Easy Peasy Alfredo Sauce

P, my love, is a great believer in the Atkins Diet.  I oppose the Atkins Diet, but let's not get into an argument about which ways of eating or dieting are the best.  The point is, while I oppose it, I love P and want to support him as best I can.  SO I decided I needed to come up with an Atkins approved meal that wasn't a plate of bacon (although that IS delicious) and incorporated one of his favorite things.  I looked at several Atkins recipes and to be honest I was very underwhelmed.  So I made up my own recipe.  And part of that recipe involved one of P's favoritest things: ALFREDO SAUCE.

Up until now, I have been lazy when it comes to sauces.  Buy the jar, heat the contents, pour on top.  However, store bought alfredo sauce is NOT Atkins friendly.  It's full of sugar and carbs and God knows how many chemical additives.  So I decided it was finally time to make sauce from scratch.  I searched for a good sounding Alfredo recipe and this is the result.  Simple, easy, delicious.  PLUS, hardly any carbs for those carb haters out there, AND no weird ingredients you can't pronounce.  Without further ado, I present to you, my official go-to Alfredo sauce recipe:

SIMPLE ALFREDO SAUCE

• 1/4 cup (half a stick) of butter
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed 

Heat the butter in a sauce pan over medium low heat until melted.  Turn up the heat to medium or a little above medium.  Pour in the heavy cream and whisk together with the butter.  Get the mixture simmering, NOT boiling, and simmer for 5 minutes (you'll need to turn the temp down to a medium-low once it starts simmering).  Whisk occasionally while it simmers.  

While your butter is melting and your milk is simmering, or beforehand if you like to have a mis-en-place like me, get a piece of parmesan cheese and your box grater and grate the cheese.  DO NOT BUY A BAG OF SHREDDED PARMESAN CHEESE.  Seriously.  The difference will blow your freaking mind.  AND in case you didn't know, that conveniently shredded cheese is conveniently coated with chemicals to prevent it from all sticking together.  Buy a block and spend 2 extra minutes shredding the real deal.  You're welcome.

Next, get out your handy garlic press and crush a couple cloves of garlic really good.  If you don't have a garlic press, you could probably try mincing the garlic SUPER fine.  you just don't want garlic chunks in the finished product.

Ok, so after simmering the butter/cream mixture for 5 minutes, throw in the garlic, and then slowly whisk in the Parmesan cheese.  Once everything is incorporated, serve it!  Don't keep cooking it.  It's fine.  Turn off the stove and pour it over whatever you were making and make sure you have some sort of bread to sop up the extra sauce because licking the plate might seem kind of extreme.  Unless you are alone when you make this.  Then feel free to lick the plate to your heart's content.  It'll be our little secret.

P.S. no pictures on this one because I'd just take a picture of the ingredients and then some white sauce, which isn't very exciting looking (but super exciting tasting!).