$1425 vs $13 Fettuccine Alfredo: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

[Emily gasps]

Oh baby.

What do I do now?

[lively music]

Hi, I'm Frank.

I'm a professional chef,

and these are my $1,425

Fettuccini Alfredo ingredients.

Hi, I'm Emily.

I'm a home cook,

and these are my $13

Fettuccini Alfredo ingredients.

That wheel weighs 80 pounds.

You're gonna need help.

[tray grinding]

Okay, bye.

That is not Parmesan cheese.

[tray squeaking and man grunting]

Frank.

Not necessarily what I expected for an Alfredo,

but I'm gonna make it work.

I don't even know where to start with this.

The Fettuccini Alfredo I was gonna make

was really special.

It was gonna be fresh fettuccini,

with Alfredo sauce

and a carved out Parmesan wheel.

I'm so excited.

And also terrified.

I had a full Parmesan wheel

straight off the boat from Italy.

Moist.

They don't tell you how slick these things are.

I was gonna use all the Parmesan.

I was gonna use the rinds

to make a Parmesan broth.

I was gonna use the cheese for the sauce.

Fancy Italian butter.

Look at this.

I had everything I needed

to make a homemade pasta from scratch.

It was gonna be magnificent.

Nona's all over the world were gonna weep.

You know, simple ingredients

make great things.

Am I putting this in the wheel?

With Emily's ingredients?

We have things you'd find in your pantry

or your local grocery store.

The Fettuccini Alfredo I was gonna make

was gonna be a pretty simple,

but good Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo.

This is definitely on the simple side.

With a little work,

I can make it really difficult.

If I had to guess,

this dish would probably cost about 1350.

[bell dings] Look at that.

Right on the money, man.

I know my grocery prices.

I have no idea

how much a wheel of cheese like this costs.

I'm gonna go $303.

[Emily gasps]

[Emily laughs]

Oh no.

Why would you trust me with this?

Well, Frank left me these ingredients.

But no instructions, as usual.

I hope that Emily doesn't get scared

that there aren't a lot of ingredients.

The thing I am most afraid of,

is definitely everything to do

with this giant wheel of cheese.

It might be a little difficult for Emily

to cut Parm in that large format.

I don't wanna disappoint the cheese.

I wanna respect the cheese,

and I don't know how to get into the cheese.

Can I call Rose?

[phone ringing]

Hi Rose.

Hey Emily, how are you?

I have the biggest wheel of cheese

I've ever seen, in real life.

I'd say I can't wait to dig in

but I have no idea how to dig in.

[Rose] Why don't we start that big wedge of cheese.

It's super heavy.

This is gonna be a little bit of a workout.

Nope.

I'll meet the cheese where it is.

[Rose] You're gonna take that knife,

and you're gonna score as evenly as possible

around the circumference of the cheese.

I am Rocky,

and these are my stairs.

[Rose] And you'll be cutting through the rind.

It'll be a little bit hard.

Ugh.

This seems misguided.

It's super greasy.

[Rose] Next thing you wanna do

is take your cheese wedges,

and wedge them in between

the cut that you just made

around the entire wheel of cheese.

This can't be how

I'm supposed to whack it in.

[Rose] And you're gonna kind of rock them

back and forth horizontally,

and a tiny little bit vertically, as well.

[Emily chuckles]

Can these lift 40 pounds?

It feels...

No, maybe impossible.

Emily, when you're cutting this wheel in half,

patience is a virtue.

Take your time.

Try and go even all the way around.

[Rose] And you're gonna do that

until you'll be able to feel it

kind of lift and pop.

[Emily gasps]

At that point.

You're ready to just take the top off.

Oh my God.

Look at it.

[Emily laughs]

[Frank] When we take that top part off

of the Parmesan wheel.

Eh?

We're gonna scoop out

all the cheese from the center

and use that for grating.

And then we have this beautiful rind left.

Most people throw the rind away.

Don't do that.

We're going to make a really nice Parmesan broth

with that rind.

Oh, we're going.

Oh, we got it.

[Frank] We're gonna use the Parm broth in our pasta

as our pasta water.

And then we're gonna use it

to adjust the final consistency of the sauce.

This enough rind?

[Rose] And then you're gonna just take a knife,

or if you're more comfortable with a spoon,

that works too.

And start in the middle

and start to carve out a bowl.

You're gonna wanna make it smooth.

Because you're actually gonna toss your homemade pasta

in the Parmesan wheel.

There's gonna be some really delicious shards

of Parmigiano-Reggiano there.

You wanna taste those.

[Emily laughs]

Woo.

It's like nutty, fruity.

Cheesy.

You're gonna really have fun

with this one, Emily.

And you're gonna do great.

You're gonna have such a luscious pasta dish.

