You're supposed to glaze the noodles with olive oil after slowing down the cooking process by blanching the noodles in cold water to keep them from sticking together also wouldn't hurt to add a little butter or olive oil to the water while cooking them and also traditional fettuccine alfredo sauce has an extra seasoning added to it supposed to add a little bit of pasta water and when it's done I like to add lemon zest a little bit of lemon juice especially if it's cooked with shrimp and I also like to add a sprinkling of fresh spinach and on top sprinkle some Gouda cheese on it I don't come from an Italian family nor do I come from a place with a strong pasta culture I've just learned to cook from watching Gordon Ramsay's TH-cam channel and different cooking channels but Gordon Ramsay Cooks the best pasta in my opinion might want to check his channel out
The dry pasta has no water in it, the fresh pasta does, you are adding the water back into the dry pasta as you cook it. So the dried pasta would weigh less than the same amount undried pasta, when the water is removed.
I think the cheese has anti caking agent which made the cheese harder to melt properly. Kinda surprised the differences between dried and fresh pasta wasn't taken into account beforehand. Dried pasta will absorb more water than fresh, so weighing them both in weight pre-cooked doesn't make sense. Also I think it's worth exploring what techniques are worth incorporating versus time (i.e is it better to put fresh pasta in cold water and heat it up or after water is boiling - do you get better and quicker results with one approach than another) or the difference experience can make to the food with the same ingredients (so it's like how it's cooked as opposed to what it's cooked with).
Agreed, that anti caking agent in pre-shredded cheese is the reason he should of done blocks, expensive block vs cheap block. That extra added stuff in pre-shredded is no good for cooking in my opinion. It's better for things like toppings, but to be frank, I think it's better just to get blocks either way.
@@cridgeway666 Cellulose is a glucose polymer which all plants use to make rigid cell walls. It's known to dieticians as "fiber" because human beings don't make the enzyme to digest it. In packaged shredded cheese, it absorbs more water than starch and also doesn't gum the pieces together like starch might. It's not harmful at all but it can make cheese sauces "grainy" (because it doesn't emulsify like starch).
Please don’t rinse pasta with cold water. Rinsing it will wash off all the starchy pasta water. What you want to do is cook your pasta in a large pot, so that your pasta has enough room to move around, and mix it with the sauce the moment it’s done. Letting it sit, as you noticed, will cause it to clump, but you’ll be fine if you lubricate it with starchy pasta water and mix it with sauce the moment it’s done.
Doesn't really apply to a cream sauce like Alfredo. Pasta water basically works as a thickening (also thinning) agent to your sauce, so it thickens and sticks on contact with the pasta. A cream sauce is already the ideal thickness, so clean drained pasta works best. Of course, no actual Italian would be making Alfredo, this is American pasta made in American style.
That's why you reserve some of the starchy water in case you need to cold rinse the pasta (like if the meal timing has gotten off). That way you still have the pasta water to add to your sauce in any event.
You have to start the timer when the water hits around 180F if you start the past cold. It's a much harder technique as more salt is absorbed and the pasta sticks together more if you don't stir it a lot.
@@barefootdep for me, "learning to cook" also means "learning how NOT to cook". You can only cook pasta in so many ways. Nate just learned a way NOT to to it.
I know some other people have said this, but fresh and dried pasta are genuinely not the same ingredient in many ways, and are used and cooked very differently. There's a cooking channel called Alex that recently went on a whole journey to explore how they compare
Yes! I was looking for this comment. They don't even have the same ingredients when they are made. As you said, Alex did a great job explaining the differences. Highly recommended series.
For the fresh pasta: PLEASE DONT RUN IT UNDER COLD WATER, you're rinsing off the starch which makes it stick to the sauce better. You're also supposed to put the pasta (whether dry or fresh) directly in the sauce with a bit of pasta water for similar reasons, and it makes the sauce creamier. You don't need a strainer, just some tongs and something to scoop like half a cup of pasta water into the sauce 👍
Dried pasta will weigh a lot less than fresh pasta, since dried pasta will rehydrate when cooking, while fresh pasta still has its liquid. Moreover fresh pasta is cooked very quickly. while dried pasta is fine to add when the water is cold, fresh pasta should always be added to boiling water, give a small mix when adding so it doesn't stick and it should be ready within 60~ seconds, once it floats its ready. Besides the taste, a big difference here is how well the sauce sticks to the pasta. Lastly if you make pasta with a sauce, it is highly recommended to take the pasta out slightly early and finish it with the sauce(with a little pasta water). this makes the sauce stick better, and overall makes the whole dish more uniform
The instructions on the pasta box are there for a reason. You are supposed to bring 4-6 quarts of water to a boil. The pasta should circulate and some of the starch will be diluted by the large amount of water. Dry paste boiled in a small amount of water is sticky and starchy.
The cheep cheese clumped and the sauce broke because of the ---anti-clumping---- powder they put into bags of cheese. You can not use bagged cheese to make a sauce.
Whenever you cook pasta save a cup or so of the water to add it to the sauce. It helps emulsify the sauce giving it a "creamier" consistency. As a side note to this, traditional Alfredo sauce does not contain cream (in general no traditional Italian sauce does) the consistency of the sauce comes form the emulsification of the fats (butter and cheese) with the pasta water (water with starch)
The pre shreaded parmesean cheese has anti caking starches in it that specifically makes it not melt very well. In the future maybe try this one again with an imported parmesean wedge vs domestic cheaper parmesean cheese.
@@Beenisweenis to be honest where i come from (germany) the price difference per weight between pre ground parmesan and regular supermarket tier block parmesan isnt really that much... so going for the block is always the better option. though the shredded didnt look like parmesan to me at all... and i doubt you could even call it that in europe because of protected names and such. shelflife of block chees is better too especially because the block wont get moldy if not used completely. i had almost every pack of any preshredded cheese (parmesan or regular) end up getting moldy if i didnt use it all in like a week or two. so for a single person the block is better because it simply dries out (and becomes insanely difficult to grind) but tastes mostly the same.
I think his methodology here is really good with just choosing the cheapest and the most expensive since that is what the average person who is not familiar with those ingredients would do. By going into it kind of ignorant he can help people learn along with him by showing the mistakes and happy surprises he discovers along the way. I think if he did research on the different ingredients ahead of time, he'd be getting closer to the content made by professionals which is already in abundance. He is making something really unique - just a guy learning to cook and sharing lessons he learns along the way!
The pre shredded cheese has cellulose to keep it from sticking together that's why it didn't melt smoothly. I've learned that lesson before lol great video though. I've never cooked fresh pasta either so I learned something new.
This is such a great series. I always use parmesan that comes in block (wedge) form and grate it myself. The pre-grated stuff almost always has cellulose or some kind of additional ingredient to prevent caking, and it really affects how the cheese melts. Also, the wedge cheese tastes way better.
I believe the pre-shredded Parmesan is coated with an anti-caking agent to keep it from sticking together, which also affects how well it melts, or doesn't?
I'm loving this series. My only complaint is that the Editor's wonderful notes fly past so quickly that I have to rewind multiple times to catch them. Please leave the text on the screen a second or two longer.
I love the premise of these videos! However, I've been getting increasingly bothered by your cheap and expensive variants of the same ingredient not actually being interchangeable. Some examples from past recipes: • Fancy mineral water (generally has way more minerals) vs tap water (which greatly varies depending on where you live, but is generally more filtered). • freeze-dried vs regular dried oregano: give them a whiff, they smell completely different! • The fancy Woodstock sugars, where especially the powdered one stuck out as tasting noticeably different. • The salt in the chocolate chip cookies, which was clearly not simply table salt but instead finishing salt to serve at the table. In this recipe, that came up with dried vs fresh pasta, which are not only prepared & measured differently (1 lb of dry pasta is way more than 1 lb of fresh pasta because it gets heavier from the water it absorbs during cooking) but also not intended to come out the same way. Dried pasta is made to be cooked al dente (with the innermost part still technically dry), while fresh pasta is past that point by definition (also it contains eggs, unlike most dried pasta). It would have been more interesting to see you compare a store brand to a more expensive Italian brand like De Cecco or even Monograno Felicetti (which you'd likely to have to order online). It also came up with the unsalted vs salted butter, though you pointed that out as a mistake. I'd be willing to bet the Italian seasoning mixes had very different compositions too. I think I'd be happier with simpler recipes to actually isolate individual ingredients' effects on the outcome-in fact, when I saw this video, I was excited because I assumed you'd be making a classic 3-ingredient Alfredo (butter, cheese, pepper) mixed with the pasta (and a lot of its water) in the pan. I'm kinda glad you kept the pasta separate because they were so different, but still. Generally, it might be more relevant to most people to compare within the range people would actually buy-nobody would use finishing salt from a tiny container in their cookie dough, but there could still be a noticeable difference between the cheapest available and the more branded product-going bougie feels counterproductive because those products are often a different category.
