Carbonara

Pasta in a sauce of egg and cheese thickened by residual heat alone, with no cream and no pan.

Pork, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains Pecorino Romano made with lamb rennet, pork.

Ingredients

• 400 g spaghetti or rigatoni
• 150 g guanciale, in short thick batons
• 4 egg yolks and 1 whole egg
• 80 g pecorino romano, finely grated
• 2 teaspoons black peppercorns, crushed
• 2 teaspoons salt, for the pasta water

Method

1. Put the guanciale in a cold dry pan over a low heat and let the fat render for 8 to 10 minutes until the pieces are crisp at the edges. No oil.
2. Beat the yolks and whole egg with the pecorino and most of the pepper into a thick paste.
3. Boil the pasta in well-salted water, keeping two cups of the water.
4. Drain the pasta and toss it in the guanciale pan OFF THE HEAT, to coat it in the fat. Then wait a full minute.
5. Stir a ladle of hot pasta water into the egg mixture to loosen and warm it.
6. Pour it over the pasta, still OFF THE HEAT, and stir hard and continuously. It thickens in about 30 seconds from residual heat alone.
7. THERE IS NO CREAM IN THIS AND THE PAN NEVER GOES BACK ON. The sauce is an egg custard thickened to the point just before it sets, and returned to a flame it scrambles. Cream makes that much harder to get wrong, which is why plenty of recipes use it; this one asks you to get it right instead.
8. Loosen with more pasta water if it tightens, and serve with the rest of the pepper.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes