Rachael Ray's Cheese-Bomb Pasta Made Her Audience Literally Scream
Everything is better with cheese. The National Historic Cheesemaking Center — which is entirely real, and magnificent — says on its website that the exact origin of cheese isn't known, but is naturally attached to agriculture and the use of animals for their milk. The International Dairy Foods Association says that the history is certainly more than 4,000 years old, and has a legend surrounding its creation. Supposedly it was caused by curdled milk that a merchant was transporting which separated into curds and whey. This provided a new and satisfying form of sustenance.
Now, cheese is so ingrained in the culinary world that people can actually have powerful cheese cravings. This is probably due to an addictive protein called casein, which impacts your brain similarly to morphine. Whether it's the casein or just the delightful flavor of a hot cheese melted over pretty much anything, it's hard not to get excited about an ooey gooey dish loaded with delicious dairy. This is what Rachael Ray was counting on when she cooked up a pasta platter worthy of screaming about.
Despite Rachael's tendency to avoid whipping the audience into a frenzy, as Emeril did with his signature "Bam!" explosives, when she made a cheese-bomb pasta, people lost control. Oohs and Aahs just weren't going to cut it.
How can you not get excited about a half pound of hot cheese
The dish that Ray was making for the show began as a relatively tame little pasta piece called "Creamy Three-Meat Ragu with Pappardelle & Burrata." The first thing to get out of your mind is that ragu in any way references the Ragu grocery store sauce brand. Ragu is actually a sauce based around meat, so says the food blog Taste of Lizzy T. A ragu sauce also includes cream. This makes it different from a bolognese or a marinara, in that it has less sauce, more filling meat, and a hint of dairy.
During cooking, Ray suggested using the rind of parmesan cheese in the sauce in order to help give it a cheesy flavor. She also added some tomato puree called passata. This is an interesting choice that the Kitchn notes is popular in Europe. The passata isn't cooked the same way as tomato paste or sauces, and as such will give a dish a slightly different flavor.
The big reveal, though, came at the end, once the bubbly host had cooked the sauce and pasta together. She then dumped it out and dropped a full 8 ounces of burrata straight into the molten dish for a cheese explosion that set people to hooting, applauding, and screaming "YES!"