Thanks Rose.

I'll send you a photo.

I'll let you know how it goes [Emily chuckles]

Now for me,

Alfredo isn't really a classic Italian dish.

It's a dish that they serve to tourists in Rome.

The dish I'm making,

isn't gonna be a classic Alfredo either.

It's inspired by the ingredients.

But it's not gonna look like Alfredo at all.

First thing I'm gonna do is cook my pasta,

and then I'm gonna stick it

in these little molds, right?

And I'm gonna let it come together into a cake.

And then I'm gonna take that cake out

and deep fry it.

So I'm gonna end up

with a crispy fried pasta cake.

My water is boiling.

I'm gonna add a fair amount of salt.

I always tell people,

you need to season your water, sea salty.

If it tastes like the ocean,

then you're doing it right.

All right,

now we're gonna make some Parm water.

Parmesan rind into my boiling water.

And now we just boil it for 45 minutes.

Rose said this is gonna go into my pasta.

So I'm making it.

And then I'm gonna put it in my pasta.

Easy as that.

Not a lot of ingredients,

just a lot of stuff to do.

[Emily laughs]

Once it comes back up to the boil,

we want to add all of our pasta.

You never want to break pasta.

If you break your pastas,

the nonna's are gonna cry.

I'm gonna take my pasta

and just drop it straight in

and let it fall where it falls.

And right away,

I'm gonna give it a stir.

I give 'em a little twist,

a little twirl.

This way they don't stick together.

All right, Parm water achieved.

It's become kind of cloudy.

There's like some cheesiness on the top.

I need to save some of this

and cool it off,

so that I can make my pasta with it.

It smells exactly like Parm.

This is literally Parm water.

Water Parm.

[Emily chuckles]

Now I'm gonna take my pasta out

and drain it on this towel

so there's not too much water on it.

And I don't need a strainer.

I like to use a pair of tongs.

Right onto the towel.

And the main reason we're putting it on the towel

is because this is gonna be fried later.

And oil and water when you're frying,

do not go together.

While the pasta dries,

I'm gonna get my molds together, all right?

And then we take our pasta

that's been nice and dry,

and we stuff it in there.

Come on, get in.

See how sticky it is?

And that's a good thing.

We want it to be sticky like that,

because we want the pasta

to stick together at this point,

and become one cake.

We can take the plastic wrap,

fold it over the top.

And I have some jars

with split peas in them.

This is gonna make our pasta

stick together and hold together.

So that when we fry it,

it doesn't fall apart.

All right, I've got everything here.

And I'm ready to make my pasta dough.

So the first thing I'm gonna do

is combine my two flours,

and a little bit of salt.

[Emily singing a jingle]

The combination of both of these flours

is gonna give us a nice silky outside of the pasta,

and a nice dense chew.

We're gonna cook it al dente,

so I have a little bite to it.

And I'm just going to like make a little well here.

And then some nice cold Parm water.

I have made pasta before,

but usually with eggs not water.

But I love it.

All right, so now I'm just going to knead this

until I get it to a nice glutenny situation.

When you push your finger into the dough,

it's gonna leave a dent.

And when you remove that finger,

you wanna see it come back

to its original position.

All right, my dough is kneaded.

And now it needs to rest.

So I'm just gonna wrap it in some plastic wrap

and set it aside.

So now I'm gonna make

some garnish for our dish.

I'm gonna take my garlic

and I'm gonna put it onto the mandoline

and get it nice and thin.

I'm just gonna sprinkle it around

so that it comes into individual slices.

You can already smell

that wonderful garlic aroma in the room.

Can you guys smell it at home?

I'm seeing a lot of bubbles here.

And that basically means

that the water in the garlic is boiling out.

And once I stop seeing bubbles,

it should be crisp.

[spider tapping] Give 'em a tap.

Get all the fat off

and then spread them out.

And then I immediately gonna season

when they come out of the oil.

So while I have this oil hot,

I'm gonna fry my parsley.

One thing you have to be careful about,

these are gonna pop and sputter everywhere.

So drop them in,

take a step back, okay.

You're gonna see [Frank imitates explosion]

It's gonna like make all these noises, okay?

[parsley frying]

So we get a little bit of that violent explosion.

And the same thing with the parsley,

you'll see that once the bubbles stop

we can take the parsley out,

give it a tap.

put it on our tray.

And then we wanna season this once it comes out.

Because we want some seasoning on that.

All right.

My dough's been resting.

It's time to roll it out into some pasta sheets.

I'm going to put them through here,

that'll flatten them,

and then eventually pasta.

Okay, that was just a little experiment.

We're all just learning together.

Except for all the people who know

and are yelling at their screen right now.

I'm gonna try and get it

to the thickness of fettuccini.

