Italians, look away now, because guanciale is hard to get round these parts. Besides, I bet your nonna used pancetta at least once in her lifetime and you didnt’t even notice.
Carbonara is actually pretty easy, although like all recipes with a very limited set of ingredients it can seem quite intimidating because there’s nowhere to hide.
- Slice or chop 150g of the best pancetta you can find (guanciale if you can get it but it’s hard to source) and gently fry until golden brown but not crispy. If you can’t get either then an unsmoked streaky bacon will work at a push while also upsetting everyone in Italy.
- Cook your chosen pasta (I do 500g for 4 people) to al dente in a pot of well-salted water. I’ve tried carbonara with various types of pasta: spaghetti, bucatini, linguine, fettuccine, tagliatelle (always tagliatelle with a ragu alla bolognese, I serve a tag bol in my house, not a spag bol) as well as short pastas like rigatoni and cavatappi (the best pasta for mac and cheese). Personally, I enjoy a tagliatelle carbonara.
- While the pasta and pancetta / guanciale is cooking, whisk eggs, cheese, and freshly ground black pepper together. I use one whole, free-range egg per person, and an additional yolk per two people (I really like Burford Brown eggs because of the exceptional colour of the yolks). I use a mix of approximately 50/50 pecorino romano and parmigiano reggiano. Loads of both.
- Once the pasta is cooked, reserve a cup of the cooking water, then drain and chuck it in with the meat. You don’t need to be super careful about draining the pasta - any excess water will be incorporated into the sauce.
- Turn off the heat under the meat and pasta. This is important and we’re close to the only challenging bit of cooking a carbonara. We’re going to add the cheesy egg mixture to the pasta and we want it to cook super gently to avoid serving our guests scrambled egg so we want it to cook in the residual heat, not any direct heat. Spend a minute or two tossing the pasta in with the meat and the oil that’s rendered out of the meat as it’s cooked.
- Add the cheesy egg mixture and stir vigorously for a minute or so to combine with the pasta. Add as much of the reserved pasta water as necessary to make sure the sauce is creamy and luxurious. It can soak up more water than you expect!
- Serve immediately with a few more grinds of black pepper.
I’m a big buccatini fan for carbonara. Your process sounds great. The only thing I do a little differently is that I will actually temper the egg mixture with pasta water to make it less likely to cook when i actually add it to the pasta. I know it’s traditional to make the sauce in the pot, but I don’t care.
I also add a whole bunch of parsley to it, and sometimes a splash of white wine.
I like to make it in a wok. I find that the thinner steel is actually better because it cools down quicker, which avoids cooking the egg. Plus you can toss it really well in a wok.
I’ve tried tempering the egg/cheese mixture with the pasta water and not - and didn’t see much of a difference between the two approaches so I see no problem with doing that.
Your wok idea is interesting. I’d worry it would cool too quickly, but I have a proper wok (bought from the ever entertaining Wing Yip. I might give the wok a go!