If Your Creamy Pasta Sauces Are Coming Out Bland, This Is The Technique You're Missing

A creamy pasta sauce can look silky and restaurant-worthy, but looks aren't everything as creamy pasta can easily taste flat. The issue happens long before the cream even hits the pan. When building a truly delicious creamy pasta sauce, you have to take your time with the flavors, so everything blooms. This can change everything.

All good pasta sauces start the same — by slowly softening diced onions until translucent and then adding minced garlic or, better yet, a roasted head of garlic. You can also throw herbs and spices, like black pepper, nutmeg or paprika, into some hot oil to release their natural fats instead of just tossing them into the sauce raw toward the end. This helps ramp up their fragrance.  All these tiny steps add up, and they matter because whilst whipping up a three-ingredient Alfredo sauce is great, sometimes you will have better results taking the time to layer in the flavors. Once your base is fragrant and golden, add room temperature cream. This is to ensure your pasta sauce doesn't leave you with clumps.

Now that you've mastered the aromatic stage, the next step is all about building the sauce itself. Keep the heat on low — you don't want to boil or burn the cream but rather let it reduce at its own pace. A good rule is to add a little splash of the pasta water to give the fat some starch, which helps the sauce cling to the pasta. The next step is all too often overlooked: brightening it all up. A rich, creamy sauce benefits from a little acidity in order to balance the whole thing out. Consider adding a squeeze of lemon, splash of white wine, or even a little spoonful of vinegar. And finally, add parmesan toward the end so that it melts nicely and doesn't become lumpy.

Then it comes down to what pasta you're using with your creamy and balanced sauce — some of the best types of pasta to use with a cream sauce include fettuccine and penne since both of these shapes hold onto more sauce instead of it just slipping off. With these touches, your sauce will start tasting like something intentional and much more impressive.