Easy Cacio e Pepe Recipe

Hey I’m John Cannell and today we’re making an easy amazing cacio e pepe so let’s get started.

Ingredients and Setup

First off we need four quarts of water in a large pot and then we’re gonna be ready to boil. Cacio e pepe literally means cheese and pepper and this is like an amazing mac and cheese but even better and easier. There we go popping that on high heat and of course I’m gonna salt my water—five teaspoons. The salt will infuse in the pasta and give you so much flavor and the salt also changes the boiling temperature of the water.

Pasta Choice

You can use many kinds of pasta for this. I love having bucatini because it’s really like thick and holds the sauce well, but spaghetti works and in a pinch yes you could use macaroni too.

Cheese Preparation

While this comes to a boil I’m going to grate about a cup of this Pecorino Romano—that’s 125 grams—but I’m gonna grate the whole wedge because everyone loves a nice pile of cheese on top at the end. This is a nutty hard cheese that gives you a ton of flavor. Avoid using pre-grated cheese for this; when you have packaged grated cheese there’s often cellulose on the ingredients—it’s just wood pulp. They take sawdust basically and mix it with cheese so it doesn’t stick together, not the most delicious. It’s also going to inhibit the melting you want to happen here, so just get that grater out and go go go. That’s a nice amount of cheese, a little bit more than we need but we might use it all anyway.

Seasoning

Don’t tell anybody, I go through a lot of pepper in my recipes. I have to fill my grinder back up because we need a tablespoon of freshly cracked black pepper. There we go. If you want to be a little sneaky you can even add your pepper into the pot as well and have like a peppery soup—that’s an infused flavor into the pasta. In fact this is also our secret; we’ll just strain it out and we won’t use it later.

Cooking the Pasta

My water has come to a boil. It’s a beautiful color from those optional peppercorns. We’re going to cook this until it is al dente; we want to have it almost ready because there’s some additional cooking happening after the boil. Our bucatini wants 9 to 11 minutes of cook time, so we’ll give it about 8 and see where it’s at. Get a container ready because we’re gonna reserve about two cups of this precious amazing pasta water—it is not to be discarded—so have that in your mind before you drain the pasta.

After some cook time you definitely want to give your pasta a test. That’s perfect actually; it’s good, it’s on the firmest side of al dente anyone could ever want, so we’re going to take this off heat. As promised I’m going to reserve two cups of pasta water. I love the color from these peppercorns. Pepper into the pot is actually not in the blog post but it’s something I do at home so I wanted to share. I have a colander in the sink ready and we’re going to drain the pasta out.

Building the Sauce

Cacio e pepe is a traditional Roman dish. It doesn’t traditionally have butter in it, but if you know me you know butter makes everything better, so I’m adding in—oh that’s a lot of butter, I didn’t mean to add the whole stick—there we go, that’s for later. I’m adding in 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter. We’re going to melt this up over like medium-low heat and I actually want to brown the butter; it’s going to give me a wonderful nutty depth of flavor that just adds a kiss of amazingness to this dish. If you don’t want to use the butter and you want to be more traditional, go ahead, it’s still gonna be delicious. Don’t burn your butter though—that’s bitter, there’s no coming back from bitter butter.

Okay this butter smells amazing and I had peppercorns in the pasta so I’m gonna add a little bit less than a tablespoon; the recipe calls for one tablespoon of freshly cracked black pepper. Ooh I’m getting some lovely color. Come take a look at this: the butter solids will sink to the bottom so you see it’s like a nice wonderful amber caramel color—that’s lovely. Now I’m going to add one tablespoon of black pepper in and the pepper will bloom with the butter. Stir stir stir.

Now we’re going to add one and a half cups of that pasta water and our pasta wasn’t done cooking; now it’s gonna cook in this wonderful amalgam of butter, pepper, and pasta water. I’m just gonna use tongs so I can make sure not to get any peppercorns in here; I don’t wanna crunch on those. All right so now we’re gonna cook this up. We’re going to add in about half a cup or so of our shredded Pecorino Romano, sprinkle that in, and we’re going to toss. All of this cheese is gonna melt with that pasta water and the butter and you’re gonna have an amazing really easy sauce. Just move that pasta around until all the Pecorino is melted in with the butter and the pasta water. You can see you have like a creamy buttery sauce over here.

Now we’re going to remove it from heat and add in the remaining half cup or so of cheese.

Serving

Serve immediately. Oh my gosh that is so easy amazing and I have to tell you Lachlan and George love this recipe more than mac and cheese—it’s that delicious even with the pepper. Serve this with additional cheese on top as well as a sprinkle of black pepper. If your pasta becomes dry for any reason just mix in some more of the reserved pasta water; it’ll come right back.

A classic for a reason—that is so lovely. The pepper is like a nice note throughout with the nutty flavors from the cheese and the browned butter and just gorgeous thick noodles of pasta. I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.