Cacio e Pepe That Does Not Clump

Name: Cacio e Pepe That Does Not Clump
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 lb spaghetti or tonnarelli; 2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns, coarsely cracked; 6 oz Pecorino Romano, finely grated; 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil; Salt, for the pasta water

Four ingredients, no cream, nowhere to hide. The whole dish rests on one thing: getting cheese, starch and water to combine into a sauce instead of a stringy clump.

5 minPrep

15 minCook

4Serves

Tricky, then easyLevel

How to tell it is right

The four cues for the moment that decides this dish.

LookA smooth, glossy coating — never grainy lumps or long strings

SmellFreshly toasted pepper, sharply aromatic rather than dusty

SoundPasta slides against the pan; a sticking sound means the water is gone

FeelA lifted strand carries sauce with it instead of leaving it behind

Method

Grate the Pecorino as finely as you can — a microplane is ideal. Coarse shreds melt unevenly and clump, which is the single most common cause of failure.
Toast the cracked pepper in a dry wide pan over medium heat for about 60 seconds, until it smells strongly aromatic.
Boil the pasta in less water than usual and salt it lightly. Less water means starchier water, and the starch is what holds the sauce together.
Cook the pasta to 2 minutes short of the package time, then reserve 2 cups of the water and drain.
Add the butter and about 1/2 cup of pasta water to the pepper pan, then the pasta, and toss over medium heat for 2 minutes until the water reduces and the pasta finishes cooking.
Take the pan off the heat and wait 60 seconds. Add the cheese in three additions, tossing hard between each and loosening with more pasta water, until the sauce is glossy and coats every strand.

How it usually goes wrong

Adding cheese to a pan that is too hot. Above roughly 175 degrees F the proteins in Pecorino tighten and squeeze out their fat, which is what produces those rubbery strings. The fix is always the same: take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a minute before the cheese goes anywhere near it.

The bit that matters

Off the heat, and in stages. Dumping all the cheese into a hot pan at once is what makes cacio e pepe fail, and it fails the same way every time. Three additions, a minute of cooling first, and constant motion.

*Approximately 520 calories per serving. Calories are an estimate from standard ingredient databases; actual values vary by brand and portion. See our disclaimer.