Make Carbone Fine Food Chef Scott Brown’s Spicy Shrimp Linguini with Chili Crisp

If you can’t make it to New York City for Carbone’s Internet-famous rigatoni with spicy vodka sauce, Chef Scott Brown wants to make sure you can get as close as possible in your own kitchen.

The restaurant’s namesake line of jarred sauces — including the spicy vodka sauce — are a revelation in home cooking. They combine fresh, non-GMO vegetables, best-of-the-best spices, and a cooking process that mimics the one used in Carbone Fine Food’s restaurant kitchen nearly exactly, creating jarred sauces that taste like they’re made by an acclaimed chef (because they are!)

After working in high-end restaurants all over New York City for the last 12 years, Brown joined the team at Carbone Fine Food to help take their jarred sauces to the next level in terms of both taste and quality. “What you’re getting out of the jar is the same thing that you would get in a restaurant,” Brown says. “It’s the same process done on a slightly larger scale, by really honing in on the quality of the ingredients.” 

Carbone Fine Food: From-Scratch Sauces With Real, Wholesome Ingredients

According to Brown, Carbone Fine Food employs several practices when making their jarred sauces that aren’t common across the industry. “We take being super premium very seriously,” he says.

To illustrate how their process differs, Brown gives a look into the factory where Carbone Fine Food sauces are made. “First of all, it’s all about the tomato,” he says. “We use tomatoes from southern Italy that grow in just the right soil from Mount Vesuvius.” After the tomato base, Brown and his team use fresh garlic, onions, and herbs to make the sauces taste as fresh as possible. “The basil is stripped right there in the factory and added fresh to the sauce,” he says.

While many jarred sauces are made with frozen or lesser-quality ingredients, Carbone Fine Food sauces are made with only the highest-quality vegetables and herbs sourced at peak freshness. “For us, it’s really making sure that each component in the sauce adds to the quality,” Brown says. “It’s the exact same way you’d make it at home or how we make it at our restaurant — we don’t skip any steps when it comes to making a good product.”

Chef Scott Brown’s Best Tips for Cooking at Home

Chef Scott hopes that Carbone Fine Food sauces will inspire more people to start cooking at home. Because they’re made with such healthy, high-quality ingredients, these sauces make the perfect starters for tried-and-true pasta dishes, last-minute dinners in a pinch, or even a jumping off point for experimenting in the kitchen.

If you want to bring even more of the Carbone Fine Food approach to food into your own kitchen, here are some of Chef Scott’s best tips for cooking at home:

1. Don’t be afraid to use high heat. When searing meat or sautéing vegetables, high temperatures help to create a nice browned crust. “The biggest difference you’ll see when you go to a really nice restaurant versus cooking at home is the amount of heat that they use in a restaurant,” Brown says. “Everything is cooked in extremely hot pans, very hot ovens, and it’s done quicker.”
2. Don’t under-season your dishes. “You use a little bit more of an aggressive seasoning when you’re cooking in a restaurant,” Brown says. “Add more flavorful, higher quality ingredients to really drive that flavor and to get that balance that you’re looking for.”
3. Know the difference between salt and pepper (and when to use each). “Salt and pepper do different things,” Brown explains. “Salt enhances flavor; pepper changes flavor.” Instead of adding each in equal amounts, taste-test your food often to see what your dish may need.
4. Get creative with the ingredients you have on hand.  If a recipe calls for a certain ingredient but you don’t have it on hand, experiment with something else. “Use whatever kind of cheese you can find,” Brown says. “If it’s ricotta, if it’s mascarpone, if it’s Parmesan — you’ve got this wide array of cheeses, you’ve got this wide array of vegetables. That’s how chefs get there — they play with things and they make so many mistakes.”
5. Use high-quality meal starters (like Carbone Fine Food jarred sauces!) When you’re cooking at home, you don’t always have the time to start completely from scratch. Using a reliable starter helps to save time and inspire the rest of the meal. “Our sauces are a great base,” Brown says. “The cool thing is that instead of taking two or three hours to make sauce from scratch, you can look at it as a blank canvas and try it with new vegetables, try it with new recipes, and cook it with your family.”

Carbone Fine Food Spicy Shrimp Linguini with Chili Crisp

“I like this recipe because it has that five-fold flavor combination,” Brown says. “You want the umami, something sweet, something salty, something bitter, and something a little bit tart. That’s kind of what I look for when I taste something; you just get a whole, relaxing, calming, feeling from the recipe. The balance of all the different flavor profiles are kind of firing on all cylinders together.”

—Chef Scott Brown

Yield: 4 servings
Active time: 10 minutes
Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound wild-caught shrimp, peeled & deveined
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2–3 garlic cloves, minced
2–3 tablespoons Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp (adjust to heat preference)
4 ounces fire-roasted red peppers, rough chopped
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 jar Carbone Fine Food Spicy Vodka Sauce
5 ounces heavy cream
1 pound linguini
¼ cup fresh basil, chopped
¼ cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
Fresh lime wedges, for garnish

Instructions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the linguini until al dente. Reserve ½ cup of the pasta water, then drain and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Stir in the minced garlic and smoked paprika; cook for 30 seconds. Add 2-3 tablespoons of chili crisp and let it sizzle gently for 1 minute to bloom the flavors.  Add shrimp and cook 1-2 minutes per side. Add the chopped roasted red peppers and stir.

Lower heat to medium. Pour in the spicy vodka sauce and heavy cream, stir to combine, and let it simmer for 3-4 minutes. Toss in the cooked linguini and a splash of reserved pasta water if needed to loosen the sauce. Add the chopped basil and mint, and stir everything together.

Plate the pasta, topping with remaining herbs. Finish with a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

Optional: Drizzle a bit more chili crisp over the top if you love extra heat.