This Nonna-Approved Pasta Hack Will Take Your Italian Dinner Up a Notch

It'll make your pasta sauce actually cling to your noodles.

Whether you’re a college student, a mom with little ones, or really any cook, chances are pasta with sauce is on your menu this week. It is simple, affordable, reliable, and delicious—a no-brainer when you need a last-minute, pantry-friendly meal. So when TikToker @steelpan.guy said he had a “special nonna hack” to make any weeknight pasta ten times better, we were all ears.

The beauty of this hack is how simple it is: It uses ingredients you’re already adding to your pasta: butter and grated cheese. The genius comes from when these ingredients are added. Instead of adding butter to the sauce and grating cheese over the finished dish, the butter and cheese are added to the hot cooked pasta before tossing with the sauce, coating the bare noodles first. This helps the pasta cling to the sauce and makes it even tastier.

The Butter and Cheese Pasta Hack

This is just one of our favorite internet cooking hacks to come from TikTok, including freezing tomato paste, instantly softening butter, and roasting a chicken in a bundt pan.

Here’s how to do it:

Once your pasta is cooked and drained, transfer it to a large serving bowl. Add a tablespoon or two of butter and some grated Parmesan cheese. Use your serving spoon, or the one you’ve been using to stir your sauce, to toss the pasta, butter, and cheese in the bowl. When the butter has melted and the noodles are nicely coated, you can add your sauce and toss.

Another rule Italian mothers and grandmothers insist on? Toss the pasta in a serving bowl, never in the pot, and toss with the sauce before serving, never spooned over each person’s plate.

Why the Butter and Cheese Hack Works

There’s some real wisdom behind this deceptively simple nonna hack: Hot-cooked pasta has a short window when it’s primed for the sauce. If it cools just a little too much after draining, the noodles will stick to each other and the sauce won’t cling as well. Tossing with butter and cheese is like an insurance policy in this case. It gives the sauce something else to cling to while keeping the noodle's surface just slippery enough so they won’t clump together. The pasta also absorbs the butter and cheese, adding fantastic flavor that might get lost otherwise.

When to Use the Butter and Cheese Pasta Hack

The best part of this hack is that it can be used with any pasta shape, from rigatoni to rotini. It works best when combined with a red sauce, though a pesto or cream sauce would be delicious too. Just remember to toss with the butter and cheese as soon as the hot pasta is drained. Buon appetito! 

Read the original article on All Recipes.