It may only be pasta, peppero and black pepper, but Cacio E Pepe is not easy to make as some imagine.
Now, the researchers have reached a scientific recipe that avoids an integrated sauce every time – but everything becomes more complicated.
Cacio e people is made by cooking pasta and using the resulting starchy water to create a sauce with grated cheese and pepper.
The researchers have recommended that the ideal recipe for two includes a solution of 5 grams of crushed starch in 50 grams of water – instead of using seized noodles, as traditional recipes do. Then, gently heat the mixture until thicken and turn into.
Next, add 100 grams of water to cool the mixture, before mixing it with 200 grams of cheese and adding roasted black pepper.
The resulting sauce should be mixed with 300 grams of pasta that is cooked in a slightly salted water until it is drained, and allows the cooling a little.
This step helps prevent excessive heat from destabilizing the sauce. Finally, they say that a little reserved starchy water can be used to control consistency as needed.
The researchers write: “You will not need a real Italian or skilled Italian grandmother from Rome to a scientific recipe for Cacio e people, instead dependent on instinct and years of experience,” the researchers write. “For everyone, this guide provides a practical way to master the dish.”
Dr. Ivan de Territri, one of the authors participating in the research, said that the team consumed about 6 kg of cheese to study, with “most of them ate with bread.”
He added: “Although we are still not tired of this delicious dish, one of the authors had blood tests showing very high levels of cholesterol in the blood.” “It is the price of science!”
“When proteins are heated, cheese proteins change their composition, and thus, they gather,” said Dr. Daniel Picilo, another participant author to study the Max Planck Institute for the physics of complex systems in Germany. He said that starch reduces this effect by linking to cheese proteins, which reduces their direct reactions, and thus its formation of blocks.
To explore the secret of the smooth and cream sauce, the researchers made a number of experiments using a fixed percentage of cheese to water, but with varying concentrations of starch. The latter was controlled by dissolving known quantities of dry corn starch in the water.
The results revealed that fewer groups that occurred at fewer temperatures, regardless of the focus of starch, with the team’s addition that proteins did not begin to join less than 65 degrees Celsius. As temperatures increase, higher concentrations of starch were needed to avoid forming blocks and prevent the “Mozarilla stage” – where huge fillings of cheese appear.
“At high starch concentrations, the temperature becomes less interested, as the sauce remains smooth even with less accurate temperature control,” Busiello said.
Busiello added that pasta water alone contains a very little starch to reliably prevent clumping, which produces only a soft sauce with a microscopic control.
He said: “Our recommended scientific approach uses a percentage of starch to cheese between 2 % and 3 % by weight, allowing home cooks to reliably create a soft sauce without the need to worry about the temperature.”