The Smoothest, Creamiest, Alfredo Sauce Ever

Ever since I started making homemade Alfredo sauce I gag at the thought of eating the canned version.  Trust me, a well made Alfredo sauce is 100X better. After making this several times I have finally perfected this recipe and cut down the cooking time drastically. I do not sit there and stir the sauce forever until it gets thick like traditional Alfredo sauce. Anyways, the longer it cooks the higher the chances of over heating the sauce which creates the tiniest "curdle balls" for a lack of a better way to describe it.

My sauce has mushrooms and artichokes in it. If you do not like those ingredients you can skip them.

Ingredients:

2lbs boneless, skinless, chicken thighs
Spaghetti pasta, mine was whole wheat
Whatever seasonings you like to use on chicken

Sauce:
4 tbs butter
1.5 tsp minced garlic
8oz white or portabello mushrooms
10 oz drained and chopped up artichoke hearts
3.5 cups half and half milk
1.5 cups Parmesan cheese
one egg yolk

Sauce Thickener:
Mix 2.5 tbs corn starch with 1 tbs cold water


Begin by seasoning the chicken thighs. I used some Italian seasoning, meat tenderizer, garlic salt, and cracked pepper. I practically do this for all meats that I cook. Season to your liking. Then I grilled the chicken on my George Foreman grill...yes I use this grill all the time.

Mine were small pieces, so it took about 10 minutes on each side. My grill is double sided (griddle on the bottom, and one on the top). Because of this my cooking times may be faster than a regular grill. In the meantime, I started boiling my pasta.

Next, I put the butter into a medium saucepan with the minced garlic on low heat. I let the butter and garlic simmer together for about 5 minutes. Do not crank up the heat or the garlic will burn.

 While the butter and garlic cooked, I chopped up my mushrooms and the artichoke hearts.

After the 5 minutes has passed, I added the mushrooms and artichoke hearts to the garlic butter. I let this cook for about 15 minutes. Just make sure the mushrooms are nice and soft. They shrink during the cooking process and brown up.

Then I added the half and half milk, and Parmesan cheese. Stir the mixture. Separate the egg yolk from the egg white and mix the egg yolk with a fork. I do not temper my egg yolk, I'm just quick about this next step. Slowly pour the egg yolk into the mixture while stirring the sauce very fast. Be careful not to spill sauce everywhere. When I do this I dont get any scrambled egg yolk in my sauce. If your worried you cant do it, then temper the egg yolk by adding 1/2 cup of the sauce to it, while mixing it together. Then add the egg yolk back into the sauce located in the medium sauce pan.

This whole time your sauce pan should have been on low heat. At this point bring it up to medium heat. Prepare the corn starch and water. Mix the starch until it dissolves in the water.
Now pay attention. Add the dissolved corn starch while stirring the sauce. From the moment that you added the half and half milk, Parmesan cheese, egg yolk, etc... until now, it should have taken less than 5 minutes. Be quick about it. The longer the milk and cheese cooks, the hotter it gets, and the more chances it will curdle. When it curdles forget it, the sauce does not have that nice creamy and smooth texture it should. Your purpose is to not cook the milk, and cheeses, but to hurry up and mix them together so you can thicken the sauce with the corn starch and the sauce is done.

Some people like their sauce more ""loose" or "watery" so skip the corn starch step. Maybe the curdling happens more easily because I use half and half milk instead of heavy cream? I have a hard time getting heavy cream at Aldi's thus why I use half and half. But to me, it tastes the same. I also use corn starch instead of flour to thicken things. I like how I can dissolve the starch into water which gets rid of all the lumps, making a nice smooth sauce.

After the sauce thickens turn off the heat. Add some freshly cracked pepper. Taste the sauce, and see if you would like to add more salt or pepper. By this time, the chicken and pasta should be ready. Drain the pasta, and I like to chop up the chicken.

I chopped up some fresh basil from my herb garden to garnish the dish.