FoodBlog Viral Recipes Testing: Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo 🐔
Alfredo. Everyone has heard of it - but nobody really knows what it is. 🙈
The original Fettuccine Alfredo is indeed an authentic Italian dish, and consists of only 3 ingredients: pasta, butter, and cheese. It’s basically your lazy pasta recipe for when you want something quick and comforting. All it takes is tossing the pasta with the cheese and butter, adding some pasta water (the magic touch to any good pasta sauce) and you have a simple, creamy sauce. 🤤
As with most authentic Italian dishes, over time the Americans have put their own twist on pasta Alfredo, which like the good old pizza pie, resulted in it being one of the most famous dishes in the country. American fettuccine Alfredo adds milk, cream, and garlic to the recipe, and the most popular variation includes chicken and sometimes mushrooms (which is what I’ll be making today). 🍄
I’m very eager to try this dish out so I can finally understand what the hype is about. Looking at the recipe and video, as well as my knowledge of the American capacity to cook pasta that isn’t mac n cheese, I hardly have high expectations for the outcome:
The Recipe 📝
I chose to try out a recipe by YouTube vlogger Natasha's Kitchen, because I am of course sticking to the theme of ‘viral recipes’ - and this one has over 12 million views, and it’s also the channel’s most popular upload. 💻
Here’s the recipe, which I assume makes 3-4 servings, depending on how hungry you are:
- 900 grams chicken breast
- 340 grams fettuccine pasta
- 450 grams sliced white mushrooms
- 1 small onion finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 3 1/2 cups half and a half, or equal parts milk and heavy cream
- 1/4 cup parsley, finely chopped, plus more for garnish
- 1 tsp sea salt or to taste, plus more for pasta water
- 1/4 tsp black pepper or to taste
- 3 tbsp olive oil divided
- 1 tbsp butter
I only wanted to cook for myself, so I simply divided the recipe by 4 and ended up with the perfect portion. I did make a few adjustments, like I didn’t use an onion (because using ¼ of an onion is just inconvenient) and I omitted the parsley (because I don’t like it, sue me). I used tagliatelle instead of fettuccine, because that’s just what I found at the store - but they’re almost identical as a pasta shape so it should be okay. 🍝
The Method 👨🍳
The method is pretty quick and simple, and the dish only took me about 15 minutes to prepare. Here’s the video if you want to follow along. You should start by preparing all your ingredients: measuring them out and slicing up the mushrooms, chicken, onion and garlic. Next put a pot of water to boil whilst you prepare the components of the dish. Start off by cooking the chicken breast on medium heat with olive oil, then set aside. Next add the rest of your butter and oil and sautée the onion and mushrooms, and add the garlic after they’ve softened. 🧈
Your water will probably have boiled by now, so you can add in the fettuccine. Next you want to add the half and half (or milk and cream) and bring everything to a boil. Lower the heat and let cook until the pasta is done. Next you can add the chicken back into the pan and season everything. When the pasta is done, add it to the pan and give everything a good toss. There you have it! 😗 👌
The Verdict 🤔
Just as I expected, this is a chicken and mushroom cream sauce, and calling it ‘Alfredo’ is very unnecessary. The reason why this video is the first thing that came up when I typed ‘Alfredo” into the search bar (and is also the one with the most views) is beyond me. I also have one very important question about this recipe: where is the cheese? It’s disappointing enough that it’s not listed in the ingredients and not a part of the sauce, but the fact that she didn’t add when serving either is just rubbing salt into the wound. I obviously took things into my own hands and added a heap of cheese to my plate. 🧀
It doesn't look thaaaaat bad, but I really did exepct a lot more in taste-factor!
Overall, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t very good either. It was totally basic and nothing like the description in the video. It was very bland since it was just seasoned with salt and pepper (and please don’t try to convince me that parsley is the solution to that). It was also very watery, and I had to discard much of the cream that remained in the pan to avoid eating pasta soup. To be fair, the video instructions did say to let it rest so the pasta absorbs more of the sauce; which I definitely didn’t do because my pasta would have got cold. 🥶
Would I recommend this recipe to anyone? No way. If said someone wanted to make a cream sauce, then maybe, but I could still find something better in that scenario. Will I ever make or eat something called Alfredo cooked by an American ever again? Nope. 👎
Well... unless it looked something like this... I think I'd try a fork-full then! 🍽️
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