You also forgot to include that pre-shredded cheese has a lot of stuff added to it prevent clumping and sticking together. He should generally tried to go for consistency when choosing ingredients. So if he buys a block of parm for the expensive one, then he should do the same for the cheap one. Keep it in block form to keep it as consistent as possible.
I agree to a point, but I'm glad he's still doing things the way he's doing them. Even if the compared ingredients aren't interchangeable, many people watching won't know that (like Nate didn't). This can lead to discussions like these and like presented in the video about why/how they're different. Because let's be real: if someone is weighing up whether they should spend more than the bare minimum for a meal, their circumstances are probably such that they wouldn't know how different those ingredients are from what might be called for in a recipe. Better for Nate to learn those lessons and pass them on to a larger audience than the audience members wasting food and money all learning that individually.
@@abydosianchulac2 And this is why I don't fault Nate for these issues. He clearly isn't a chef and doesn't know how to cook SUPER well, so he wouldn't know that some of these ingredients aren't interchangeable with the others. Neither would a lot of people. It also kind of adds another element to the entire premise that Nate could explore to maybe find out what he SHOULD have done once the experiment is concluded. Why did some things taste so different, etc. LOL hell I only learned last year what fleur de sel was, and I cook a LOT. 🤣
For actual fettuccine Alfredo, the quality of the ingredients definitely matters. All you really need to make it is pasta, water, salt, butter, and cheese. There is no cream and no garlic. The sauce is an emulsion of the pasta water with the butter and cheese. With so few ingredients, even a small upgrade in the flavor of any of them can make a huge difference in the overall flavor of the dish. There isn’t any cream to dilute the flavor of the butter. You don’t have garlic that overpowers the flavor of the overall dish. Any additional flavor that you can get from the butter or from the cheese makes a massive difference. An important thing is that the butter melts because of the residual heat from the pasta and the pasta water. Please don’t wash the pasta with cold water because that will get rid of some of the starch that’s needed for the emulsification and for the sauce to stick on the pasta itself. Basically, just warm up a pan for a minute and then take it off the heat. Throw in a cup of pasta water and the cooked pasta. Start throwing in little cubes of butter and mix until the butter melts and emulsifies to form almost a creamy water mixture. Then, add the cheese.
@@FlyingwithFire Alfredo di Lelio created the original modern version of fettuccine Alfredo. He later went onto create the Alfredo Alla Scrofa restaurant. To this day, the restaurant uses his original recipe with the same ingredients in the same proportions. They literally just use pasta, butter, and Parmesan. No cream. The practice of putting cream in fettuccine Alfredo came from the United States. The reason why cream is so widespread nowadays is because restaurants like Olive Garden popularized the practice. However, almost no restaurants in Italy will put any cream in their fettuccine Alfredo (few restaurants even sell fettuccini Alfredo tbh. This is a dish that’s so simple to make that most people will just eat it at home instead of going to a restaurant… but most restaurants that do sell it will not add cream). The American style sauce with cream is more of a Mornay (roux+milk+cheese) than an Alfredo sauce.
@@FlyingwithFire no, cacio e pepe is cheese and pepper, no butter. Fettuccine Alfredo is the Italian pasta al burro, pasta and butter. It really is as simple as dried pasta, butter and parmigiano reggiano. Cream and garlic and all that nonsense comes with the bastardized American version of Alfredo.
Dear Nate, The concept for this series is brilliant. May I offer a suggestion? You should really have an experienced cook as a guest for these episodes. For example, Calli as an experienced baker really helped the test because it was the ingredients that were compared, not the cooking errors that needed to be forgiven. She knew all of the potential pitfalls in the process and how to overcome them already. That’s something you really need for these experiments. Keep up the excellent work and stellar videos!
Alllll of this! Not just in the cooking aspect. Whoever is picking the ingredients has no idea what they're doing... The pasta... the garlic... my god the cheese. There are inexpensive options that do not adulterate and destroy the recipe.
I learnt something new the other day - it may not have been expensive vs cheap cheese but pre-grated vs home grated. Pre-grated cheese is coated with something to stop it sticking and that affects it’s melting capability
Nate, I’m a professional chef (25 years). I’ve been the executive chef for many high-end restaurants and one 1 Michelin Star restaurants. For future cheese sauce videos, you must allow the Béchamel to reduce in heat to 71C or 160F before adding the cheese. The protein structure in cheese will constrict and bind at temperatures over 71C, hence your oily clumpy Alfredo sauce. Also, add the cheese in small portions (stirring the mixture until the cheese fully incorporates into the liquid)so as to not allow the Béchamel to cool too quickly from the cold cheese. Love your cooking videos. Keep up the great work. Checkout my TH-cam channel 10 minute history. It’s a history channel that I started last year. Would love to know what you think.
@@boarbot7829 possibly. Cellulose is what’s used to prevent the shredded cheese from clumping together in the package. In my experience, I’ve never had an issue with it failing to properly melt and form a smooth sauce. In my experience it comes down to high temperature at the time cheese is added. Even freshly grated cheese will become stringing at temps above 71C.
Dear super experienced chef: Alfredo's sauce ingredients are butter and parmigiano. No cream. You're supposed to make the cream by a process called "mantecatura"
pre-shredded cheese in a bag like the cheap one comes with a coating on it to keep it from clumping, and that also stops it from melting into the sauce the right way. any time you make a cheese sauce you should only use a block of cheese you shred yourself.
You are doing way better when you work on your own. There is so much more to explore of your video. Keep producing geat videos. Also keep the type editing consistent as i like this raw format. Great Job. Keep it up
You should have used the block cheese for both. Great value even comes in a block. Pre shredded cheese is worse for cooking (because of the anti-caking agent) and even usually more expensive.
It would be really cool to see you do grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Even though it's a way less complex recipe, I would be interested to see if there was a big difference. I guess any type of grilled sandwich could have very interesting results.
Always save some pasta water. The starch is an emulsifier that will combine fat and water and make a creamy sauce. Also pre shredded cheese has cellulose in it to keep it from clumping. Cheap Walmart cheese is 50% cellulose.
Apart from other issues (such as cooking pasta in about 1/10th the water it needed)... not sure that I'd call Organic Valley a high end cream -- they ultra-pasteurise. Gives it a sweet, burnt flavour, and changes the way the protein binds to create flavour in a sauce. For quality milk and cream, always seek out either low-temp pasteurised or raw, as local as possible. (And actually, the reason milk has to be pasteurised in mass production -- bad small batches ruining an entire tank when mixed together -- is an excellent study in how cheaper foods have changed the quality that people expect) Oh, and always use fresh garlic! Your prepack from the supermarket isn't going to be largely different from jarred in comparison. Cheese oil separation is a huge issue with not just cheaper cheeses, but seems to depend somewhat on the breed of cow the milk is from (IE, a cheap English cheddar like Coastal won't separate easily, but an expensive North American one definitely will if you make a fondue). It can be countered somewhat with a good flour dusting (gluten-free inclusive). An immersion blender can also help to smooth it out. The bottom line is that you can make an amazing meal with any set of ingredients. It looks like you're on the path to understanding how to work with each of them!
Obviously there were several notable cooking fails here -- but the point remains that this type of series is great ♥ My family is low-income, but we still eat "bougie on a budget" because it's so important to know where to pick your battles. You can save money on certain spices or pasta, then use that to compensate for things like nicer cheese and butter! That's a great thing to teach people about, especially in this economy!
My favorite part of this was the summary at the end where you broke down what you think the perfect balance would be. Some things like expensive salt or expensive water are just ridiculous and the question isn't just for the overall experience but which ingredients are actually worth the extra cost. I'm a little surprised that the fresh pasta wasn't more of a winner but I guess there's not really all that much to it - it's pretty much just flour, water, and egg. Obviously you figured out that the fresh pasta just takes seconds to cook -- drop it in the boiling water and it's almost instantly ready to fish back out. It also has a much higher water content than the dry stuff, so a weight to weight comparison really isn't accurate -- as you noticed the fresh pasta is much less dense than the dry is, but if you had weighed the cooked pasta you'd find that the dry stuff absorbed a huge amount of water and probably would've weighed significantly more than the fresh pasta.
Maybe retry but without the cheese difference. In my experience, it is difficult to get good cheap cheese, and also the shredded ones are not that great, as they have something else to avoid the pieces from sticking between them, and avoid extra drying. Solid block cheese is always my preference.
With this one huge thing to consider is preshredded cheese had additives (saw dust for example) to keep the shreds from sticking. When you make sauce with this that additive to keep the cheese from sticking goes with it and makes a non cohesive sauce. Also, if you make your own fresh noodles thr cost would be similar just a lot more work.
Nate, you cook pasta in a pot! with a lot of water, not a pan with a little water especially fresh pasta. Video series Idea, budget vs budget, get the budget versions from two stores and test which are better, and if it makes a difference. It seems you use walmart a lot and I think they are horrible I think you would get a much better version using Kroger (smiths brand in utah) but am truly curious.
