Lemon Butter Pasta Recipe — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:01] love most about traditional Italian pastas is the simplicity of ingredients and pasta al limone is a perfect example. Just a handful of ingredients come together to make something incredibly fresh, bright, and perfect

[00:14] shot and I have a feeling it will become one of those recipes that [music] you just keep coming back to. Now, let's go. Now, you got to love any pasta recipe that has only four ingredients, which in this case are unsalted butter, your

[00:27] pasta of choice. I'm just using spaghetti today. I think it works really old-fashioned lemon, simple as that. And cheese, which in this case is either Parmesan or pecorino. You know, I've tried it with both and I couldn't decide

[00:40] a combination of both, but you can use either or. Now, before I show you how to throw this simple pasta together, we're going to make a very simple lemon oil to sort of drizzle on top once it's finished. was doing the research for

[00:53] Italian chef and that's what he did at his restaurant and I definitely wanted looks super interesting and it's incredibly easy to do. What we're going using avocado oil. You could use grapeseed or what have you and I'm just

[01:06] going to put I don't know, about a third of a cup in the blender and then I'll lemon. This is a large lemon. Then, we'll pop a lid on and just blend at we'll pop a lid on and just blend at high speed for about 45 seconds.

[01:22] bowl and I'm just going to take a spoon and just sort of push through and that's going to use this really sparingly. It does just taste pretty lemony and would be at all, just a slight bitterness. Now, we need to get to

[01:34] zesting and juicing our lemons for the pasta and one great technique I found is putting your thumb on the base of the lemon and then taking the very bottom of the microplane and just zesting around the lemon like this. Doing it this way

[01:48] as opposed to rubbing the lemon on the microplane is just so much more consistent. As you can see here in the end, I get one really nice even layer off the edge. I learned this trick from a pastry chef about a decade ago and

[02:00] it a shot. Once all your lemons are zested, then we're just going to half them and juice them right into the bowl along with the zest. And then we can just set that aside for now. Now, let me say this. I absolutely love my morning

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[03:07] a friend. Thank you Element for sponsoring this video. Now, back to the recipe. Now, once your water is boiling, make sure you salt it up, but not super your spaghetti from your paper towel holder and into the pot. And if it

[03:21] doesn't all fit, I just do a little splashing like this. It'll be in in no time. Look, actually in actually right [music] now with no editing. And you need to let this pasta cook for about 6 or 7 minutes before you start building

[03:33] your sauce because we're going to be using that starchy pasta water to begin know if production was the right word, but we're making an emulsion with it. of our pasta water here. And then with the heat on really low, we're going to

[03:46] start whisking in little cubes of cold unsalted butter to make a a of emulsion here. And once that first batch of butter is worked in, you can then start adding more. And there you have it. That took about 3 minutes to build, which is

[03:58] pasta. So, we're starting with this butter emulsion. I've seen a lot of that they've juiced, but I tried that and it didn't make a big difference for me, but you could do that if you want to extract more of the flavor, I suppose.

[04:12] is when I add the lemon juice and the zest, cuz I'm trying to retain that really vibrant fresh flavor of the lemon. I don't want to cook it too much. Now, here we go. Pasta's been cooking. It is pretty much done right now. A lot

[04:25] sauce, but this one I do when it's almost done. If the box says cook for 10 minutes, I did this for 9 minutes and 30 seconds. Now, with the heat on medium, you'll begin to see all that beautiful liquid now being absorbed into the

[04:38] pasta, which is what we're after. Just about a minute of cooking in this pot, cheese, and I'm going to toss like this as I add it in. Now, we want to start really mixing, and you can see how it's turning into this really creamy looking

[04:51] just the cheese, the pasta water, the butter, the lemon, all doing its work. And if for some reason yours looks like it's drying out, and this is the move with so many pastas, is you just add a touch of pasta water, which essentially

[05:04] is going to rehydrate it and make that creamy sauce all over again. And there look how creamy that got, right? No cream, just all those ingredients. Look how it comes together. And here we go, my friends. Look at that. And again,

[05:18] a tiny little drizzle of our lemon oil and some very thinly sliced mint. I love this touch, but it's up to you. All right, Marcus, pasta al limone, [music] or as the Italians would say, and as I would say, pasta time. It's

[05:34] pasta time. That's right. Oh!

[06:02] things you truly have to make to understand. Cuz like in your head you're like, "Oh, lemon butter and pasta." But like it just works so well and it makes eating pasta seem so light. When I tried all this I ate a huge bowl of pasta and

[06:14] gluten. I'm good." >> it is. >> It's only gets placeboed, but this would >> Yeah, or seafood. I think it'd be great with seafood, too.

[06:27] >> But it makes pasta so much lighter. And the thing that makes Italian food so good is this is four ingredients and it feels so much more prestigious. >> Dude, lemons, butter, Parmesan, or pecorino. It's definitely a winner, my

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