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How to enjoy Gigi Hadid’s famous vodka pasta

This is an easy recipe and delicious meal for college students looking to practice their limited cooking skills

<p>A colorful spread of greens and Gigi Hadid's famous vodka pasta create a feast for both your eyes and your stomach.</p>

A colorful spread of greens and Gigi Hadid's famous vodka pasta create a feast for both your eyes and your stomach.

As a second-year student with no meal plan and zero experience cooking, I decided to take on the challenge of cooking real meals for myself as opposed to my daily sandwiches, frozen Trader Joe’s meals or instant ramen. This Gigi Hadid vodka pasta was, in my opinion, one of the best and easiest dishes I have made so far. If I can make it, I guarantee you can too. 

I first heard of this pasta when Gigi Hadid posted it casually to her Instagram story, and ever since then it has been a sensation among her followers for its immaculate taste and easy execution. Even I, with my limited — pretty much nonexistent — cooking skills, was able to make this pasta with ease.

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 25-30 minutes

Servings: About 3 plates

Ingredients: 

¼ cup olive oil

1 clove of diced garlic

¼ green onion

¼ cup tomato paste

½ cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon vodka

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

225 grams of shells pasta (or any pasta)

1 tablespoon butter

¼ cup parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper 

Instructions:

  1. First, put the olive oil, green onion and garlic in a pan and cook until soft for about five minutes. 
  2. Then, add your tomato paste and cook until it is “a bit caramelized,” according to Hadid.
  3. Once your sauce has become darker, add your heavy cream and stir.
  4. Now, add in your vodka and cook through until vaporized. For those of us under 21, a perfectly fine alternative to vodka is a splash of fresh water and lemon juice. 
  5. Next, you can add your pepper flakes to add a little heat — or, in my case, a lot of heat because of my unhealthy addiction to spicy foods. I bought my pepper flakes from Trader Joe’s, but you can find them just about anywhere.
  6. While the sauce is cooking you will also want to boil your pasta. In Hadid’s original recipe she uses shells, but I believe any form of pasta would work. I personally decided to use rigatoni, which is a tube-shaped pasta. Depending on which pasta you opt for, you can cook to your desired firmness. Since I don’t particularly like my pasta soft and would rather have it be al dente, I boiled my rigatoni for about 11 minutes, and it was perfect. 
  7. Next, strain your pasta and reserve a little pasta water to add to the sauce. 
  8. Before combining the pasta and sauce, add your desired amount of butter to your noodles — I like things buttery — and then add the buttered noodles and pasta water to the sauce.
  9. While things are still steamy and hot, add your parmesan cheese to the noodles and sauce and it will melt right into the sauce. I used thick-cut parmesan, but any parmesan will do. 
  10. In addition to these steps, I decided to add a little bit of protein by sauteing shrimp and mushrooms in a separate pan, adding a small amount of salt and pepper to taste and adding it into the finished sauce. 

To balance out this carb-heavy dish, I decided to pair the pasta with a greens salad. I combined one of my favorite greens, arugula, with air-fried brussel sprouts — also another one of my favorites — and topped it off with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Together, this two-course college meal ended up being a delectable and easy go-to recipe of mine. After taking the first bite, I could taste that the creamy parmesan was perfectly balanced out by the tangy tomato paste and the sharpness of the vodka — or lemon and water. What made this dish taste even better was the fact that it was very simple and only took about 30 minutes to make. 

Perhaps the reason why I like this dish so much is because, being the first real dish I’ve made on my own, it holds a special place in my heart — or maybe there is a secret part of me that believes that if I eat enough Gigi Hadid pasta I'll start to look like a supermodel. Whichever one, the fact remains that I will be making this pasta very often, and now you can too!

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