This is very interesting! I may recommend getting people who LIKE the dishes they are tasting! I noted that the deciding factor was if they liked alfredo sauce or not.
pre shredded cheese has anti caking so it doesn't stick together that makes it harder to melt. also for the salt you might want to weigh it because of different sized grains.
Clicked on the vid cause the title was interesting, almost wanted to click off again right away cause I thought how TKOR got into my inbox? then I realized it didnt and stayed to watch Nate do his thing. And I dont regret it! Really prefer them how they are now, a lot more mature and calm yet super informative and funny :) Keep it up Nate!
@@algaegreen8 the king of random. He did videos there for a couple of years, imo in the beginning it was really good but once it got so big it kinda lost its character.. Nate has a good vid on it tho, have a look at that
@@dermax_hd TKOR as in Grant Thompson is completely different than TKOR the management team. Fuck the management for letting Nate go when he was ghe one holding the channel together the most and RIP Grant
Is that cheap cheese actually cheese? I now they add a lot of "stuff" to cheese in the US. Pasta normally is cooked in a deep big pot and not a pan 😅 maybe some new ones are needed in the future 😉 Rising with water and adding some oil will keep the fresh pasta separate. And normally it should taste way better than the dry stuff. BREAD please 😊
@@witiwap86 It's made in the USA means USA Cattle were milked for it. That's where it fails. The source dairy has a huge impact on the outcome of cheese and the USA has a very industrialized dairy (more so than here in Canada and industrial cheese is just terrible). If I were in the USA and wanted USA made cheeses and wanted something that tended towards human-made vs machine-made I would look up places like LoveTree Farmstead Cheese for example (one of many smaller artisanal makers that really keep the craft alive).
@@keeperofthegood What makes you think USA cattle are bad? There are good places and bad places but it's more about region. With the food club stuff it isn't that it's from USA cattle it's that whoever makes the cheese for them just doesn't do a good job. And I'm talking about budget brands. Great value cheese is usually pretty good. It's not high quality but it tastes good. Food club doesn't.
@@witiwap86 I didn't say bad :) I said industrial and industrial dairy is good in coffee or a bowl of cereal but you can taste it in the cheese. Walmart's 'Great Value' line is pretty good overall, I use more than a few of their Great Value products. It's not open market sourced, they contract long term for source. Some products they are private labeling from other companies (dry goods like beans), some they own the entire output from the farm to the store. They are probably pulling their dairy from farther upstream than other makers. There is an ebook on the process you can read from University of Guelph titled dairy science and technology ebook. Chapter 27 has a good visual titled Overview of the Range of Products that can be Manufactured from Milk as a Starting Point
Nate this is awesome. I made Alfredo for my wife on our first date and it did the same thing as your cheap pasta. She still loved it and that was 10 years ago. I have been able to make it the right way since then.
I've heard that the pre-shredded cheeses have a coating on them to keep it from clumping. That coating is what makes it melt differently than block cheese.
if you wanna know a pretty surefire way to do it: start with the sauce. once it's done take it off the heat, but keep the lid on. afterwards you cook the pasta until it's a bit underdone and then you add it to the sauce. no rinsing it off or anything. just let it finish cooking in the sauce. the starch the pasta gives off will make the sauce stick to it nicely, and since the were a bit undercooked when added to the sauce they will be really nice, once finished
Idk if this would help but I've found that melting cheap shredded cheese WITH the cream helps for a little more even consistency but I mean obviously you don't want to put too much cheese you do it little by little and keep stirring
Hi Nate. I have been following you since TKOR and I think you are great.I have been living in in Italy for 35 years so after watching this video I thought I would give a few interesting facts for pasta Alfredo. 1. Even though pasta Alfredo originates from Italy it is almost unheard of by Italians. Its name in Italy is pasta burro e parmigiano (Butter and Parmigiano) 2. Cream is an American addition. 3. Fresh pasta cooking time usually goes from 2 to 5 minutes depending on the type of pasta. Dry pasta between 9 and 14 minutes still depending on pasta type. In Italy cooking time is always written on packet and somtimes even specifies if the given cooking time referes to AL DENTE or normal . 4. Never cook the pasta until sauce is ready or time perfectly if possible. As you have discovered, pasta left standing is an un-eatable glue like gunge 😂 5. Italians do not necessarily consider fresh pasta better than dry pasta. It is just a different thing even though there are big differences between cheap and expensive dry pasta brands or fresh pasta brands. 6. Original Parmesan cheese is undeniably better than off brand cheeses as you have also discovered. Luckily in Italy it is not so expensive so we can indulge in large quantities without going bankrupt 🤭 I hope to have revealed something interesting about Italian cuisine. Keep up the great content Nate. I also hope to see you make some more knives soon.
This is the most simple video concept but it is equally compelling. You have to watch all of these to the end. Keep it up Nate. I remember hearing about this on Safety 3rd and thought it was great. I'm glad to see you going for it.
Haha there is no pure Italian Alfredo. It's not actually an authentic Italian dish. It's American, but based more on a Spanish sauce from what I understand. *I was wrong, it was invented in Rome, but the recipe I'm using with cream is not Italian.
btw, nate, the fresh noodles start out with more volume because they have the water in them (most of the water at least) already. The dried gain volume and weight as they absorb water while boiling. That then end up with more noodle weight after cooking with the dry noodles if you start with a pound of dry.
I think this just shows how forgiving alfredo is. So many cooking mistakes, and non-comparable ingredients to start with. I don't think this is any real comparison of the ingredients. For something as simple as pasta, at least read and follow the cooking instructions!
The reason that the cheap cheese didn't melt well is that pre-shredded cheese in bags at the store is coated with an anti-clupming agent, maybe cornstarch or similar. That stops even melting and coagulates with the butter and cream.
I just ordered balsamic vinaigrette. One is 4 times the cost but both aged the same amount of years. I can't wait to rest the difference. Thank you for these experiments
When you add cheese to the cream and butter mixture it should be added off of the heat, slowly, and while constantly stirring. It takes practice to get a completely smooth Alfredo sauce, but it's totally possible with cheap ingredients.
The garlic, in both cases, was a mistake. Jars of garlic are pretty much the _worst_ form of garlic, regardless of price point. And fresh bulbs would have been cheaper in _both_ cases, but there is a different price point between organic and non-organic, providing a fair comparison point for your metric. Using bagged shredded cheese for...anything...is wrong. Comparing dry to fresh pasta is a bad idea as well. 16 oz dry equates roughly to 24 oz fresh. Also, you _must_ follow cooking instructions for noodles, regardless of the rest of your recipes. You murdered those poor fresh noodles. There are quality more costly dry pastas that would have been a better comparison. In the first episode, you set a limit on flour, where there were things that were more expensive, but would have been a fundamentally different product. You violated that rule here. Dry pasta and fresh pasta, _fundamentally_ perform differently and have different ingredients. Different flours, Durum vs semolina, most fresh pasta is made with eggs instead of water, etc.
My time to shine! Fresh pasta hasn't been dried and will weigh more. Additionally, fresh pasta cooks in a few minutes (1-5 minutes) while boxed, dried pasta takes around 8-12 minutes. For this experiment, I would have made each dish completely before starting the next. Doing both at the same time means the pasta will be over/under cooked ("I apologize for being an idiot," LOL!). "Expensive minced garlic," should instead be you buying fresh garlic and mincing it yourself (However, I totally understand if this is too much work). NEVER MIX SALT AND PEPPER! They simply don't mix well and you'll end up with too much of one or the other. Bougie black pepper should always be ground fresh, always! Salt your pasta water so it tastes like salty sea water! Most of the salt washes away with the water, but some remains with your pasta. Final note: weight everything and go by that metric! Volume isn't always the best measurement, and for solid ingredients in particular (e.g. cheese, pasta, breadcrumbs, etc.) weight is the best measurement to use. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE all the cooking you're doing Mr. NFT....I! I love your name, but hate the fact that the first 3 letters are N.F.T. Keep doing what you're doing man! Love the content! Stealth Edit: NEVER EVER NEVER RUN YOUR PASTA UNDER COLD WATER!!! It rinses off the starch which prevents your sauce from sticking! On a side note, add a drop or two of oil to your pasta cooking water. It won't flavor anything, but it will prevent boil-over from the pasta foam. Oil breaks the surface tension which prevents your pot from boiling over and creating a mess.
Fresh pasta is generally made from different recipe than dried pasta. The recipe for dried pasta is made to be dried. Also, you can't get fresh pasta to be "al dente".
