How The World’s Best Buttered Noodles Are Made

Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit joins Chef Mattia Moliterni of Roscioli NYC, the legendary Roman restaurant’s New York outpost, as he makes their award-winning Burro e Parmigiano (Buttered Noodles). Made with just three high-quality ingredients–pasta, creamy butter, and Parmigiano Reggiano–these buttered noodles come together in mere minutes and deliver an irresistibly rich, velvety flavor. A simple yet delicious meal, discover why Roscioli’s version is considered one of the best buttered noodles dishes in the world.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Mattia Moliterni from Rochali New York City and today we make our perfect

00:06version of pasta, burro and parmigiano. Rochali is a family business. Everything

00:13started in Rome in 1972 with the bakery. We opened in 2023 the restaurant here in

00:18Soho in New York City. It's very simple, just the two ingredients, the pasta, the

00:23butter and the parmigiano reggiano. In some ways a home dish but it's extremely

00:28taste is extremely rich. This is going to happen quickly. The first thing that we

00:32do is to cook our pasta. For this recipe we use maccheroni. It's a shape that is

00:41very similar to a rigatone. It's coming from an artisan producer in the central

00:46part of Italy on the east coast. With this pasta you have more surface area. You

00:50can see that thanks to the bronze dyes the pasta is very rough and it's great to

00:55catch the sauce. When the salted butter is boiling we can add our macaroni. We want

01:01to cook them not exactly al dente. We want to remove them let's say a couple of

01:06minutes before the pasta is perfectly cooked. The type of cheese that we use

01:10for this pasta is very important. We use parmigiano reggiano. There are many

01:14different types of parmigiano reggiano. We tried the multiple combinations. In terms of

01:20aging 24-30 months I wouldn't go over that aging because otherwise the cheese

01:25gets too dry, too salty. We grate our parmigiano very fine using a machine that

01:31we have in another section in the kitchen. To get to this very fine texture at home

01:36you can just use your grate. The small holes are going to be way better and it's

01:41going to be way easier to make the cream. For this pasta since you have very few

01:45ingredients using a real parmigiano reggiano would help a lot. So if you see

01:50the stamp here it means that it's authentic. For this recipe we use butter

01:55demi-cel from Normandy in France. The amount of fat average is slightly higher

02:00than the one that you find in the Italian butter rather than American butter. For

02:05French butter usually the demi-cel is addition with crystals of salt and it's

02:11even fermented. This gives a little bit of acidic flour which makes this butter

02:16extremely unique. For this recipe I would recommend to use a butter that is high

02:21on fat slightly salty like the demi-cel that we are using right now. I would

02:26recommend you to leave the butter in the fridge until the pasta is ready. It will

02:29make way easier to emulsify the pasta and turns to the thermic shock it's going to be

02:36way more creamy. We want to use a pan with high walls. When you emulsify it, when you

02:43are melting the pasta, it's going to be way easier to have it creamy. Pasta is

02:49almost cooked. It requires two minutes in the pan, not more than that. A bit of water

02:53is not a big problem, it's going to help. The pasta releases starch and so it helps to

02:59make it very creamy. This is not the kind of recipe where we want too much starch

03:04because all the ingredients are already very creamy. When you put the heat like

03:07a high level, you melt it for a couple of minutes. As soon as you see that this

03:11becoming is reducing, you can turn off the fire and once the fire is turned off

03:18add the parmigiano-reggiano. Now this is very important because when you add

03:23parmigiano-reggiano, it's like there is the tricky moment because if the pan is too

03:29hot, parmigiano-reggiano is going to become chewy right away. At the same time we have to go

03:33fast because we don't want to eat pasta cold. So this is an important moment,

03:37it's an important step. The goal here is to have a pasta that is perfectly creamy,

03:45the sauce has to be very smooth. Adding pasta water with the starch, little by

03:50little, it's a big help. Don't add too much water because then if the pasta is too

03:55watery, you will have to put back other parmigiano-reggiano and it's going to

03:59unbalance the flavor because probably it's going to become too salty. This whole

04:03process should take not more than a couple of minutes because again you

04:07don't need too much starch. It's time to plate. Macaroni in the pan, you see that

04:13are perfectly glazed. Now the last thing to do is take a little bit of parmigiano-reggiano

04:21and you add it on top. And it's done. Quick and easy and now we can eat it. This is actually my favorite pasta.

04:42Pretty good. The pasta is al dente, it's extremely creamy, you can feel the flavor of this beautiful butter

04:49and the parmigiano-reggiano gives the right saltiness. It's not too strong, it's not overwhelming.

04:54I mean, so easy, so simple, but so tasty, it's delicious. Just a few ingredients but a lot of flavors,

05:01a lot of complexity. It's very rich but at the same time not too fatty. You can impress people with a

05:07very simple recipe. Just don't call it butter noodles. It's pasta, burro and parmigiano-reggiano.

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