Easy Cooking: Carbonara
Early in our relationship, my wife saw me beat raw egg and cheese in a serving bowl. I told her I was going to toss hot pasta in the egg to cook it and she asked me, “Are you sure this is safe?” Now it is one of her favorites!
Carbonara is unequivocally the best dish we can cook using ingredients we always have on hand. I am talking X factor, Je ne sais quoi, “how did they do it?” amazing food. It might be the best thing that we cook, period, which really is why we always have bacon on hand, just in case we want carbonara.
Carbonara is a technique: using the residual heat of boiling water, usually from making pasta, to cook beaten egg to a creamy, luxurious consistency.
Having seen quite a few versions of carbonara on YouTube from #authentic English-speaking cooks and three Italian masters — versions which totally differ from my father’s method, which I have tinkered with for years — I have to conclude that there really are many viable ways to make carbonara. There is one hill I am absolutely willing to die on: No cream in carbonara. It is made with egg, period. That is the elusive magic. Mine does have garlic though seeing my distant cousins’ virulent objection gives me pause.
My version is an evolution of how I saw my dad do it growing up, but there is so much background and context that I want to start with the recipe:
Ingredients
- Kosher or sea salt
- 1 pound of dried non-egg linguine or spaghetti, ideally bronze die*
- 1/3 to 1/2 pound bacon cut into ~1/3-inch strips (high-quality bacon produces less water and yields more grease, which helps form the sauce)
- 1 whole large egg
- 3 large egg yolks (save the whites for breakfast or something else!)**
- 1/2 cup grated cheese (Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano, or both) plus a bit more to taste
- Fresh cracked black pepper to taste (makes a big difference!)
- 2–3 cloves garlic, if desired (for maximum flavor microplane 1–2)
- ~1/2 cup of reserved pasta water to deglaze the bacon
*Other pastas like bucatini or short ones like rigatoni (which also appears traditional) and farfalle may require a different amount of sauce. Egg-based pasta is too heavy for this rich dish.
**A disposable-gloved hand works great for separating yolks, but take the eggs out of the fridge a bit in advance so they are not too cold to handle!
Preparation
- Moderately salt water in a large pot and set on heat to boil.
- Place bacon pieces in a skillet and set to medium-low to low heat. Move them around to cook evenly. For crispier bacon, preheat pan. This might take a while; you might even want to start the bacon cooking first.
- Place egg and yolks in a large serving bowl. Whisk in grated cheese. Season mixture to taste with freshly cracked black pepper. Beat until homogenous.
- When water is boiling, add dried pasta, stirring a few times to avoid sticking or clumping. Set timer four minutes less than the minimum time written on pasta’s packaging.
- If desired, add minced garlic to skillet when bacon is almost done cooking. Be careful not to burn garlic. For maximum flavor use a microplane grater.
- When pasta is almost done or bacon is done cooking, deglaze skillet containing bacon with ~1/2 cup of pasta water.
- After draining pasta let cool for a minute or two, then gradually pour into the egg mixture, tossing and keeping everything moving so the heat of the pasta gently cooks the egg. Adding pasta a bit at a time can help.
- After all of the pasta is tossed and coated, add in the bacon. Once fully mixed, add additional cheese if desired, but not too much! Enjoy!
Don’t Sweat the Technique
Written out, the recipe is surprisingly simple, but requires precise timing. Let the pasta cool too much and the egg stays raw. Add the pasta too hot or toss it too slowly and the egg will scramble. If you are a true beginner you may want to whisk together the egg and cheese first. Do not be frustrated if your first attempt goes off of the rails! Even I find once in a while that I have eaten undercooked egg.
The consensus “traditional” approach to carbonara is cooking the egg with the heat of pasta or pasta water in the pan where the pork has cooked. I have tried this once or twice and even in a nonstick pan found it difficult. My egg curdled. But honestly, our recipe produces the same spectacular final product, totally reliably. The same things happen in a different order.
Our two innovations to my dad’s method of tossing the pasta in the egg mixture were adding pasta water and cranking up the yolks. I had kept pasta water out of the equation for fear of scrambling, but realized less than a year ago I could deglaze the bacon with it, lifting up all of the flavorful fond and yielding a magical glossiness. The first time I did it, I was characteristically immodest about what I had achieved in the kitchen (which I am working on).
My wife is uncharacteristically immodest, saying her insistence on boosting the ratio of yolks to whites made the key difference. Who am I to disagree with the mother of my children? A few recipes including my dad’s use whole eggs, but my better half made an executive decision “after seeing it in so many recipes!” The resulting chrome yellow color on top of pasta water glossiness made me realize that as usual, she was absolutely right. We cracked the code.
Bacon and Grease
Despite being born and raised in Italy, my father almost insists that bacon is best for carbonara because it is flavorful. Pancetta, or Italian cured pork belly, is quite light (and my wife points out, easier to overcook). Guanciale is the ultra-traditional choice made from, I kid you not, cured pork jowl. I tried using it once but was still a bit of a loose cannon in the kitchen, meaning I seared it in a cloud of acrid smoke to a flavorless crisp. I will try again one day, but there is no pressing need, because bacon is delicious and works great.
In fact, I think the bacon’s flavor is easily lost in the mix, perhaps because I have exposed myself to garlic so much that I can no longer fully perceive it. (Kind of like hearing my favorite dubstep drop too many times, I guess.) Even if the bacon’s flavor is lost, its most important contribution is its grease, which adds to that magical, glossy, rich texture, plus grease tastes really good.
The grease is a good example of how carbonara can be made many ways. My father loved using all of the grease, which seemed crazy to me. When I started making it, or soon after, I fished out the bacon and discarded all of the grease. Then a few years ago, after meeting my wife, I began adding a spoonful or two of grease to the dish, like a Latin-blooded Mary Poppins. In the past couple of years or so, I have come full circle, adding all of the grease to the dish. You do not have to, but it was the right choice for me and my family.
Carbonara has many variables to play with, so as noted there are multiple combinations to nail that magically yellow, almost criminally good sauce.
Pep Talk
I need to warn you, this is the hardest thing I have asked you to do. A real risk of failure is part of the deal. My father accidentally made my mom a giant puck of pasta in scrambled egg when they were dating. But it was the late ’80s in the U.S. so she was just impressed that a man had cooked for her.
My wife and I split the crucial step: I pour the pasta into the egg and she tosses it. Sometimes we get it wrong, but it is OK: we are still learning.
