Pioneer Pasta a la Vodka!

So I guess this is part one of an unintended three part posting to document my forging into the pioneer. Wait. No, that's not quite right. More like as I try three recipes from Pioneer Woman's site. Yup - that's more like it!!!

I'd tried making a vodka sauce years ago that we HAAAATED. And then a year or so ago Randy and Larry had us over for dinner where Randy whipped up this amazing vodka sauce for pasta - we were all drooling over the stuff! And when Pioneer Woman recently posted her take on vodka sauce, I was soooo tempted to give it another try, but worried I'd have another bomb.

Part of my concern was we don't buy nice vodka. We get the cheap shit. The REALLY cheap shit. I rarely have it in anything anyhow (once or twice a year at most), and Brett dumps it into Diet Mountain Dew for his own recipe he dubbed "Hulk Juice". Swirl it into something as nasty as Diet Mountain Dew and I really doubt you'll notice the vodka's cheap. ;-)

I'd picked up the ingredients based on memory from her recipe, and hadn't yet read through the comments, etc. Just an hour or so before I started (and long after the shopping had been done), I saw comments about how you were to NOT use cheap vodka - that it would ruin the dish.

Aw shit.

Someone suggested not evening doing the three minute cooking time after adding the vodka, but a number of other folks mentioned they tried that and the dish was waaaay too harsh. Since we were dealing with the cheap vodka, the LAST thing I needed to risk was making it even more "harsh". The recipe called for 3/4 to 1 cup of vodka and three minutes of cooking time after adding it. Just to play it safe, I followed everything else in the recipe but this part, where I went with 1/2 cup of vodka, and about 4 minutes of cooking time.

This stuff was GREAT!

Thing is, it was so great that I barely took time to take any pictures! Here's a quick, slightly out of focus one, just before I dove in!



I have to say, the cream and pureed tomatoes combine to make a nicely colored sauce - sort of a cross between pink and orange? I have to say, there's nothing "light" about this sauce but the color...not that that's a bad thing. I mean, I'm not worried about taking in too much heavy cream and parmesian, riiiiight? ;-)

A couple days later, when I was working from home, I need a quick lunch, and something warm to take off the chill of all the snow we've had. I dug around in the freezer for a bag of ground beef I'd already cooked up (usually used when we want to throw together spaghetti or chili), chiseled off a small bit and nuked it, and then added the sauce and noodles for a more filling lunch. Mmmm - good stuff!


I DEFINITELY recommend this recipe!!