Does Vodka actually make Pasta taste better?

I find that DRINKING alcohol first, and THEN eating anything, makes it taste WONDERFUL!

My favorite origin story for the sauce is that it was misheard, originally called alla vacca. Vacca translates to cow, referring to the heavy cream and butter you add to a simple tomato sauce. Italy isn't really known for it's vodka industry after all.

I'm a physical chemist. You did a great job on your explanation of the science of water-ethanol solutions. For anyone who is curious about some real nitty gritty: ethanol and water form what's called an azeotrope at around 91-96% abv. This means at these concentrations the boiling point of the solution is lower than the individual boiling point of either of its components individually. If you are interested in evaporation in general there are two models that are pretty interesting. They are Henry's Law and Raoult's law. Hope this sparks some curiosity!

Gin is basically just vodka with juniper berries and sometimes other stuff added to it. I love it for vodka recipes, especially vodka pasta. Also, the longer you cook it for, the more alcohol you can add without it being bitter. I add quite a bit into the sauce and cook it very slowly for an hour or more before adding the cream

I'd love to see a deep dive into olive oil, it's insane how cheap vs expensive you can go

I like how the result of testing pasta ala vodka was that you don't really need to add vodka.

Very interesting. I think this would NOT be the case for myself. My hypothesis is that San Marzano tomatoes were to blame for the lack of significant change on the sauce taste. I live in Argentina, we grow tomatoes here, and imports are scarce and expensive so I always make tomato sauce with home grown tomates. They are WAY more watery and acidic, so they require a different treatment, I go low and slow until they start to have that sweetness that we all know and love (no sugar nor baking soda btw, that's quite common here but I don't do that). In my experience vodka was an ABSOLUTE GAME CHANGER. Like.. head and shoulders ahead from my regular sauce, particularly the sweetness that it provides. I think for me it's about reason #2. Cooking alcohol to make alcohol molecules bound with something on my tomatoes to make them sweeter, which your San Marzano sauce didn't need. Just a food for thought after a thought for food. I'll definitely execute the experiment at home to really test it. Cheers and great content, thank you.

I had vodka pasta at a restaurant with my wife and I thought it was just okay. We both agreed that gin would probably be better due to the flavors. Great to see that you thought gin was the better option too.

Ethan - this new explainer format that you’re doing (like you did for vanilla and Parmesan Reggiano) is everything I’ve ever wanted. I would watch a whole channel of just THAT. Thank you for the efforts!

"Wine is primarily flavored with grapes." is a sentence that will forever haunt me.

I'm using Sake in nearly every cooked dish. I learned this in Japanese recipes that very often use Sake, Soy sauce and Mirin. This also works in other dishes like italian recipes and elevates any flavor. Sake itself has no unpleasant taste of its own and the alcohol content should be minimal due to boiling.

This has to be my favorite cooking / science related Youtube channel. You do such an amazing job at making science fun and practical while still extrapolating enough data to make our brains work a little. Bravo man really I aspire to incorporate this type of content into my normal day to day life, thanks again!

I think one thing missed in this experiment is that the timing of when you add the vodka to the sauce matters. In vodka sauce you’re adding at after frying off the tomato paste with the onion, which exposes the ethanol more directly to the tomato/onion and cooks off much faster. Also, because I’m weird I use dry vermouth in cooking where you’re not wanting the flavor of the alcohol and you’re just wanting the benefit that the ethanol brings to the party.

I really enjoy the blind taste test videos to try and compare the flavors with out the influence of reading a label. Super interesting to see you piece together your impressions and often bring them in line accurately.

One thing to add, as the amount of ethanol evaporated doesnt just depend on the amount of ethanol added prior to cooking, you might actually end up with similar alcohol concentrations despite starting with different amounts - if the cooking time is long enough.

This format is so freaking informational and addicting to watch. Thanks for all the hard work.

I’ve always been skeptical of vodka pasta but since I don’t keep vodka at home never tried it, but often make “vodka style” sauce with no booze. Glad to see I wasn’t missing much if anything!

This is probably the first time when I’m not very satisfied with testing methodic. The best tasting recipe had different time when you introduce alcohol - it is used to deglaze tomato paste, not after you add cream. And here I’m pretty sure it makes significant difference. I definitely could smell fruity aroma of deglazed tomato paste. Also, that recipe included significantly more alcohol (I’d say about 6-8%), because it was introduced earlier and most of it was evaporated. Maybe I’ll try to make pasta alla vodka without alcohol some time to taste the difference for myself

Anytime I make any kind of tomato based sauces, I always add about half a tablespoon of vodka when adding the room temperature tomatoes. That way the alcohol has a little time to extract the alcohol soluble flavors before it starts to evaporate.

Man Ethan really appreciate all the time, work and effort that goes into your videos, especially the sciency ones like this!! I know I would never go through this to find this stuff out but definitely want to know lol - appreciate you going through it for us 😂 Amazing video