Which I think is a little thinner than this.

Mamma mia.

Uh, that feels good to me.

Maybe one more.

Oh, that can't be right.

Oh, I forgot to turn it back down.

You know, I'd love to say

I'm getting the hang of this.

But I have very little confidence

that I'm doing this correctly.

There you go.

Three perfect sheets of pasta.

No questions asked.

Our pasta cakes have been in the fridge.

It's time to fry 'em up.

I'm gonna just take these.

And instead of just plunking 'em in,

I'll just put 'em into my spider

and lower them in nice and easy.

You can see that it's starting to bubble

and that's good.

This is gonna ensure

that our pasta cake is not greasy.

So I'm using the same oil

as the garlic and parsley.

And they impart

just a little bit of flavor to our oil.

So that's gonna impart

some flavor to our pasta.

All right, I'm gonna give these a little flip

just to see how the backside is looking.

We're looking good.

I don't care if the inside of this pasta cake

is a little soft.

But I want it to be nice and crispy on the outside.

All right, these look good.

Let's take 'em out.

Drain 'em really well,

right onto our tray.

And if we want to season these when they come out

and they're nice and hot.

All right.

Pasta is dried.

And it's time for me

to try to cut it into fettuccini.

Totally ready

and definitely not concerned.

Gonna just a little bit thinner

than I started out.

'Cause I think I might have been making

more like a tagliolini

than a fettuccini.

What do I know?

Is this too thin?

Is it too thick?

Maybe Frank will tell me later.

Oh, that kinda looks like fettuccini, right?

Right?

And now you have pasta.

A heavenly choir of Nonna

singing your praises.

[choir chant]

All right.

My pasta's all ready.

I'm gonna cook everything

and put it in a giant cheese wheel.

Normal day.

[Emily laughs]

So now we're gonna saute our chicken breast.

I'm gonna drop it in the pan away from me

so the oil splatters that way.

My pan's really hot.

My oil's hot.

You want to be careful

not to move things around too much.

Leave it alone.

You can give it a little peak

if you get nervous.

But leave it in the pan.

Let the pan do its work.

All right, let's give it a turn.

So we're starting to get a nice crust on that,

and we're gonna let it go.

Okay, this looks like it's pretty good.

I got some nice browning there.

What I wanna do now

is take this off of the fire

and get rid of the oil.

And you can see what we're left with.

I got some brown bits,

that's called the fond.

And I want that in the pan

to flavor our sauce.

So we're gonna let our chicken breast rest.

Letting it rest

lets the juices redistribute

back into the breast.

And it gives us a more juicy

and tender end product.

All right, I've got some of my cheese

from the wheel.

Now I'm gonna grind it up.

And I'm gonna use it for my Alfredo sauce.

[food processor whirring]

Woo.

Smells good.

Smells cheesy in here.

It literally,

the smell of cheese is permeating.

Parmeating this whole room.

I'm so sorry.

Now it's time to make our sauce.

I'm gonna take my cream,

I'm not gonna use all of it right now.

Let me get into there my whisk first.

I'm gonna try and get up all those brown bits.

We're gonna hit this

with a little bit of salt.

And we're gonna let it come to a simmer.

While that's coming up,

I'm gonna open my boursin cheese.

I'm gonna take about half of this right now

and drop it in,

and give it a whisk.

Start whisking away.

And I guess it kinda looks like an Alfredo sauce.

It's creamy.

It looks good.

I am going to take some of my cheese.

I'm gonna sprinkle this in

and I'm gonna start buzzing.

Buzz it up and you get a nice thick sauce.

And that is it.

Our sauce is done.

It's creamy.

It's thick and smooth.

All right.

It's time to put it all together.

First things first,

I'm gonna cook my pasta.

This is fresh pasta.

So I'm really not gonna cook it for very long.

And give it a quick stir.

Not nervous at all.

The thing is that pasta

can feel your fear.

So you have to be confident

when you handle it.

I think that's true.

Or a dream I had.

And pop it right out.

Whoa, what are you doing?

Why?

See confidence.

You gotta move with confidence.

She said immediately not moving with confidence.

All right.

And the next thing I'm gonna do

is get a whole bunch of butter in here.

The challenge here

is getting your sauce emulsified.

Emulsified sauces are putting two things together

that don't normally stick together.

In our case here,

we're doing butter and cheese and water.

Feeling good, feeling great.

Gonna put like a whole bunch

of this Parm on top.

Oh wow.

We're gonna take our tongs.

Mix it around.

Sometimes when you make an Alfredo sauce,

if you have too much grated cheese in there,

it gets lumpy and kind of sticks together.

So we're gonna take our Parmesan broth

and adjust that.

Just to thin it out a little

so it gets nice and creamy.

