Why Mixing Pesto And Alfredo Sauce Might Be Your New Favorite Pasta Trick

Whether you use it to smother a heaping pot of fettuccine or lather across pizza dough for piling on toppings, Alfredo sauce is a timeless Italian provision with an on-the-nose creamy richness. Traditionally prepared by combining butter, Parmesan cheese, and pasta water, with modern iterations often featuring heavy cream, Alfredo sauce — despite its rightfully earned icon status — has a relatively one-dimensional flavor profile. However, with the help of pesto, you can deepen the flavor of Alfredo sauce to enjoy a more dynamic-tasting pasta dish.

Pesto is an Italian spread made from fresh basil, garlic, Parmesan cheese, buttery pine nuts, and olive oil. With an herbaceous, garden-fresh flavor accented by delicate whispers of cheesy richness and earthy undertones, pesto is the perfect vehicle for imparting complexity into a creamy Alfredo sauce. Because aroma plays a fundamental role in taste perception, the bright bouquet of scents affixed to pesto makes the flavor of Alfredo sauce feel bolder and more memorable. Visually, pesto-infused Alfredo sauce boasts a pop of color, transforming an otherwise pale, uniform dish into something more vibrant. Because it's made with familiar ingredients commonly used in a wide variety of dishes, pesto sauce marries wonderfully with foods frequently found in Alfredo-based dishes, such as grilled chicken, roasted vegetables, and steak, ensuring you never have to omit or compromise on your favorite Alfredo sauce fixings.

Alfredo sauce is one of those recipes that tastes expensive, opulent, and hard-wrought, but doesn't actually require much elbow grease. Thankfully, introducing pesto into Alfredo sauce doesn't have to complicate the process.

Because pesto is made with fresh herbs, whose delicate flavors diminish under heat, it's important to introduce it to your Alfredo sauce towards the end of the cooking process. Whether you are making Alfredo sauce from scratch or enjoying the convenience of a store-bought selection, a few dollops of pesto, once the sauce is removed from heat, is all you need to do to integrate its flavors into the cheesy white sauce. The exact amount of pesto you should add to Alfredo sauce depends on your unique preferences. As a good rule of thumb, a one-to-two ratio of pesto-to-Alfredo-sauce will give you a present pesto flavor without distracting from the familiar taste of the creamy white sauce.

Pesto isn't strictly confined to its original recipe, so don't hesitate to experiment with pesto infused with different ingredients and flavors. From roasted red pepper pesto to sun-dried tomato and artichoke varieties, using traditional pesto threaded with non-traditional flavors can bring even more excitement to your Alfredo sauce.