Almost Guilt-Free Alfredo Sauce

Talk about guilty pleasures! Alfredo sauce, especially tossed with fettuccine, is what my dreams are made of. This smooth and silky cream sauce that effortlessly coats al dente pasta is so comforting but not exactly low calorie, which is why I only eat it on occasion. Why can’t there be a healthier version that can be enjoyed more frequently and without guilt? Well, there is, and I’m going to teach you how to enjoy this rich sauce while consuming less calories.

But first, a little history. Alfredo sauce was invented in Rome in 1908 by Alfredo di Lelio while looking for a way to get his wife, who had just given birth and didn’t have an appetite, to consume more calories and increase her energy. His solution was to toss pasta with amped up amounts of Parmigiano Reggiano and butter (sounds good to me!), and this was the first version of Alfredo sauce. It has since become very Americanized with the addition of cream, but who’s complaining? As of today, there are only two restaurants in Rome that serve up the original version of this simple sauce. 

In order to create a healthier-yet-delicious version of this sauce, we only need 4 ingredients for the recipe: skim milk, flour, garlic and Parmesan cheese. Yup… we’re entirely skipping the butter and cream. 

The first step is to whisk together the cold milk and flour until combined. But wait! Doesn’t the flour get clumpy? The key word here is cold milk. When you whisk together cold liquids with starches, they don’t get clumpy. The alternative is to make a traditional béchamel, but that requires the use of butter to make a roux, which we’re skipping in order to make this an almost fat-free sauce. 

Just because it’s almost fat free doesn’t mean it has to be flavorless. In order to spruce up the sauce, I added minced garlic and a parmesan cheese rind that I simmered in the sauce until the end.

Once the sauce had reached a coating consistency, I removed it from the heat, whisked in grated Parmesan cheese and seasoned it with truffle salt and pepper, but any salt of your preference can be used. 

Nappe (i.e. coating) consistency

I tossed the Alfredo sauce with spaghetti, because that what I had on hand, but any choice of noodle would be yummy!

Tip: Save 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water to toss with the pasta in case it gets too thick after saucing it. Add a couple tablespoons at a time to start. This would also be a great sauce drizzled on chicken, fish and shellfish.

Speaking of fish, and in order to make this a more balanced meal, I served sautéed salmon fillets seasoned with Sara’s Mediterranean Sea Salt (my favorite salt blend we sell at TCB) with the pasta Alfredo along with a side salad with roasted beets and candied pecans. 

Almost Fat-Free Alfredo Sauce

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Yield: 4 cups; enough sauce for 1 pound of pasta

Active time: 10 minutes

Start to finish: 25 minutes

4 cups cold skim milk

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup good-quality parmesan cheese, grated

Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a saucepan, whisk together the cold milk and flour until combined. Set over medium-low heat and cook, whisking very frequently, until the sauce starts to thicken and is bubbling.
2. Reduce the heat to low, and continue to cook until the sauce reaches a coating consistency, about 10 additional minutes.
3. Remove the sauce from the heat, and whisk in the parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve tossed with pasta. Tip: Save 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water to toss with the pasta in case it gets too thick after saucing it. Add a couple tablespoons at a time to start.

Learning how to make the classic sauces from scratch is an important step into understanding the hows, whys and science of cooking before making modifications. A great place to get that knowledge is in our popular and in-depth Culinary Boot Camp course. You’ll spend five days exploring all of the critical cooking techniques and walk away with a deep foundation of knowledge that you’ll use for a lifetime. We just added all of our 2023 Culinary Boot Camp sessions, so take a look and join us this new year for a new experience!