If you want mid week rave reviews on a dinner served or if you just want to wow your guests with something special, this is the dish for you! Serve them this luxurious pasta with vodka cream sauce.

This sauce tastes like you spent hours cooking it on the stove, but you really didn’t. It has a deep, rich flavor with a silky and luxurious texture that coats the pasta inside and out in every groove.

Speaking of pasta I recommend using mezzi rigatoni, it’s the shorter version of traditional rigatoni, go for the one with the ridges.

Don’t get me wrong you can use other shapes, I’ve made it with penne pasta before, but my heart belongs to mezzi!

Get yourself a bottle of vodka that has a nice smooth character to it, you don’t want to use anything too harsh. Right now I’m enjoying Trader Joe’s TX vodka it’s 6 times distilled and it really pairs well with this sauce. (not sponsored).

Have your ingredients ready to go and your salted water boiling and you’re on your way to a fantastic meal!

Onions and garlic are the foundation to this sauce but the star of the show is tubed tomato paste!

Triple concentrated tomato paste to be exact, this is the game changer to this recipe! No more cans of tomatoes, no more doctoring up a marinara sauce with cream, no chopped tomatoes added, nothing!

Triple concentrated tomato paste is the secret ingredient!

Let the tomato paste cook down a bit, then you’ll deglaze it with the vodka. Now is the time to start cooking your pasta.

You’ll be adding pasta water and heavy cream together stirring and stirring until it reaches a vibrant pink color.

Like this!

Now add in your pasta (al dente) and incorporate all that sauce with the pasta really well.

Shut the burner off and sprinkle in the cheese and toss gently.

Now get a big scoop so you can fill your plate!

Add more cheese of course and a sprinkling of parsley, after you take one bite you’ll know exactly what I mean.  This sauce is to die for!

You’ll want to make it often and the best part is that it comes together so quickly, so make sure you have a full bottle of vodka and tubes of tomato paste on hand.

If you want to go all out and show off a little, you can sear up a few scallops or add some shrimp like I did for a special date night meal, it’s over the top delicious.

All I did was added some partially roasted shrimp at 400F to the original recipe below until slightly opaque then tossed them in the sauce to finish cooking and to soak up all that goodness!

I chose some thin and long penne pasta for this and it was quite elegant tossed around with the shrimp.

Trust me, you need this in your life!

5.0 from 1 reviews

Luxurious Pasta With Vodka Cream Sauce

 

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Recipe adapted from Bon Appetit

Author: Marie

Ingredients

• ½ lb. mezzi rigatoni with ridges, or penne with ridges
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 3 oz. triple - concentrated tomato paste in a squeeze tube
• ¾ cup of grated parmesan cheese, more for plated garnish
• 2 oz. vodka ( smooth character )
• ¾ cup heavy cream
• 1 cup or so of reserved pasta water
• pinch of red pepper flakes
• olive oil
• parsley for garnish

Instructions

1. Start your water boiling for the pasta, make sure it's salted
2. Have all your ingredients ready to go.
3. Drizzle olive oil into a heavy bottomed pan.
4. Saute the onion and garlic until the onion starts to brown around the edges, could take 5 or so minutes.
5. Squeeze tomato paste in along with red pepper flakes.Sir well until the paste coats the onion.
6. Continue stirring until the paste reaches a deep red color and starts to brown on the bottom of the pan, around 5 or so minutes.
7. Add the vodka and deglaze the pan, stirring to incorporate, reduce heat to low.
8. Using a heatproof measuring cup scoop ¼ cup of the boiling water from the pot, then add all the cream to the hot water, this will temper the cream so it doesn't break when added into the sauce.
9. Slowly add the warm cream into the pot, stirring to incorporate.
10. Remove from heat for a few minutes.
11. Add the pasta to the pot of boiling water and cook it al dente according to box instructions.While pasta is boiling, add a little pasta water so it's not so thick.
12. Reserve a good cup of the pasta water to add to sauce to thin out later if needed.
13. When cooked, transfer the pasta into the sauce pot using a spider (as pictured in post).
14. Toss everything together, adding pasta, then the grated cheese, plus enough of the pasta water to have the right consistency.
15. Sauce should be smooth, glossy and coating each piece of the pasta, not runny.
16. Toss in some chopped parsley.
17. Garnishing each plate with a drizzle of olive oil, cheese and more parsley.
18. Enjoy!

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