Read and follow the cooking instructions. Fresh pasta only practically requires blanching before serving. While there are some varieties which require cooking the cooking times are usually 1-2 minutes, stirring gently to break them apart from clumping and drain with cold water. Dried pasta takes 6-9 minutes depending on how firm or soft you want it to be. If you want to make it like the fresh pasta then 6-7 minutes is your mark. Same with the fresh, drain immediately then rinse under COLD water. Rinsing in cold water not only removes excess starch, it stops the cooking process. Setting aside hot pasta will continue to cook. And for the time you left the fresh pasta simmering, it overcooked which is why you could not pick up a strand. It kept breaking right? And the most important is you're using PANs and not POTs to cook. Pasta require pots not pans. Pans are limited in providing space for verticle and bi-lateral movement. Pots allow space to move anywhere and everywhere. Also to use CHEAP cheese it needs a double boiler and a slow but low temperature. Cooking it at a higher temperature and the oils separate and look gross and clumpy.
idk if anyone agrees with me but when I cook pasta, I always add olive oil or a bit of butter to the water so it doesnt stick together. also, I add the spices after draining the pasta. to me the spices look more colorful and the flavor is bolder...MY OPINION. either way, I love pasta dishes
As a Kiwi, I had to do a double-take at the "expensive" Lewis Road Creamery New Zealand butter! That is indeed an expensive brand... they do flavoured milk in collaboration with Whittaker's chocolate (iconic Kiwi chocolate company dating back to the 1800's!) which is crazy expensive too compared to other brands. Sadly though, all dairy products we buy here in NZ is stupid prices considering we produce so much of it. As I type a supermarket el-cheapo block of butter is NZ $5.80 ($3.92 US) for a 500g (17.6 ounces) block of it!
Make cheap and expensive ice cream. Use Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla recipe. It's really good. I have found it to be pretty expensive with real vanilla beans.
I have used the cheap parm, and I had decent results. Was it as good as the higher-end ingredients? Not by a long shot, but it was smooth and creamy. You are right about the pasta. We would buy the middle of the road, dry pasta. You save a good amount of time using the fresh, however. I am looking forward to what will be next in this series.
Wow, Lewis Road Creamery butter in the States! That stuff is mad expensive at in NZ, I'm impressed you tracked it down there. Butter is it's own rabbit hole, if you want to go down it. I know someone who has, and you'll be surprised by what you can find.
Pre shredded cheese has an anti clumping chemical coating on it so it doesn't melt and blend well. Get cheap block cheese and shred it. Will work better and won't separate as bad.
Pre shredded cheese is coated with cellulose, starch, and natamycin to prevent clumping and mold, it doesn't melt as well. A better comparison would have been domestic parmesan vs. parmigiano reggiano from Italy. High quality dry pasta is often better than fresh, marketers rely on the idea that people equate fresh with quality - when you make home made pasta in the traditional method (rolled not extruded), you dry it before you cook it
first time ive seen someone cook pasta in a frying pan but i guess it works. fresh noodles only need like 1min to cook and yeah all pasta should be sauced right away to avoid sticking together. if you arnt done the sauce and have to let them cook, toss it in a bowl with some oil/butter so they don't glue together. cheese will 'split' if its melted at too high a temp, the cheep stuff maybe had a lower temperature break point. cheep stuff usually has lots of fillers in so its not pure cheese.
I feel like you should have got a more expensive DRY pasta because the fresh stuff seems just so different to dry pasta, but even though your making mistakes you’re still incredibly entertaining and a bit educational with really good music and I’m here for it… I’ve watched this video like five times all read and enjoy it the same amount every time, love this channel thank you 💛🎶
Yeah in my experience when cooking pasta the water absolutely needs to be at a rolling boil before adding the pasta whether its dried or fresh, also if you add a bit of oil to the water it will prevent the pasta sticking together as well.
It should be quite easy to tell which is the more expensive one just by the pasta. Fresh pasta is made with eggs, while dried pasta just uses water. But yeah fresh pasta is completely different, normally just a couple of minutes in boiling water. Once the pasta is done it should be straight into the sauce as well to toss through the sauce. Also when measuring pasta, dry pasta absorbs half its weight in water, so you want about 2/3LB ot 1LB of fresh
One thing to note between fresh and dry pasta, you can't really get Al dente with fresh so there's a difference the set should be taken into consideration. Great videos and absolutely loveing this series. Keep up the awesomeness
Yay! Mark finally gets a cameo! It's great to see him since the TKOR days. And seeing his work on NFTI is just a joy to watch. (Also camera person #2 also did a fantastic job. Whoever you are, well done!)
Most of the parmesan we use is the plastic canister, refrigerate after opening, kinda stuff and it's easy to tell the difference between the store brand sawdust and the Kraft not-so-bad cheese. That's always been good enough for me. Maybe there's an idea for cooking comparisons; cheap ingredients, good enough ingredients and premium ingredients. You used store brand butter, something once again I can taste the difference between that and Land o' Lakes butter which has been good enough forever to my family. As an idea of what to cook next why not something even simpler, biscuits & gravy?
U do have to grate the cheese urself. Grated stuff is coated in cornflour and won't melt right. Also the fresh paste is substantially better. You didn't salt the water and U put it in the water for no longer than a min. U just want to heat it thro. The fresh stuff has a way better texture and is much more filling U also split the cream in the cheap one
Omelette stuffed with cheese, spinach, and sausage. Stuffing and gravy (the crispness of the bread in the stuffing will matter at least as much as the quality of the bread). Meringue cookies (there should be no difference between cheap and expensive, although egg age may matter). Quiche. Lasagna. Creamy soup (corn chowder, clam chowder, bisque, cream of mushroom, cream of spinach).
awesome video, usually when you cook fresh pasta(and dried pasta as well) first use a pot not a pan and salt your water, you should either cook it for a minute or two and then move it to the pasta sauce with some pasta water, or wash it with cold water then move it around with some olive oil to keep it from sticking. Also you should put the garlic into the butter and let it fry before adding cream for a better flavor. (Also when not overcooking fresh pasta, you usually get a richer eggier flavor from it)
Something I learned when I worked at a restaurant is that you mix ice into the noodle after you strain it to prevent it from sticking together like that, then you just warm it up a when you need to serve it
Thanks Morning Brew for my daily news briefing - sign up for free here bit.ly/mbnatefrominternet
That nasa clip after the noodle war was 👌😂
Nate you should do chocolate ice cream in the brand vs basic
Virgin watcher: skips morning brew segment cause its an ad
Chad watcher: skips morning brew segment cause we already use it
You're supposed to glaze the noodles with olive oil after slowing down the cooking process by blanching the noodles in cold water to keep them from sticking together also wouldn't hurt to add a little butter or olive oil to the water while cooking them and also traditional fettuccine alfredo sauce has an extra seasoning added to it supposed to add a little bit of pasta water and when it's done I like to add lemon zest a little bit of lemon juice especially if it's cooked with shrimp and I also like to add a sprinkling of fresh spinach and on top sprinkle some Gouda cheese on it I don't come from an Italian family nor do I come from a place with a strong pasta culture I've just learned to cook from watching Gordon Ramsay's TH-cam channel and different cooking channels but Gordon Ramsay Cooks the best pasta in my opinion might want to check his channel out
BvB macaronic and cheese.
The dry pasta has no water in it, the fresh pasta does, you are adding the water back into the dry pasta as you cook it. So the dried pasta would weigh less than the same amount undried pasta, when the water is removed.
I was about to say the same thing. He should have weighed them after they were cooked.
@@thisgoodstuff4057 that, and the fresh pasta only needs to be warmed up, not cooked at all. the cheap pastas are kinda freezedried fresh pasta.
Kinda crazy that he missed this detail. Obviously not a “real chef”
Thank god I'm not the only one that got triggered by this 😆
I'm not even done watching this and I am scared.
Please do cheap vs expensive burgers, will be interesting to see the cost vs the taste and effort. Keep up the good work
seconded on burgers; this could be a massive difference
That would be good too... And sticking with italian do lasagna
I support the motion for burger content. All opposed...... STFU
And fake meat to so it would be more interesting
good idea
I think the cheese has anti caking agent which made the cheese harder to melt properly. Kinda surprised the differences between dried and fresh pasta wasn't taken into account beforehand. Dried pasta will absorb more water than fresh, so weighing them both in weight pre-cooked doesn't make sense.
Also I think it's worth exploring what techniques are worth incorporating versus time (i.e is it better to put fresh pasta in cold water and heat it up or after water is boiling - do you get better and quicker results with one approach than another) or the difference experience can make to the food with the same ingredients (so it's like how it's cooked as opposed to what it's cooked with).
Agreed, that anti caking agent in pre-shredded cheese is the reason he should of done blocks, expensive block vs cheap block. That extra added stuff in pre-shredded is no good for cooking in my opinion. It's better for things like toppings, but to be frank, I think it's better just to get blocks either way.
Cheap Parmesan cheese has cellulose in it which is very similar to sawdust and wood pulp and cheaper it is the more it has in it
@@cridgeway666 cellulose is the anti caking agent they're referring to
Dried pasta a rolling boil isn't that important, but for fresh, you want the water boiling, as it will be spending less time in the water.
@@cridgeway666 Cellulose is a glucose polymer which all plants use to make rigid cell walls. It's known to dieticians as "fiber" because human beings don't make the enzyme to digest it. In packaged shredded cheese, it absorbs more water than starch and also doesn't gum the pieces together like starch might. It's not harmful at all but it can make cheese sauces "grainy" (because it doesn't emulsify like starch).
