Lighten The Richness Of Store-Bought Alfredo Sauce With One Addition

Alfredo sauce usually tastes better when it's made from scratch, but sometimes, a store-bought version is all you have time to prepare. The downside to store-bought Alfredo sauce is that it tastes heavily processed. Dairy isn't safe to jar or can using usual at-home canning methods; it has to go through a more rigorous pasteurization process. Besides looking oddly gloopy and thick, it almost never tastes quite like the fresh version, but there are plenty of ways to improve it. If you find the sauce to be too rich or dense, you can lighten it up with a vibrant burst of lemon juice or lemon zest.

Lemons are acidic and sour, so they add a nice counterbalance to dishes that are too rich, such as Alfredo sauce. A little goes a long way; start with just a splash of juice, whisk it into the sauce, then taste it and add more as needed. Lemon zest can be added directly to the sauce or used as a garnish, but keep in mind you'll get two different levels of flavor from each part of the lemon.

Lemon zest has the same bright flavor as the juice, but it doesn't come with quite the same sour, pungent flavor. If you only want a hint of lemon in your sauce, it wouldn't hurt to stick with just the zest. Gently push the lemon over a zester or small grater to grate the lemon rind; once you start to see white rind, stop zesting — the yellow part is where the flavor is. If you want to cut the richness more deeply, squeeze a lemon wedge into the sauce, but keep your hand between the juice and the sauce to catch any seeds that pop out.

Lemons can make cream sauce curdle. It won't be an issue when adding zest because of the lack of acidity, but don't make the lemon mistake of adding too much juice at once; add it in small quantities to help it adjust with the cream. Make sure the Alfredo sauce is neither scorching hot or straight out of the refrigerator. The more fat in a cream sauce, the less likely it will curdle, so this trick works best with full-fat Alfredo sauce.