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This Creamy Pasta Is Powered by Egg Yolks

Combined with just a few other ingredients, they transform into a quick, easy, and velvety sauce.
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Published Mar. 15, 2023.

This Creamy Pasta Is Powered by Egg Yolks

Want an easy, creamy pasta sauce made from scratch with just a handful of ingredients? It’s possible if you use our recipe for Creamy Secret Ingredient Pasta

And what’s that secret ingredient, you ask? Egg yolks.

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10 ingredients. 45 minutes. Quick, easy, and fresh weeknight recipes.

With help from pasta water and seasoning, the egg yolks in this dish create a velvety sauce that coats each and every piece of pasta. First, we whisk them up with Parmesan, garlic powder, and mustard powder. Then, we temper them by adding hot pasta cooking water to the egg yolks, a little bit at a time. This slowly raises the yolks to a safe temperature, gently cooking them while keeping the sauce smooth (we’d rather save the scramble for breakfast).

Next, we pour the sauce into the cooked pasta and give it a vigorous, 30-second stir. This helps the sauce coat all the pieces of the pasta, but more importantly, all the starch in the pasta thickens up the sauce. Letting it sit for a minute and then giving it another stir completes this process, resulting in that perfectly creamy sauce we crave.

It’s a dish that’s so simple and quick, even kids can make it—which is why it landed a spot in one of ATK Kids’ most recent cookbooks, Kids Can Cook Anything!

Book

Kids Can Cook Anything!

This bright, accessible book features impressive but kid-friendly recipes, plus how-tos, and links to 20 videos exploring kitchen techniques!

This recipe was developed with farfalle pasta, but you can swap it out with other short pasta shapes like ziti, penne, or medium shells, if you like. Whatever kind you choose, make sure you use 6 ounces—it’s the proportion of pasta to water that gets you just the right amount of starch in the cooking water.

The cherry (or rather, grated Parmesan) on top? This recipe takes about 35 minutes from start to finish, which makes it an egg-cellent choice for a lunchtime meal or weeknight dinner.

Recipe

Creamy Secret Ingredient Pasta

Kids can make their own creamy, cheesy pasta in just about half an hour. The secret to the silky sauce? Egg yolks.
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