Please don’t rinse pasta with cold water. Rinsing it will wash off all the starchy pasta water. What you want to do is cook your pasta in a large pot, so that your pasta has enough room to move around, and mix it with the sauce the moment it’s done. Letting it sit, as you noticed, will cause it to clump, but you’ll be fine if you lubricate it with starchy pasta water and mix it with sauce the moment it’s done.
Bump for pasta culture
Absolutely - I always make the sauce first, as that will survive the wait for the pasta.
Doesn't really apply to a cream sauce like Alfredo. Pasta water basically works as a thickening (also thinning) agent to your sauce, so it thickens and sticks on contact with the pasta. A cream sauce is already the ideal thickness, so clean drained pasta works best. Of course, no actual Italian would be making Alfredo, this is American pasta made in American style.
That's why you reserve some of the starchy water in case you need to cold rinse the pasta (like if the meal timing has gotten off). That way you still have the pasta water to add to your sauce in any event.
@@jerotoro2021 Alfredo was created by an Italian chef in Italy. His restaurant is in Rome and is called Alfredo alla Scrofa.
Never thought I'd see someone cooking pasta in a PAN in non boiling water. lmao Nate what the hell
That was so triggering.
It doesn't matter for dried pasta, you just have to pay attention as the time is variable.
I've seen hacks where you do the exact thing Nate did. Never tried it, tho
Agreed for fresh pasta, but for dry, I throw it in cold all the time. Alton Brown has a video on why the cold water method is better.
You have to start the timer when the water hits around 180F if you start the past cold. It's a much harder technique as more salt is absorbed and the pasta sticks together more if you don't stir it a lot.
These could be called "Nate is Learning to Cook"
But did he really?
@@barefootdep for me, "learning to cook" also means "learning how NOT to cook". You can only cook pasta in so many ways. Nate just learned a way NOT to to it.
"Nate triggers a new group every week"
I know some other people have said this, but fresh and dried pasta are genuinely not the same ingredient in many ways, and are used and cooked very differently. There's a cooking channel called Alex that recently went on a whole journey to explore how they compare
Came her to say this!
Yes! I was looking for this comment. They don't even have the same ingredients when they are made.
As you said, Alex did a great job explaining the differences. Highly recommended series.
I'd love to see Alex come to the US and visit a few channels like Nate. He approaches food with an engineer's brain and I love his deep dives.
For the fresh pasta: PLEASE DONT RUN IT UNDER COLD WATER, you're rinsing off the starch which makes it stick to the sauce better. You're also supposed to put the pasta (whether dry or fresh) directly in the sauce with a bit of pasta water for similar reasons, and it makes the sauce creamier. You don't need a strainer, just some tongs and something to scoop like half a cup of pasta water into the sauce 👍
Dried pasta will weigh a lot less than fresh pasta, since dried pasta will rehydrate when cooking, while fresh pasta still has its liquid.
Moreover fresh pasta is cooked very quickly. while dried pasta is fine to add when the water is cold, fresh pasta should always be added to boiling water, give a small mix when adding so it doesn't stick and it should be ready within 60~ seconds, once it floats its ready. Besides the taste, a big difference here is how well the sauce sticks to the pasta.
Lastly if you make pasta with a sauce, it is highly recommended to take the pasta out slightly early and finish it with the sauce(with a little pasta water). this makes the sauce stick better, and overall makes the whole dish more uniform
The instructions on the pasta box are there for a reason. You are supposed to bring 4-6 quarts of water to a boil. The pasta should circulate and some of the starch will be diluted by the large amount of water. Dry paste boiled in a small amount of water is sticky and starchy.
The cheep cheese clumped and the sauce broke because of the ---anti-clumping---- powder they put into bags of cheese. You can not use bagged cheese to make a sauce.
It is cellulose powder AKA wood, which they put in parmesean
its mainly because of BOILING THE CREAM . cheese split at high temperatures .
Whenever you cook pasta save a cup or so of the water to add it to the sauce. It helps emulsify the sauce giving it a "creamier" consistency. As a side note to this, traditional Alfredo sauce does not contain cream (in general no traditional Italian sauce does) the consistency of the sauce comes form the emulsification of the fats (butter and cheese) with the pasta water (water with starch)
The pre shreaded parmesean cheese has anti caking starches in it that specifically makes it not melt very well. In the future maybe try this one again with an imported parmesean wedge vs domestic cheaper parmesean cheese.
He used imported cheese in the expensive anyways.
But yeah he should of used an American made wedge of cheese
To be fair, the shredded stuff is more accurate to what hes testing. On a budget youre more likely to buy the pre shredded cheap stuff.
@@Beenisweenis to be honest where i come from (germany) the price difference per weight between pre ground parmesan and regular supermarket tier block parmesan isnt really that much... so going for the block is always the better option.
though the shredded didnt look like parmesan to me at all... and i doubt you could even call it that in europe because of protected names and such.
shelflife of block chees is better too especially because the block wont get moldy if not used completely. i had almost every pack of any preshredded cheese (parmesan or regular) end up getting moldy if i didnt use it all in like a week or two. so for a single person the block is better because it simply dries out (and becomes insanely difficult to grind) but tastes mostly the same.
I think his methodology here is really good with just choosing the cheapest and the most expensive since that is what the average person who is not familiar with those ingredients would do. By going into it kind of ignorant he can help people learn along with him by showing the mistakes and happy surprises he discovers along the way.
I think if he did research on the different ingredients ahead of time, he'd be getting closer to the content made by professionals which is already in abundance. He is making something really unique - just a guy learning to cook and sharing lessons he learns along the way!
The pre shredded cheese has cellulose to keep it from sticking together that's why it didn't melt smoothly. I've learned that lesson before lol great video though. I've never cooked fresh pasta either so I learned something new.
Two things:
This "Brand vs. Basic" is a great idea.
And Nate's editor is on point!
Really love the editor-added commentary throughout. Seriously a great component of these videos!
This is such a great series. I always use parmesan that comes in block (wedge) form and grate it myself. The pre-grated stuff almost always has cellulose or some kind of additional ingredient to prevent caking, and it really affects how the cheese melts. Also, the wedge cheese tastes way better.
I believe the pre-shredded Parmesan is coated with an anti-caking agent to keep it from sticking together, which also affects how well it melts, or doesn't?
I'm loving this series. My only complaint is that the Editor's wonderful notes fly past so quickly that I have to rewind multiple times to catch them.
Please leave the text on the screen a second or two longer.
like subliminal messages😜
I normally watch most of my TH-cam videos at 1.5&2x speed , I skipped back at .75x. so yes , they went by too fast!
I love the premise of these videos! However, I've been getting increasingly bothered by your cheap and expensive variants of the same ingredient not actually being interchangeable. Some examples from past recipes:
• Fancy mineral water (generally has way more minerals) vs tap water (which greatly varies depending on where you live, but is generally more filtered).
• freeze-dried vs regular dried oregano: give them a whiff, they smell completely different!
• The fancy Woodstock sugars, where especially the powdered one stuck out as tasting noticeably different.
• The salt in the chocolate chip cookies, which was clearly not simply table salt but instead finishing salt to serve at the table.
In this recipe, that came up with dried vs fresh pasta, which are not only prepared & measured differently (1 lb of dry pasta is way more than 1 lb of fresh pasta because it gets heavier from the water it absorbs during cooking) but also not intended to come out the same way. Dried pasta is made to be cooked al dente (with the innermost part still technically dry), while fresh pasta is past that point by definition (also it contains eggs, unlike most dried pasta). It would have been more interesting to see you compare a store brand to a more expensive Italian brand like De Cecco or even Monograno Felicetti (which you'd likely to have to order online). It also came up with the unsalted vs salted butter, though you pointed that out as a mistake. I'd be willing to bet the Italian seasoning mixes had very different compositions too.
I think I'd be happier with simpler recipes to actually isolate individual ingredients' effects on the outcome-in fact, when I saw this video, I was excited because I assumed you'd be making a classic 3-ingredient Alfredo (butter, cheese, pepper) mixed with the pasta (and a lot of its water) in the pan. I'm kinda glad you kept the pasta separate because they were so different, but still. Generally, it might be more relevant to most people to compare within the range people would actually buy-nobody would use finishing salt from a tiny container in their cookie dough, but there could still be a noticeable difference between the cheapest available and the more branded product-going bougie feels counterproductive because those products are often a different category.
You also forgot to include that pre-shredded cheese has a lot of stuff added to it prevent clumping and sticking together. He should generally tried to go for consistency when choosing ingredients. So if he buys a block of parm for the expensive one, then he should do the same for the cheap one. Keep it in block form to keep it as consistent as possible.
I agree to a point, but I'm glad he's still doing things the way he's doing them. Even if the compared ingredients aren't interchangeable, many people watching won't know that (like Nate didn't). This can lead to discussions like these and like presented in the video about why/how they're different. Because let's be real: if someone is weighing up whether they should spend more than the bare minimum for a meal, their circumstances are probably such that they wouldn't know how different those ingredients are from what might be called for in a recipe. Better for Nate to learn those lessons and pass them on to a larger audience than the audience members wasting food and money all learning that individually.