So we really wanna kinda like

turn this into not just cheese on pasta,

but a cheesy saucy pasta.

Once you have the right amount of those,

you have to really stir it well,

so that you get an emulsified sauce at the end.

[Emily] That is some creamy looking Fettuccini Alfredo.

I think it's coming together.

You're gonna make the nonna's blush.

Phew.

It's a cheese bowl.

What is this?

What happened here?

How did we get to this point?

Should I be trusted with this?

It's too late now.

All right, I think we're done here.

Do we need to plate it,

or does it just stay in the-

[Producer] It goes on a plate.

[Emily laughs]

My chicken is rested.

Gonna slice it up.

You can see the chicken breast

actually has a grain to it.

The muscle fibers run this way.

So I'm gonna do some nice long flat slices.

Slicing on the bias,

because I want long strips of chicken.

And I'm cutting against the grain of the meat

so it's not chewy at all.

All right, now I'm gonna plate this.

Let's see how we gonna do this.

I guess I'll try and get like a good twirl going here.

Hmm.

It's wet.

Just give it a little Parm on top.

I call this Parmesan Splat.

[Emily laughs]

Oh my God [Emily laughs]

Don't tell Frank I did that.

That's so good.

First thing I'm gonna do

is I'm gonna put my chicken down

in the center of the plate.

The chicken is the protein,

but it is not the star of the show here.

Now the pasta is the star of the show.

So I'm gonna take my pasta cake,

place it right on top.

What I really wanna do with this

is put some of the sauce around,

but also let the sauce

soak a little into my pasta cake.

And then we're gonna take some of the sauce

and sprinkle it around, right?

And then I'm gonna take some of my garlic chips,

and kind of selectively

place them around.

A few chips hiding inside that nest.

So you get a little surprise

once in a while.

And then some of my parsley leaves,

just a few around the plate.

But let them fall naturally.

There you go.

Look at that.

It's gorgeous.

Emily, good to see you. Hey, how's it going?

[Frank] Can I have a hug? Nice to see you.

Hi Chef Frank.

I opened up a whole wheel of cheese.

No, it's funny.

'Cause I've never actually done that myself.

Oh well, you know, so-

So, you got one up on me.

I love it.

I'm excited to see what you did.

It's nothing like you could imagine.

[Frank] All right. Yeah.

[Both] 3, 2, 1.

[Emily and Frank awes]

Look at this.

[Frank] That looks exactly

like Fettuccini Alfredo should look.

Pasta, cheese and butter baby.

Yeah. [Emily laughs]

I mean, it's that simple, you know?

Yeah.

But it takes all day to make.

Yeah, yeah, I know. [Frank laughs]

I mean, trust me, I've been here.

I went a little crazy with this.

Look at this.

So it's not exactly Fettuccini Alfredo.

I know that.

[both talking over each other]

[Frank and Emily laugh]

[Emily] I'm ready. Oh, I'm ready.

[Frank and Emily laugh]

Time to taste.

[Emily chuckles]

Delicious.

The thing about this pasta

is that it's just simple ingredients, you know?

And it's all about the technique.

The chew on the pasta's perfect.

Oh, thank you.

I made that pasta myself.

[Emily laughs] That's great.

And it just to me,

like it just tastes like the cheese.

But in a very like positive way.

Yeah, in a good way.

That's kind the decadence of it.

It's creamy and it's cheesy.

You're hitting those notes

and that's what that makes it so good.

Thank you so much.

I worked really hard.

All day.

It was super hard

and my feet are tired.

But, I agree, it's delicious.

Great recipe. Yeah, absolutely delicious.

[Emily] I'm so excited to dig into this.

[Frank] I'm excited for you to try this.

[Emily] Like a little of everything?

[Frank] A little bit of everything.

A piece of chicken.

It's good.

Yeah, I mean, again, it's not Alfredo.

But it's like,

it's got some really good flavor to it.

I feel like it's like,

you have all the flavors of like a classic,

like American style, like...

[Frank] Agreed.

[Emily] Chicken Alfredo.

Just a little more like whimsical.

Yeah, it's a little whimsical.

When I think you,

[Frank] I think whimsy. Totally.

If someone charged me 1354

for this at a restaurant,

I'd be like, You're crazy.

Charge me more.

I got the shaker cheese,

the green top one.

And at first I think

that I really put it down a lot.

It's not cheese.

It is not cheese.

But I realized that it actually

has some additives to it

that make things kind of like gel,

and hold that creaminess.

So I think that aided in this sauce.

[Emily] Great recipe, great cooking.

You did it.

And you got a workout.

And I got.

And I got-

All that and a workout.

Do I look a little stronger than before?

Swole.

You're swole [Emily laughs]

Right, don't be too scared.