Pasta
Cacio e Pepe
The Roman pasta of just three ingredients: spaghetti tossed with finely grated Pecorino Romano, toasted cracked black pepper and starchy cooking water into a smooth, glossy sauce.
- Serves 2
- Hands-on 15 min
- Ready in 15 min
- Use a fine grater for the cheese
- Cook just before eating
- Italian (Roman)
Method
Bring a large pan of water to the boil but salt it only lightly: the Pecorino is salty. Cook the spaghetti (200 g) for 2 minutes less than the packet time.
Meanwhile toast the cracked pepper (2 tsp) in a large, dry frying pan over a medium heat for 1 minute, until fragrant. Add a ladle (about 150 ml) of the pasta water and the butter (15 g) and let it bubble.
Put the grated Pecorino (80 g) in a bowl and stir in 3–4 tbsp of lukewarm (not boiling) pasta water to make a smooth, thick paste.
Lift the spaghetti straight into the frying pan with tongs and toss for 1–2 minutes over the heat, adding a splash more pasta water, until it is al dente and the water has thickened to a starchy glaze.
Take the pan off the heat and wait 30 seconds. Add the cheese paste and toss hard, adding pasta water a spoonful at a time, until the sauce is creamy and clings to the pasta. Serve at once with more Pecorino and pepper.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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See also
Chef’s notes
- Cheese that meets very hot liquid clumps. Making a paste with cooler water first, and adding it off the heat, is the trick that stops lumps.
- Cook the pasta in less water than usual (about 2 litres) so the cooking water is starchier.
- Parmesan works but gives a milder, sweeter sauce. Half Pecorino and half Parmesan is a good compromise.
Cheese and pepper
Cacio e pepe means “cheese and pepper” in the dialects of central Italy. It belongs to the cooking of Lazio, around Rome, where it is made with Pecorino Romano and tonnarelli or spaghetti.
A common story credits shepherds of Lazio, Abruzzo, Tuscany and Umbria, who could carry dried pasta, hard sheep’s cheese and pepper on the move. Black pepper was costly, though, and it was probably added to the dish much later. Making the sauce smooth rather than lumpy is notoriously tricky: in 2025 a group of physicists won an Ig Nobel Prize for working out a reliable method.
Sources for these notes
For the history above.
How this recipe was developed
We compared cacio e pepe on BBC Good Food (its own and Danilo Cortellini’s authentic version) and Rachel Phipps’s recipe on BBC Food.
- Toast the pepper. We toast cracked pepper in the pan first, so its flavour carries through the sauce.
- A cheese paste. Danilo Cortellini mixes the Pecorino with pasta water before it meets the pasta; we do the same, off the heat, to stop lumps.
- Butter optional. BBC Good Food’s quick version (3.95/5 from 74 ratings) uses butter as a safety net; we left it optional.
- Finish in the pan. Rachel Phipps (BBC Food, 3.8/5 from 29 ratings) finishes the pasta in the pan with its water; we explain how to judge the glaze.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- BBC Good Food (Good Food team): Cacio e pepe (3.95/5, 74 ratings)
- BBC Good Food (Danilo Cortellini): Authentic spaghetti cacio e pepe
- BBC Food (Rachel Phipps): Cacio e pepe (3.8/5, 29 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.