Recipes
Aglio e Olio Recipe: Spaghetti with Garlic, Chilli and Olive Oil
The four-ingredient version by weight and volume, for two and for four, with the pasta-water step that turns oil into sauce and the point past which garlic ruins the plate.
The short answer
Aglio e olio is spaghetti, garlic, chilli and extra virgin olive oil bound with starchy pasta water. Weigh the pasta, take the garlic only as far as blond, keep a mugful of the cooking water back, and stir the last third of the oil in raw off the heat.
Aglio e olio exposes a kitchen: four ingredients, twelve minutes, nothing on the plate to hide behind.
Two things separate a good bowl from an oily one: the pasta water, and how far the garlic went.
The four ingredients, by weight and volume
Spaghetti, garlic, chilli and extra virgin olive oil, finished with parsley and a ladle of the water the pasta cooked in. With so few components, quantities matter more here than in a dish of fifteen. Weigh the pasta and measure the oil.
| Ingredient | For two | For four |
|---|---|---|
| Spaghetti | 200 g | 400 g |
| Extra virgin olive oil | 60 ml (4 tbsp) | 120 ml (8 tbsp) |
| Garlic, sliced thin | 4 cloves (20 g) | 8 cloves (40 g) |
| Dried red chilli | 1 whole | 2 whole |
| Parsley, chopped | 3 tbsp | 6 tbsp |
| Water and salt | 2 litres, 20 g | 4 litres, 40 g |
How to make aglio olio, step by step
Everything happens in the time the spaghetti takes, so slice the garlic and chop the parsley before the water boils. The method below runs pan and pot in parallel and brings them together while both are hot, the only moment a sauce will form.
- Boil 2 litres of water, salted with 20 g — double every quantity in this method for four. It should taste clearly salty.
- Slice the garlic thin by hand; chopped garlic burns, slices cook evenly.
- Drop the spaghetti, timer set one minute short of the packet time.
- With about five minutes left on the pasta, put 40 ml of oil and the garlic in a cold wide pan over low heat.
- When the edges turn pale gold, about four minutes, add the chilli and pull the pan off.
- Keep a mugful of cooking water back, drain, and lift the spaghetti across; add a ladle, 120 ml, of that water.
- Back on medium heat, toss hard for 60 to 90 seconds until the liquid clings.
- Off the heat, stir in parsley and the last 20 ml of oil raw. Serve immediately.
The pasta water step people get wrong
The sauce is an emulsion. Starch dissolved in the cooking water holds oil and water together so the mixture coats every strand instead of pooling under it. Two habits break it: draining into a colander and losing that water, and finishing the toss off the heat.
- Keep a mugful back before draining. It is the only thickener here.
- Undercook by two minutes. The rest happens in the pan.
- Toss, do not stir. Agitation forces oil and water to combine.
- Judge by the pan, not the clock: ready when it turns glossy.
Garlic: blond, never brown
Garlic in warm oil travels from raw to sweet to bitter fast, and brown garlic ruins the plate because the oil carries that bitterness into every strand. Blond is the target: pale gold at the edges, still soft in the middle, smelling sweet. A cold start buys time.
- A few dark edges? Off the heat at once, lift those slices out.
- Brown and smelling acrid? Start over. Four minutes against a bitter dinner.
- Burning every time? Use a wider pan: one layer cooks evenly.
Chilli, parsley and the second pour
The chilli is warmth, not fire: one dried chilli crumbled, or half a teaspoon of flakes, for two. Parsley goes in off the heat so it stays green. The oil arrives twice, warm at the start to carry the garlic, cold at the end for the aroma heat drives off.
Two-thirds of the oil cooks, one-third goes in raw. That last 20 ml is most of what you smell.
Mostly oil, so the oil is the flavour
Strip the recipe back and it is pasta, garlic and about 30 ml of oil a head. Nothing else carries the plate. A flat refined oil makes a flat bowl: texture and salt, no fruit. This is the dish where an extra virgin's pepper and grassiness has somewhere to go.
A young, green, peppery oil suits it: bitterness that is aggressive off a spoon becomes backbone against starch. Heat is not the constraint here — what heat olive oil takes covers that. Arabian Village sells it in 250 ml and 500 ml.
The short version
Salt the water, keep a mugful back, start the garlic in cold oil and stop at blond, toss until glossy, then stir a third of the oil in raw.