Friday, May 29, 2009

Creamy Alfredo - the Cheap Way

My husband and I love Alfredo sauce, but it can be a bit more pricey than we prefer. Making it calls for things like heavy cream and fresh Parmesan, which we never buy. And I just can't get myself to buy jars of pre-made pasta sauce when I know I can make it at home.

We've made do by making a mock Alfredo sauce, by adding Parmesan and garlic powder to a basic white sauce. But this always had a slightly gritty/chalky feel to it. Today I altered our mock Alfredo recipe by substituting corn starch for the flour in the white sauce, and that made it super creamy. I also used fresh garlic instead of powdered (we have a super cheap source of fresh garlic), which gave it a wonderful flavor. I'm thrilled with how it turned out, and this is how we'll be making it from now on.


Creamy Mock Alfredo Sauce
2 tbsp. butter or margarine
2 cloves fresh garlic, minced (or you can use 1-2 tsp. bottled minced garlic)
1 tbsp. corn starch
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup Parmesan (the cheap powdery stuff, of course)
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and saute for a couple minutes. In a separate container, combine corn starch and milk and mix thoroughly - I used a container with a tight-fitting lid and just shook it up real good. Pour into the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Add Parmesan, salt, and pepper. Heat through and serve with pasta.

We stirred in some small shell pasta (shells are so fun!) and topped with additional Parmesan. Yum!

10 comments:

Country Whispers said...

This looks yummy. I'm gonna have to try this. Thanks for sharing!

Chloe m said...

We had Alfredo for dinner tonight! I wish I would have tried this recipe first. It looks a lot less fattening than the one I pounded down. Thanks for sharing!

Frances said...

This sounds delish! I can't wait to try it!

Abby said...

That sounds easy..and very economical. thank you for posting this wonderful recipe ;)

Katy ~ said...

Good interpretation of the dish, I would say. Well done.

brokeintrovert said...

I cannot wait to try your recipe.

Anonymous said...

Great idea to use the corn starch! Sounds super yummy, and without all the cream it's healthier too. Bonus!

Kimmie said...

My kids LOVE "Creamy Parmesan", but I as well, don't like the HIGH fat and costly nature of it and so I am really excited to try this out!

My son will be THRILLED to have this surprise for dinner. BTW...we have a fairly cheap source of Sharp Cheese and so I will buy a block of it and "cut it into chunks" and freeze the chunks and then for 6 or 7 nice meals we have some yummy cheese to grate on it.

Anyway, I just really enjoy your Blog and learn so much from it.

Have a really nice day and I hope things are going well with your pregnancy!

Bargains to Bounty said...

Thanks for sharing! My DH loves Alfredo, but I don't like buying cream that we won't use up. It's always better when you can use ingredients you have on hand!

Amanda XOX said...

Just made a huge batch to freeze in "meal size" portions. Thank you thank you thank you for this recipe. It took a while to thicken up so I added just a bit more cornstarch and that seemed to do the trick (probably because I was cooking 4x as more). It tasted great while I was cooking it up and I can't wait to have it later.