Turn Cottage Cheese Into Creamy Alfredo Sauce With 1 Extra Ingredient

Fans of pasta drenched in Alfredo sauce know the comforting goodness that comes with each bite of this classic dish. The rich, creamy texture infused with a prominent parmesan and mild garlic flavor makes it difficult not to crave a plate time and time again. Its only fault is that it contains a less-than-impressive nutritional profile, as its main ingredients of butter, cream, and cheese are high in calories, saturated fat, and sodium. Thankfully, you can healthily recreate this beloved sauce using just two ingredients: cottage cheese and garlic.

Combining these elements allows you to make a lighter Alfredo that bears a strong resemblance to the beloved Italian sauce. Blended cottage cheese gives you that same velvety, silky texture, while the garlic brings in its bite, warmth, and a light sweetness. Even more importantly, cottage cheese is not only lower in calories and fat, but it also has a significant amount of protein, as well as important minerals like calcium, phosphorus, and selenium (via Cleveland Clinic). Add your garlic in, and you've got yourself the perfect pasta partner that takes a fraction of the time, compared to making Alfredo sauce from scratch.

Making this sauce will take no more than a few minutes, so you can expect dinner on your table faster. Begin by grabbing a cottage cheese of your choice. You'll likely be able to choose from a few different flavors, like herb or chive, depending on what taste you want your noodles to take on, but plain works perfectly fine, since you'll be adding garlic and seasoning later. Also keep in mind that the higher in fat your dairy product is, the creamier the sauce will come out.

From there, all that's left to complete your dressing is combining the cottage cheese with some cloves of garlic. You can go about creating this mixture in a number of ways, but the quickest and easiest is to throw them into a food processor together and blend until smooth. And voilá! You're finished.

You can now toss your cooked noodles, whether it be spaghetti, linguine, or fettuccine, in this creamy cottage cheese and garlic concoction. Add any desired seasonings or extra ingredients, such as peas, chicken, or maybe even the luxurious steak upgrade your Alfredo deserves. Lastly, sprinkle in a generous portion of grated parmesan cheese as a topping, or you can put it in the blender with the other ingredients from the start – a chef-approved way to thicken your Alfredo sauce. A runny sauce can also be thickened using flour.