4 Ways to Thicken Alfredo Sauce, According to a Chef (2024)

• Food & Cooking
• Cooking How-Tos & Techniques

Eating creamy, decadent pasta coated in Alfredo sauce is always a treat. This mouthwatering sauce is surprisingly simple to make at home—all you need is unsalted butter, garlic, heavy cream, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. But what happens if your sauce doesn’t quite have the consistency you’d like? If you’re wondering how to thicken Alfredo sauce to achieve a silky, irresistibly delicious pasta topper, here are four chef-approved methods to try.

Add More Cheese

This first method is not only the easiest but also arguably the most delicious. The key ingredient that adds the most flavor to Alfredo sauce is cheese (generally Parmigiano-Reggiano, but Pecorino Romano or Grana Padano can be used instead) and lots of it.To thicken the Alfredo sauce, simply add more cheese at the end until you achieve the consistency you want.

Reduce the Heavy Cream

Another way to thicken Alfredo sauce is by further reducing the heavy cream during the cooking process before you add the cheese. “Generally, heavy cream is reduced by half to make an Alfredo sauce. If you want an even thicker, richer sauce, you can triple reduce it,” says Christopher Arturo, chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education. This means that if a recipe calls for one cup of heavy cream, you should reduce it until it measures about one-third cup; the water content will have evaporated, leaving behind a very decadent creamy sauce.

Toss the Pasta With Flour

If you’re serving fresh pasta with homemade Alfredo sauce, one way to naturally thicken the sauce is by tossing the uncooked pasta with flour before cooking it. The flour will help form a very starchy pasta water; when you transfer the pasta to the sauce, it will carry over some of that starch, which will thicken the sauce, says Arturo. Here’s how to do this without making a mess:

1. Place the pasta in a bowl that’s large enough to allow some room for tossing.
2. Add a generous spoonful of flour–all-purpose is fine. Using tongs or your hands, gently toss the pasta until all of the noodles are evenly coated with a fairly thick layer of flour.
3. Slide the noodles and any excess flour directly into the pot of boiling water.

Use Cornstarch

Finally, Arturo says that you can make a cornstarch slurry, which is a mixture of cornstarch and water that should resemble the consistency of heavy cream. “Always make more than you need and use less than you think,” he says. This advice will leave you with the creamiest Alfredo sauce you’ve ever tasted. Here's how to make it:

1. In a bowl, whisk together equal parts of cornstarch and water—about 2 tablespoons of each for four servings of pasta and sauce.
2. Add 2 teaspoons of the slurry to the Alfredo sauce.
3. Bring the sauce to a boil to activate the starch, then add more slurry, 1 teaspoon at a time, as needed.