Creamy Pasta Carbonara Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you keep carbonara creamy? ›

The creaminess comes from the eggs and the rendered fat from the guanciale or pancetta. The key to making a creamy carbonara is to toss the spaghetti with the egg mixture and the rendered fat immediately after draining it. This helps to cook the eggs and thicken the sauce.

Whisk Like You Mean It

You're using more egg yolks than whites here, which is what makes carbonara so rich and luxurious. But there's still two eggs-worth of whites in there. Whisking your eggs so that the whites are completely incorporated into the yolks will give your sauce a more uniform texture.

Carbonara is a classic, 5-ingredient Roman pasta dish made with 5 simple ingredients: pasta, eggs, guanciale, Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper. It's made by tempering eggs, cheese and starchy pasta cooking water into a luscious creamy pasta sauce. The taste is rich, salty and addictive!

Should carbonara have cream? Typically carbonara sauce is only made of eggs, bacon, parmesan, olive oil, seasoning, and sometimes, vegetables. As for cream, Italians will tell you that is a big no no.

What not to put in Spaghetti Carbonara? Don't put garlic, cream, milk or butter. It is not needed. It is fine if you want to make a dish with those ingredients, but if you want to learn how to make this dish correctly, use only pecorino, eggs/egg yolks, black pepper, guanciale, and pasta water.

Adding creaminess

Eggs are the main ingredients in the carbonara sauce and to make it seem creamy I use mostly egg yolks. It is the yolks that are responsible for the creaminess in the sauce and that luxurious feeling you get with each mouthful without feeling greasy.

Using a large mixing bowl and setting it over the boiling pasta water to create a makeshift double boiler helps prevent you from accidentally scrambling the eggs.

Equally important is that the fat that melts out of the guanciale is required to thicken the carbonara sauce to make it creamy. Basically, what happens is that when the fat from the guanciale and in the egg yolks is mixed with starchy pasta cooking water, it thickens.

What distinguishes carbonara from other pasta dishes is its technique of combining eggs, hard cheese, cured pork, and black pepper into a rich, silky sauce. This recipe calls for raw eggs that are gently cooked by the hot sauce. If you prefer, you can use pasteurized eggs instead.

Pecorino Romano: This aged sheep's cheese is always traditionally used in the Roman pastas, and its salty, grassy, earthy flavor is absolutely delicious in carbonara. That said, if Pecorino is unavailable at your local grocery store, you can use Parmesan as a non-traditional substitute.

Is Alfredo and carbonara the same? ›

Alfredo is made from butter, parsley, heavy cream and minced garlic, whereas carbonara is made from pecorino romano, eggs, black pepper and guanciale (ingredients seem to vary for the sauces depending on the recipe). In Italy carbonara is made without cream, adding cream to the sauce is an American thing it seems.

This can be tricky, but the method used here is foolproof: Whisk some hot pasta water into the beaten eggs, then drizzle the tempered egg mixture into the pasta while stirring vigorously for a glossy smooth sauce. Tomatoes are not traditional in carbonara, but they lend a bright tang to the dish.

Must-have ingredients

that there are only five ingredients: pasta, pork cheek, eggs, cheese and pepper. That's it. A real carbonara does not contain onion, garlic, or cream.

No cream or milk or anything like that. the only dairy product in Carbonara is the cheese.. Americans use cream because you can hide the mistakes of amateur chefs by adding a different texture with more ingredients.

As the fat renders, he removes some of the molten liquid with a spoon. The lean part of the meat ultimately caramelises and becomes a sort of "popcorn guanciale": crunchy outside and tender inside. His carbonara is very yellow in colour since he only uses egg yolks – one per 60g of pasta.

Make sure you're using either the dry pasta pan that's still hot or something pre-heated because the residual heat of the pasta and pasta water will cook the egg but not scramble it. Add a splash more of the hot pasta water if the carbonara is too dry.”

Using a large mixing bowl and setting it over the boiling pasta water to create a makeshift double boiler helps prevent you from accidentally scrambling the eggs.

Add more cream to keep the sauce from separating

Bring the sauce to room temperature first, then pour it into a pan and gradually raise the stove's temperature while adding cream bit by bit. The fat in the cream helps prevent the sauce from separating.

The reason that your sauce can turn grainy in the last stages of cooking is usually related to the temperature of your pan as the sauce is coming together. If the sauce is too warm, then you're basically going to scramble the eggs. Of course, you don't want the sauce to go uncooked, either.