@@abydosianchulac2 And this is why I don't fault Nate for these issues. He clearly isn't a chef and doesn't know how to cook SUPER well, so he wouldn't know that some of these ingredients aren't interchangeable with the others. Neither would a lot of people. It also kind of adds another element to the entire premise that Nate could explore to maybe find out what he SHOULD have done once the experiment is concluded. Why did some things taste so different, etc.
LOL hell I only learned last year what fleur de sel was, and I cook a LOT. 🤣
For actual fettuccine Alfredo, the quality of the ingredients definitely matters. All you really need to make it is pasta, water, salt, butter, and cheese. There is no cream and no garlic. The sauce is an emulsion of the pasta water with the butter and cheese. With so few ingredients, even a small upgrade in the flavor of any of them can make a huge difference in the overall flavor of the dish. There isn’t any cream to dilute the flavor of the butter. You don’t have garlic that overpowers the flavor of the overall dish. Any additional flavor that you can get from the butter or from the cheese makes a massive difference.
An important thing is that the butter melts because of the residual heat from the pasta and the pasta water. Please don’t wash the pasta with cold water because that will get rid of some of the starch that’s needed for the emulsification and for the sauce to stick on the pasta itself.
Basically, just warm up a pan for a minute and then take it off the heat. Throw in a cup of pasta water and the cooked pasta. Start throwing in little cubes of butter and mix until the butter melts and emulsifies to form almost a creamy water mixture. Then, add the cheese.
your talking about cacio e pepe
alfredo has cream
@@FlyingwithFire he's not wrong, cacio e pepe has black pepper. The original Alfredo has no cream in it.
@@FlyingwithFire Alfredo di Lelio created the original modern version of fettuccine Alfredo. He later went onto create the Alfredo Alla Scrofa restaurant. To this day, the restaurant uses his original recipe with the same ingredients in the same proportions. They literally just use pasta, butter, and Parmesan. No cream. The practice of putting cream in fettuccine Alfredo came from the United States. The reason why cream is so widespread nowadays is because restaurants like Olive Garden popularized the practice. However, almost no restaurants in Italy will put any cream in their fettuccine Alfredo (few restaurants even sell fettuccini Alfredo tbh. This is a dish that’s so simple to make that most people will just eat it at home instead of going to a restaurant… but most restaurants that do sell it will not add cream). The American style sauce with cream is more of a Mornay (roux+milk+cheese) than an Alfredo sauce.
@@FlyingwithFire no, cacio e pepe is cheese and pepper, no butter. Fettuccine Alfredo is the Italian pasta al burro, pasta and butter. It really is as simple as dried pasta, butter and parmigiano reggiano.
Cream and garlic and all that nonsense comes with the bastardized American version of Alfredo.
No going to lie editor commentary on this one was spot on this time and I laughed so much from it.
Dear Nate,
The concept for this series is brilliant.
May I offer a suggestion?
You should really have an experienced cook as a guest for these episodes.
For example, Calli as an experienced baker really helped the test because it was the ingredients that were compared, not the cooking errors that needed to be forgiven.
She knew all of the potential pitfalls in the process and how to overcome them already.
That’s something you really need for these experiments.
Keep up the excellent work and stellar videos!
Alllll of this! Not just in the cooking aspect. Whoever is picking the ingredients has no idea what they're doing... The pasta... the garlic... my god the cheese. There are inexpensive options that do not adulterate and destroy the recipe.
I learnt something new the other day - it may not have been expensive vs cheap cheese but pre-grated vs home grated. Pre-grated cheese is coated with something to stop it sticking and that affects it’s melting capability
Nate, I’m a professional chef (25 years). I’ve been the executive chef for many high-end restaurants and one 1 Michelin Star restaurants. For future cheese sauce videos, you must allow the Béchamel to reduce in heat to 71C or 160F before adding the cheese. The protein structure in cheese will constrict and bind at temperatures over 71C, hence your oily clumpy Alfredo sauce. Also, add the cheese in small portions (stirring the mixture until the cheese fully incorporates into the liquid)so as to not allow the Béchamel to cool too quickly from the cold cheese. Love your cooking videos. Keep up the great work. Checkout my TH-cam channel 10 minute history. It’s a history channel that I started last year. Would love to know what you think.
It’s also the anti-caking agent in pre-grated cheese.
@@boarbot7829 possibly. Cellulose is what’s used to prevent the shredded cheese from clumping together in the package. In my experience, I’ve never had an issue with it failing to properly melt and form a smooth sauce. In my experience it comes down to high temperature at the time cheese is added. Even freshly grated cheese will become stringing at temps above 71C.
cooking pasta with cold water also...
Dear super experienced chef: Alfredo's sauce ingredients are butter and parmigiano. No cream. You're supposed to make the cream by a process called "mantecatura"
As a professional chef, you should know that there is no bechamel in this video or in any variety of this dish.
pre-shredded cheese in a bag like the cheap one comes with a coating on it to keep it from clumping, and that also stops it from melting into the sauce the right way. any time you make a cheese sauce you should only use a block of cheese you shred yourself.
You are doing way better when you work on your own. There is so much more to explore of your video. Keep producing geat videos. Also keep the type editing consistent as i like this raw format. Great Job. Keep it up
You should have used the block cheese for both. Great value even comes in a block. Pre shredded cheese is worse for cooking (because of the anti-caking agent) and even usually more expensive.
It would be really cool to see you do grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Even though it's a way less complex recipe, I would be interested to see if there was a big difference. I guess any type of grilled sandwich could have very interesting results.
Always save some pasta water. The starch is an emulsifier that will combine fat and water and make a creamy sauce. Also pre shredded cheese has cellulose in it to keep it from clumping. Cheap Walmart cheese is 50% cellulose.
I’ve never seen anyone cook pasta in a pan like that. It was unreasonably jarring.
THROWING THE PASTA INTO COLD WATER AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
Apart from other issues (such as cooking pasta in about 1/10th the water it needed)... not sure that I'd call Organic Valley a high end cream -- they ultra-pasteurise. Gives it a sweet, burnt flavour, and changes the way the protein binds to create flavour in a sauce. For quality milk and cream, always seek out either low-temp pasteurised or raw, as local as possible. (And actually, the reason milk has to be pasteurised in mass production -- bad small batches ruining an entire tank when mixed together -- is an excellent study in how cheaper foods have changed the quality that people expect)
Oh, and always use fresh garlic! Your prepack from the supermarket isn't going to be largely different from jarred in comparison.
Cheese oil separation is a huge issue with not just cheaper cheeses, but seems to depend somewhat on the breed of cow the milk is from (IE, a cheap English cheddar like Coastal won't separate easily, but an expensive North American one definitely will if you make a fondue). It can be countered somewhat with a good flour dusting (gluten-free inclusive). An immersion blender can also help to smooth it out.
The bottom line is that you can make an amazing meal with any set of ingredients. It looks like you're on the path to understanding how to work with each of them!
interesting to see the cost difference actually changing the flavor
The cheese alone is drastically different in flavor
Obviously there were several notable cooking fails here -- but the point remains that this type of series is great ♥ My family is low-income, but we still eat "bougie on a budget" because it's so important to know where to pick your battles. You can save money on certain spices or pasta, then use that to compensate for things like nicer cheese and butter! That's a great thing to teach people about, especially in this economy!
My favorite part of this was the summary at the end where you broke down what you think the perfect balance would be. Some things like expensive salt or expensive water are just ridiculous and the question isn't just for the overall experience but which ingredients are actually worth the extra cost. I'm a little surprised that the fresh pasta wasn't more of a winner but I guess there's not really all that much to it - it's pretty much just flour, water, and egg.
Obviously you figured out that the fresh pasta just takes seconds to cook -- drop it in the boiling water and it's almost instantly ready to fish back out. It also has a much higher water content than the dry stuff, so a weight to weight comparison really isn't accurate -- as you noticed the fresh pasta is much less dense than the dry is, but if you had weighed the cooked pasta you'd find that the dry stuff absorbed a huge amount of water and probably would've weighed significantly more than the fresh pasta.
Maybe retry but without the cheese difference. In my experience, it is difficult to get good cheap cheese, and also the shredded ones are not that great, as they have something else to avoid the pieces from sticking between them, and avoid extra drying. Solid block cheese is always my preference.
Fresh pasta takes like 1/4 the time of dry pasta. Nate, did you even read the packages or just wing it???😂😂
Just take a look at where he boiled the pasta, who uses a pan for that? And you might have your answer
@@yessigabi12 agreed
With this one huge thing to consider is preshredded cheese had additives (saw dust for example) to keep the shreds from sticking. When you make sauce with this that additive to keep the cheese from sticking goes with it and makes a non cohesive sauce. Also, if you make your own fresh noodles thr cost would be similar just a lot more work.
Nate, you cook pasta in a pot! with a lot of water, not a pan with a little water especially fresh pasta.
