fahrenheit is when the milk fat starts to melt and it often brings those little beads of melted fat to the surface then as we go up in temperature around 130 for soft cheeses 150 for cheddar and 180 for the parm and our pecorino enough of those bonds holding the proteins together break down and it allows the cheese to flow as a liquid so as that cheese is heated first the proteins are denaturing which makes them lose their rigid shape and become loose now this is completely fine but if too much heat is applied those denatured proteins are highly susceptible to coagulate with each other and this is where chaos ensues cheeses are their stringiest right around their melting point and like we saw earlier the proteins get super tight and coagulate together and this pushes out all the fat and water and this is the same basic process we see all over cooking i mean for example a well done steak the proteins get super tight and it squeezes out the moisture and the fats making them dry and not tasting all that beefy same idea behind cooking an egg a soft boiled egg six minutes but after 12 minutes everything coagulates and it's completely firm now the big takeaway for our kachoe pepe is this once the cheese proteins are coagulated we can't save it so we need to do everything in our power to keep the cheese above the denaturation temperature but below the melting point and like i mentioned at the beginning of the section it all comes down to controlling the heat so let's kind of just map out all these temperatures i think it's much easier to see the big picture this way this chart right here is why the traditional version is so hard to execute realistically we need to say 10 to 15 degrees away from the melting point of the pecorino to ensure that we don't clump up and a couple of degrees above when the proteins start to denature so let's say our safe zone is roughly 145 to 165 degrees fahrenheit now this can obviously still be done successfully i mean we just did it earlier in the video but it's a pretty small margin for error i mean how many times have you answered a phone call or a text during dinner maybe you've got a kid running around maybe you've got a side dish that you forgot about all it takes is for you to leave that on the heat for a little bit too long it gets too hot and it gets stringy and coagulated and then you can't save it not to mention even if you nailed everything correctly this method kind of still has another issue in that it's probably going to be cold by the time you actually eat it so since the temperature of the sauce can't get all that hot i actually decided to take the temperature of the pasta in the pan and then on one minute increments after i served it and as you can see it actually does drop quite a bit [Music] and conchae pepe in general is one of those dishes where like the first maybe three to four bites are really amazing and then even by the end of the dish it kind of cools down a little bit the sauce tightens up and gets a little like jelly and you're like well this was really really good and now it's like average now and after looking into all this kachoi pepe on the surface can be this simple three ingredient pasta dish but it can also be a very very complex one the deeper you look and i have this massive appreciation for a properly executed traditional version but i also have a massive massive appreciation for the genius of the second method which really solves all the potential issues that can happen with the first one with the addition of a single ingredient recipe number two comes from italian squeezita's video with luciano monocillio which after i started the research for my video i stumbled upon theirs where we had a similar idea and luciano actually calls this the foolproof technique and it's the one used for restaurant service so for this recipe we have 224 grams or a half pound of bronze cut spaghetti 100 grams of parm reg 150 grams of pecorino 15 grams of olive oil again black peppercorns of course and then we have 10 grams of corn starch 150 grams of water and salt for the pasta water and as you can guess our special ingredient for this one is the cornstarch so let's make it to start we need to make the cornstarch gel so add 150 grams of water and the 10 grams of corn starch together and mix that until it's dissolved pour that mixture into a pot and bring it to medium low heat where it will start to thicken now keep this under a simmer just stirring it and making sure there are no clumps and then turn this off the heat and you should see it has this kind of viscous quality to it meanwhile add the grated pecorino and parmigiano to a container along with the freshly cracked black pepper and 15 grams of olive oil now once the starch oil has cooled a little bit just pour all of it in there and start mixing this together with a fork now once that's all mixed use the hand blender or if you're just using a regular blender blend that all together to create a stable and thick emulsion of the cheese the pepper and the corn starch gel [Music] to assemble into kachoe pepe all you have to do is add a couple spoonfuls of pasta water to a pan along with a couple heaping spoonfuls of that cheese emulsion and mix those together [Music] then toss in the pasta water mix all that together as well and then turn the heat to low and start to cream the two together again you still want to be a little bit careful with the heat but as you can see you can really bring this all the way up to a simmer and you're not going to have any of the issues that we had before [Music] and then of course serve it as before with some toasted peppercorn and a little more cheese over the top so looking at the base metrics for this one i mean yeah it takes more time more dishes you know more ingredients so you may just be like ah just let me do the other one and you should be able to successfully now that we've kind of gone through all that science about it but the big benefit that we get from this one is kind of twofold first the convenience of having this in your fridge like you can keep this in your fridge for a week you could use it for a bunch of kachore pepe or other dishes i mean you could throw this over like maybe broccoli for like an upgraded cheesy broccoli that would be very good maybe throw this in lasagna throw it on pizzas there's a lot of things that this could become and secondly from an execution perspective you get such a greater margin for error when you're using this cornstarch cream gel this pecorino pepper in cornstarch sauce is so much more stable than the plain cheese and water from the experiment earlier so i kind of just wanted to do a stress test so first i started the water at 160 degrees and mixed in that cream and then just gradually worked my way up all the way to a rolling simmer boil and actually i was able to do that and as we can see it's perfectly fine i mean it didn't break there are no coagulated stringy cheese bits and that's pretty amazing so functionally with the first method we kind of had this like 20 degree safe zone and we had to be very diligent making sure that we did not get anywhere above that or else it would start to clump up it's going to start to melt and all that bad stuff that you don't want to see happen to your cacho pepe is going to happen with this method on the other hand we've essentially raised our temperature window you could bring this all the way up to 200 degrees and it can bubble it can go through all that but it'll actually still be perfectly fine so you can't leave just yet because we need to know the science behind this what does the cornstarch do that keeps the cheese from splitting even at sustained temperatures above the melting point [Music] well storage molecules are long chains of thousands of glucose sugar molecules linked up together and there are two kinds long straight chains called amylose and short branch bushy trains called amylopectin now starches need heat to work which is why we heated that starch and water mixture and as they are heated they reach the gelatin stage during which they will begin to absorb that water and swell up in addition to absorbing that water they also stabilize the emulsion by kind of just getting in the way so instead of those fats and proteins of the pecorino attracting each other that starch and the chains act as something else in the way and we essentially get to increase our temperature threshold this leads to that stable nature we just saw now eventually with enough time at high temperatures it is still going to thin out and break there's no real way around that but you have so much more margin for error with this sauce so you may be wondering do you have to use cornstarch no there are plenty of other starches or xanthan gum is another common restaurant chick or as many of you may know our pasta releases starch itself which is why we use that pasta water in the first place to create the sauce also remember all those tips from earlier i bet you know now why these are probably used so will i still be making cachoe pepe the traditional way yeah probably from time to time especially now that i know how to control for all those variables and exactly how to troubleshoot for what could go wrong but i'm really excited to see how this kind of blossoms and see what i make the rest of the week that's going to wrap it up for me in this one hopefully you guys have enjoyed the recipes will be up on my website that's going to wrap it up for me i will catch you in the next one peace y'all you

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 1,025,433

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, how to make cacio e pepe, how to make cacio e pepe better?, Why is my cacio e pepe stringy?, Why is my cacio e pepe bad?, how do restaurants make cacio e pepe?, Whats the secret to making good cacio e pepe?, Cacio e pepe recipe, Best way to make cacio e pepe, How to take cacio e pepe to the next level?, Easy cacio e pepe recipe, What is the secret to cacio e pepe?, How to make restaurant style cacio e pepe, cacio e pepe

Id: 10lXPzbRoU0

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Sun May 08 2022