Vodka sauce, hold the vodka, and add some spice. Is it worth all the hype? The answer is YES.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid posted her Spicy Vodka sauce recipe on her Instagram story during Spring quarantine and it went viral on TikTok. Suddenly, people stopped caring whether Gigi was dating Zayn Malik or if she was pregnant, and everyone was obsessed with her pasta recipe! Well played, Gigi.
After watching countless videos of Hadid’s recipe on Food TikTok, and reading the raving reviews, it was time to give it a shot.
The recipe is fairly simple. However, I don’t recommend beginning to cook without a can opener! My housemate and I started heating up the oil, onion, and garlic when we realized we had no way of opening the tomato paste can.
After about 20 minutes of YouTube tutorials and WikiHow instructions, trying to scrape the can against the asphalt and attempting to cut it open with a bread knife (really, don’t try this at home), we gave up and dashed to Target. We picked up a new can opener for the low low price of $7, and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for the ride home.
The mini crisis was averted, and we got cooking.
Chopping the onion and garlic was probably the most difficult (and annoying), since I only cook if I absolutely must. I’m also not the biggest fan of red onion, but you hardly notice it in the sauce. I highly recommend cooking with a friend; you can hand off the chopping duties to them. Plus, it’s more fun belting “Drivers License” and Folklore with a duet partner as you prep.
Once you have the oil, onion, and garlic in the pan the rest is just too easy. You mix the tomato paste and spices in, and then add the cream and water. Once the pasta is done cooking, you can toss the pasta right into the pan then add the grated cheese and butter.
If you don’t like spice, I’d say go a little lighter on the red pepper flakes.Otherwise, I have no complaints.
My kitchen smelled like a Italian restaurant for the rest of the night. Since we can’t travel at the moment, shoutout Covid, and we’re all broke college students, cooking this dish was like a mini trip to Rome! The whole recipe took about 30 minutes to make, but you could eat two bowls of it in half that time.
I even added Trader Joe’s grilled chicken to my recipe (sorry Gigi, I had to make it my own) and it was amazing.
Obviously, the recipe is much more complex than Kraft Mac and Cheese, but it’s definitely worth the extra time and money.
Thanks to Gigi, those of us confined at college can take a break from a strict diet of ramen noodles or frozen pizza, and indulge in finer dining.
Ingredients:
¼ cup of olive oil
½ a red onion
2 cloves of garlic
6 oz of tomato paste
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper
1 cup of heavy cream
⅓ cup of pasta water
3 cups of cooked pasta
1 cup of parmesan cheese
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp fresh basil