Video series Idea, budget vs budget, get the budget versions from two stores and test which are better, and if it makes a difference. It seems you use walmart a lot and I think they are horrible I think you would get a much better version using Kroger (smiths brand in utah) but am truly curious.
The pot thing was startling to me too XD
That’s what I asked for as well. Didn’t see your post first.
This is very interesting! I may recommend getting people who LIKE the dishes they are tasting! I noted that the deciding factor was if they liked alfredo sauce or not.
Could you do this with making the noodles from scratch?
thats cool i like when it comes down to the best choice being mixing the cheap with some of the expensive
The editing is top tier
pre shredded cheese has anti caking so it doesn't stick together that makes it harder to melt. also for the salt you might want to weigh it because of different sized grains.
Clicked on the vid cause the title was interesting, almost wanted to click off again right away cause I thought how TKOR got into my inbox? then I realized it didnt and stayed to watch Nate do his thing. And I dont regret it! Really prefer them how they are now, a lot more mature and calm yet super informative and funny :) Keep it up Nate!
i’m new here and i keep seeing it, what does TKOR mean? lol
@@algaegreen8 the king of random. He did videos there for a couple of years, imo in the beginning it was really good but once it got so big it kinda lost its character.. Nate has a good vid on it tho, have a look at that
@@dermax_hd TKOR as in Grant Thompson is completely different than TKOR the management team. Fuck the management for letting Nate go when he was ghe one holding the channel together the most and RIP Grant
when i make alfredo i usualy use cheap butter cheap cream but exspensive cheese as it made the most notable differance.
I was watching the video where you made a silicone copy of a record for record player
I use the grated Parmesan in the green containers and it dissolves great
Is that cheap cheese actually cheese? I now they add a lot of "stuff" to cheese in the US.
Pasta normally is cooked in a deep big pot and not a pan 😅 maybe some new ones are needed in the future 😉
Rising with water and adding some oil will keep the fresh pasta separate. And normally it should taste way better than the dry stuff.
BREAD please 😊
My cooking sucks, so sometimes the fresh pasta I make is way better and sometimes it is way worse
Yes, that food club parmesan is real. It's bad (speaking from experience most of their dairy) but it's real.
@@witiwap86 It's made in the USA means USA Cattle were milked for it. That's where it fails. The source dairy has a huge impact on the outcome of cheese and the USA has a very industrialized dairy (more so than here in Canada and industrial cheese is just terrible). If I were in the USA and wanted USA made cheeses and wanted something that tended towards human-made vs machine-made I would look up places like LoveTree Farmstead Cheese for example (one of many smaller artisanal makers that really keep the craft alive).
@@keeperofthegood What makes you think USA cattle are bad? There are good places and bad places but it's more about region. With the food club stuff it isn't that it's from USA cattle it's that whoever makes the cheese for them just doesn't do a good job. And I'm talking about budget brands. Great value cheese is usually pretty good. It's not high quality but it tastes good. Food club doesn't.
@@witiwap86 I didn't say bad :) I said industrial and industrial dairy is good in coffee or a bowl of cereal but you can taste it in the cheese. Walmart's 'Great Value' line is pretty good overall, I use more than a few of their Great Value products. It's not open market sourced, they contract long term for source. Some products they are private labeling from other companies (dry goods like beans), some they own the entire output from the farm to the store. They are probably pulling their dairy from farther upstream than other makers. There is an ebook on the process you can read from University of Guelph titled dairy science and technology ebook. Chapter 27 has a good visual titled Overview of the Range of Products that can be Manufactured from Milk as a Starting Point
Nate this is awesome. I made Alfredo for my wife on our first date and it did the same thing as your cheap pasta. She still loved it and that was 10 years ago. I have been able to make it the right way since then.
probably should've done the sauce first and THEN cooked the Noodles lol
I've heard that the pre-shredded cheeses have a coating on them to keep it from clumping. That coating is what makes it melt differently than block cheese.
I would of thought the cheap sauce would just be out of a jar lol
His cheap sauce is like three times more expensive than my Preggo in a jar Alfredo Sauce, which to be fair, tastes barely ok
if you wanna know a pretty surefire way to do it: start with the sauce. once it's done take it off the heat, but keep the lid on. afterwards you cook the pasta until it's a bit underdone and then you add it to the sauce. no rinsing it off or anything. just let it finish cooking in the sauce. the starch the pasta gives off will make the sauce stick to it nicely, and since the were a bit undercooked when added to the sauce they will be really nice, once finished
This is a really good series Nate, I love it
Idk if this would help but I've found that melting cheap shredded cheese WITH the cream helps for a little more even consistency but I mean obviously you don't want to put too much cheese you do it little by little and keep stirring
Fettuccine alfredo is so good
Hi Nate. I have been following you since TKOR and I think you are great.I have been living in in Italy for 35 years so after watching this video I thought I would give a few interesting facts for pasta Alfredo.
1. Even though pasta Alfredo originates from Italy it is almost unheard of by Italians. Its name in Italy is pasta burro e parmigiano (Butter and Parmigiano)
2. Cream is an American addition.
3. Fresh pasta cooking time usually goes from 2 to 5 minutes depending on the type of pasta. Dry pasta between 9 and 14 minutes still depending on pasta type. In Italy cooking time is always written on packet and somtimes even specifies if the given cooking time referes to AL DENTE or normal .
4. Never cook the pasta until sauce is ready or time perfectly if possible. As you have discovered, pasta left standing is an un-eatable glue like gunge 😂
5. Italians do not necessarily consider fresh pasta better than dry pasta. It is just a different thing even though there are big differences between cheap and expensive dry pasta brands or fresh pasta brands.
6. Original Parmesan cheese is undeniably better than off brand cheeses as you have also discovered. Luckily in Italy it is not so expensive so we can indulge in large quantities without going bankrupt 🤭
I hope to have revealed something interesting about Italian cuisine.
Keep up the great content Nate. I also hope to see you make some more knives soon.
For heaven's sake do not put cold water on the noodles after cooking. They will get cold and you wash off the starches by doing that.
You wash off a lot of the starches by cooking it
This is the most simple video concept but it is equally compelling. You have to watch all of these to the end. Keep it up Nate. I remember hearing about this on Safety 3rd and thought it was great. I'm glad to see you going for it.
Italian purists, please provide information for a correct Alfredo
Haha there is no pure Italian Alfredo. It's not actually an authentic Italian dish. It's American, but based more on a Spanish sauce from what I understand.
*I was wrong, it was invented in Rome, but the recipe I'm using with cream is not Italian.
@@NFTI my grandma is Italian, like very Italian and I didn’t know that, interesting. I love you Nate keep up the good work!!
Italian purists don't eat "fettuccine Alfredo".
btw, nate, the fresh noodles start out with more volume because they have the water in them (most of the water at least) already. The dried gain volume and weight as they absorb water while boiling. That then end up with more noodle weight after cooking with the dry noodles if you start with a pound of dry.
I think this just shows how forgiving alfredo is. So many cooking mistakes, and non-comparable ingredients to start with. I don't think this is any real comparison of the ingredients. For something as simple as pasta, at least read and follow the cooking instructions!
The reason that the cheap cheese didn't melt well is that pre-shredded cheese in bags at the store is coated with an anti-clupming agent, maybe cornstarch or similar. That stops even melting and coagulates with the butter and cream.
did he not boil the water before putting in the pasta??
And he put them in a frypan not a saucepan
I just ordered balsamic vinaigrette. One is 4 times the cost but both aged the same amount of years. I can't wait to rest the difference. Thank you for these experiments
When you add cheese to the cream and butter mixture it should be added off of the heat, slowly, and while constantly stirring. It takes practice to get a completely smooth Alfredo sauce, but it's totally possible with cheap ingredients.
The garlic, in both cases, was a mistake. Jars of garlic are pretty much the _worst_ form of garlic, regardless of price point. And fresh bulbs would have been cheaper in _both_ cases, but there is a different price point between organic and non-organic, providing a fair comparison point for your metric.
Using bagged shredded cheese for...anything...is wrong.
Comparing dry to fresh pasta is a bad idea as well. 16 oz dry equates roughly to 24 oz fresh. Also, you _must_ follow cooking instructions for noodles, regardless of the rest of your recipes. You murdered those poor fresh noodles. There are quality more costly dry pastas that would have been a better comparison. In the first episode, you set a limit on flour, where there were things that were more expensive, but would have been a fundamentally different product.
You violated that rule here. Dry pasta and fresh pasta, _fundamentally_ perform differently and have different ingredients. Different flours, Durum vs semolina, most fresh pasta is made with eggs instead of water, etc.
Thanks after reading comments not sure I want to watch anymore lol
Yeah the garlic was baffling to me. Fresh garlic is always better and it's much cheaper to just get a bulb of garlic.
@@NikolisKitchen Guy's doing interesting stuff, but is very much...not a food person? So it's an odd combo.
@@drackar I love watching people learn about food though and I love Nate! Win win.
@@NikolisKitchen Yeah. He's trying. It's good.
