# Pasta Prosciutto e Piselli Brings Italian Comfort to Your Kitchen

Serious Eats delivers a straightforward take on pasta prosciutto e piselli, the Italian classic that trades fancy techniques for honest flavour. This dish pairs creamy sauce with prosciutto cotto, the cooked ham variety that dissolves into silky ribbons throughout the pasta.

The recipe centres on simplicity. Butter and cream form the base. Prosciutto cotto, sliced thin, softens in the pan before peas join the mix. The combination requires just minutes to come together, making it ideal for weeknight dinners when you want restaurant-quality results without complexity.

Prosciutto cotto differs from its raw counterpart, prosciutto crudo. The cotto version has already been cooked during curing, so it needs only gentle warming to release its savoury, slightly sweet character. This makes it more forgiving for home cooks than handling delicate sliced cured ham.

The peas add textural contrast and slight sweetness that balances the richness of cream. Fresh or frozen both work. Serious Eats likely recommends frozen for reliability, since they maintain consistent texture and flavour year-round.

This dish represents a particular strand of Italian cooking that emerged from Rome. It values ingredient quality over technique, trusting that good prosciutto cotto, fresh peas, and proper pasta will carry the meal. There's no garlic, no excessive seasoning, no muddying the waters.

The appeal lies in execution and ingredients rather than invention. You'll need quality prosciutto cotto from a proper deli counter, not the plastic-wrapped supermarket version. That distinction separates a memorable dish from a forgettable one.

Pasta choice matters too. Short shapes like penne or rigatoni work better than