Simple Creamy Pasta Sauce

Ingredients

• 60 ml Dairy liquid cream
• 1 tsp Flour

Method

Make a roux first. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, then add the flour and stir constantly for about one minute. You're cooking out the raw flour taste and hydrating the starch granules — skip this step and your sauce will taste chalky and thin. The mixture should smell toasted and faintly nutty, not raw.

Pour the cold cream in slowly while whisking hard. This is critical: cold liquid hitting hot roux means the starch granules hydrate evenly, which prevents lumps forming. If you dump it all in at once, you'll get a slurry that seizes into clumps. Whisk until smooth, then increase the heat to medium-high.

The sauce will thicken as it simmers — you're looking for the thickening point where starch granules absorb liquid and swell. This takes around three to four minutes. Watch for the surface to move as a single sheet when you tilt the pan; if you can draw a clear line with your spoon across the bottom and it holds for a second before collapsing, you've got medium coating consistency. Don't let it boil hard — vigorous bubbles break down the sauce and can cause it to split (the fat separates from the liquid). A gentle simmer is all you need.

Taste and adjust now. Salt it properly — cream masks salt, so you'll need more than you think. If it's too thick, add cream one tablespoon at a time. Too thin? Let it simmer another minute or two; the reduction does the work. Some cooks will make a slurry with a teaspoon of flour and a splash of cold water, whisked smooth, then stir it in — this works if you're impatient, but it risks introducing lumps.

Dress the hot pasta directly into the pan and toss hard for thirty seconds. The starch from the pasta water (reserve 100ml before draining) will thin the sauce slightly and help it cling to the pasta. Serve immediately — once this cream-based-sauces cools it congeals, and reheating often causes the emulsion to break.