My time to shine! Fresh pasta hasn't been dried and will weigh more. Additionally, fresh pasta cooks in a few minutes (1-5 minutes) while boxed, dried pasta takes around 8-12 minutes. For this experiment, I would have made each dish completely before starting the next. Doing both at the same time means the pasta will be over/under cooked ("I apologize for being an idiot," LOL!). "Expensive minced garlic," should instead be you buying fresh garlic and mincing it yourself (However, I totally understand if this is too much work). NEVER MIX SALT AND PEPPER! They simply don't mix well and you'll end up with too much of one or the other. Bougie black pepper should always be ground fresh, always! Salt your pasta water so it tastes like salty sea water! Most of the salt washes away with the water, but some remains with your pasta. Final note: weight everything and go by that metric! Volume isn't always the best measurement, and for solid ingredients in particular (e.g. cheese, pasta, breadcrumbs, etc.) weight is the best measurement to use.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE all the cooking you're doing Mr. NFT....I! I love your name, but hate the fact that the first 3 letters are N.F.T. Keep doing what you're doing man! Love the content!
Stealth Edit: NEVER EVER NEVER RUN YOUR PASTA UNDER COLD WATER!!! It rinses off the starch which prevents your sauce from sticking! On a side note, add a drop or two of oil to your pasta cooking water. It won't flavor anything, but it will prevent boil-over from the pasta foam. Oil breaks the surface tension which prevents your pot from boiling over and creating a mess.
Fresh pasta is generally made from different recipe than dried pasta. The recipe for dried pasta is made to be dried. Also, you can't get fresh pasta to be "al dente".
The pre-grated cheese is coated with an anti clumping agent, that is why it doesn't melt like cheese grated at home.
Read and follow the cooking instructions. Fresh pasta only practically requires blanching before serving. While there are some varieties which require cooking the cooking times are usually 1-2 minutes, stirring gently to break them apart from clumping and drain with cold water.
Dried pasta takes 6-9 minutes depending on how firm or soft you want it to be. If you want to make it like the fresh pasta then 6-7 minutes is your mark. Same with the fresh, drain immediately then rinse under COLD water. Rinsing in cold water not only removes excess starch, it stops the cooking process. Setting aside hot pasta will continue to cook. And for the time you left the fresh pasta simmering, it overcooked which is why you could not pick up a strand. It kept breaking right?
And the most important is you're using PANs and not POTs to cook. Pasta require pots not pans. Pans are limited in providing space for verticle and bi-lateral movement. Pots allow space to move anywhere and everywhere. Also to use CHEAP cheese it needs a double boiler and a slow but low temperature. Cooking it at a higher temperature and the oils separate and look gross and clumpy.
idk if anyone agrees with me but when I cook pasta, I always add olive oil or a bit of butter to the water so it doesnt stick together. also, I add the spices after draining the pasta. to me the spices look more colorful and the flavor is bolder...MY OPINION. either way, I love pasta dishes
Oil and water don't mix. The oil floats on top of the water, so it effectively does nothing....except waste oil.
Kind of cool to see how he’s getting more comfortable with cooking. If he keeps doing this I’m sure he’ll end up pretty good
As a Kiwi, I had to do a double-take at the "expensive" Lewis Road Creamery New Zealand butter! That is indeed an expensive brand... they do flavoured milk in collaboration with Whittaker's chocolate (iconic Kiwi chocolate company dating back to the 1800's!) which is crazy expensive too compared to other brands. Sadly though, all dairy products we buy here in NZ is stupid prices considering we produce so much of it. As I type a supermarket el-cheapo block of butter is NZ $5.80 ($3.92 US) for a 500g (17.6 ounces) block of it!
Make cheap and expensive ice cream. Use Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla recipe. It's really good. I have found it to be pretty expensive with real vanilla beans.
My father makes ice cream and accidentally doubled the vanilla. He now doubles it every time.
the cheap cheese will also have some sort of starch on the outside to prevent it from clumping like most pregrated cheeses
I have used the cheap parm, and I had decent results. Was it as good as the higher-end ingredients? Not by a long shot, but it was smooth and creamy. You are right about the pasta. We would buy the middle of the road, dry pasta. You save a good amount of time using the fresh, however. I am looking forward to what will be next in this series.
Wow, Lewis Road Creamery butter in the States! That stuff is mad expensive at in NZ, I'm impressed you tracked it down there. Butter is it's own rabbit hole, if you want to go down it. I know someone who has, and you'll be surprised by what you can find.
Pre shredded cheese has an anti clumping chemical coating on it so it doesn't melt and blend well. Get cheap block cheese and shred it. Will work better and won't separate as bad.
Another thing u turn down the heat when your stir in the cheese that's what made the oils separate too
Pre shredded cheese is coated with cellulose, starch, and natamycin to prevent clumping and mold, it doesn't melt as well. A better comparison would have been domestic parmesan vs. parmigiano reggiano from Italy. High quality dry pasta is often better than fresh, marketers rely on the idea that people equate fresh with quality - when you make home made pasta in the traditional method (rolled not extruded), you dry it before you cook it
first time ive seen someone cook pasta in a frying pan but i guess it works.
fresh noodles only need like 1min to cook and yeah all pasta should be sauced right away to avoid sticking together. if you arnt done the sauce and have to let them cook, toss it in a bowl with some oil/butter so they don't glue together.
cheese will 'split' if its melted at too high a temp, the cheep stuff maybe had a lower temperature break point. cheep stuff usually has lots of fillers in so its not pure cheese.
I feel like you should have got a more expensive DRY pasta because the fresh stuff seems just so different to dry pasta, but even though your making mistakes you’re still incredibly entertaining and a bit educational with really good music and I’m here for it… I’ve watched this video like five times all read and enjoy it the same amount every time, love this channel thank you 💛🎶
for parmesan cheese, try using store brand or name brand "shakeable" grated parmesan , it will make a much better sauce than shredded
Yeah in my experience when cooking pasta the water absolutely needs to be at a rolling boil before adding the pasta whether its dried or fresh, also if you add a bit of oil to the water it will prevent the pasta sticking together as well.
This was very fun! Thanks Nate and all the team behind it!
It should be quite easy to tell which is the more expensive one just by the pasta.
Fresh pasta is made with eggs, while dried pasta just uses water.
But yeah fresh pasta is completely different, normally just a couple of minutes in boiling water.
Once the pasta is done it should be straight into the sauce as well to toss through the sauce.
Also when measuring pasta, dry pasta absorbs half its weight in water, so you want about 2/3LB ot 1LB of fresh
I love whoever edits these videos and just completely shuts down the basic lovers LOL.
Pregrated cheese has coting to prevent it from sticking together. Which affects how it melts
One thing to note between fresh and dry pasta, you can't really get Al dente with fresh so there's a difference the set should be taken into consideration. Great videos and absolutely loveing this series. Keep up the awesomeness
Yay! Mark finally gets a cameo! It's great to see him since the TKOR days. And seeing his work on NFTI is just a joy to watch. (Also camera person #2 also did a fantastic job. Whoever you are, well done!)
Most of the parmesan we use is the plastic canister, refrigerate after opening, kinda stuff and it's easy to tell the difference between the store brand sawdust and the Kraft not-so-bad cheese. That's always been good enough for me.
Maybe there's an idea for cooking comparisons; cheap ingredients, good enough ingredients and premium ingredients. You used store brand butter, something once again I can taste the difference between that and Land o' Lakes butter which has been good enough forever to my family.
As an idea of what to cook next why not something even simpler, biscuits & gravy?
You know the simpler the dish, the easier it can be to royally muck it up? Biscuits and gravy is very easy to mess up, I've heard some stories.
U do have to grate the cheese urself. Grated stuff is coated in cornflour and won't melt right.
Also the fresh paste is substantially better. You didn't salt the water and U put it in the water for no longer than a min. U just want to heat it thro. The fresh stuff has a way better texture and is much more filling
U also split the cream in the cheap one
Cream-based pasta~! My favourite. Wonderful video once again
Just wanna give a shout-out to the editor. I don't know who does it, but it is right on point! I love it!
Omelette stuffed with cheese, spinach, and sausage. Stuffing and gravy (the crispness of the bread in the stuffing will matter at least as much as the quality of the bread). Meringue cookies (there should be no difference between cheap and expensive, although egg age may matter). Quiche. Lasagna. Creamy soup (corn chowder, clam chowder, bisque, cream of mushroom, cream of spinach).
awesome video, usually when you cook fresh pasta(and dried pasta as well) first use a pot not a pan and salt your water, you should either cook it for a minute or two and then move it to the pasta sauce with some pasta water, or wash it with cold water then move it around with some olive oil to keep it from sticking. Also you should put the garlic into the butter and let it fry before adding cream for a better flavor. (Also when not overcooking fresh pasta, you usually get a richer eggier flavor from it)
Something I learned when I worked at a restaurant is that you mix ice into the noodle after you strain it to prevent it from sticking together like that, then you just warm it up a when you need to serve it