this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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My recipe (speaking as someone from Rome, my tastes might be different):
Ingredients:
Usually you want spaghetti or maybe rigatoni, fettuccine or similar (like OP) tend to suck too much the sauce and are also heavier (it makes sense that they used many full eggs).
Preparation: You beat the eggs and add scraped pecorino until the result is thick. You add pepper and a bit of salt to it as well and mix.
In a pan with no oil or butter you put the guanciale and you let it sweat. You let it fry in its own fat until it's like you want it. You can take a couple of teaspoons of fat and add it to the egg and pecorino mix.
Depending on your taste, you can remove a bit of fat.
You put water boiling and you salt it generously. You boil pasta, and take it out approximately 2 minutes before the official cooking time. You add the pasta in the pan with the guanciale, and you add cooking water into it to continue the cooking while you mix (few water, multiple times, bit by bit). With the pasta still wet, you add it to the container where the egg mix is (not on fire). Better too dry (in which case you add a bit of cooking water) than too liquid (cannot be repaired easily, you will have to drop it in the pan and let it dry). You mix vigorously and you should have the egg sauce perfectly attached to the pasta. If you put enought pecorino in the sauce, you probably won't need additional one on top.
That's it. There are people who do it very differently, for example there are those who mix egg with so much pecorino that they make a solid ball that they add to the pan while finishing the cooking of the pasta and they melt it with cooking water.
Either way, carbonara (and cacio e Pepe) are extremely simple recipes that have a tricky process easy to mess up, and it takes a few attempts to get it as you want it.
There's one thing I do differently: I prepare the eggs and cheese in a metal bowl which I slowly warm up on top of the cooking pasta (Bain marie) while whisking it. Shortly before the pasta is done I'll add the right amount of pasta cooking water with a ladle to make it nice and creamy.
This gives me plenty of time to do things and reach the perfect temperature without stress.
With the bain marie way, just let the pasta cool a moment before adding the sauce, to prevent the sauce from curdling (as it already has the perfect creamyness).
With this technique I find it very easy to control the temperature.
I actually also warm up the metal bowl with the cooking water, but I generally don't add the cooking water to it (like I do for cacio e pepe).
I will try next time, it seems it might make it easier to nail the density.
I usually mix fridge cold eggs and cheese separately. Then I roughly and quickly drain pasta so some water remains and add meat and pasta back to the pot. I then add egg mixture slowly while constantly mixing and I get creamy sauce every time. It is not prescice but it doesn't need to be.
Im sure it won't reach peak creamyness but in exchange it's quick, reliable and easy.
Mixing directly I got scrambled eggs far too often (no idea what I did wrong) so I switched methods. (Or runny sauce when I waited a moment before mixing)
If it works for you, perfect!
The bain marie is my workaround with the heat problems.
Scramble should be a result of too hot pasta or pot or not fast enough mixing. Maybe the difference is I almost never use spaghetti and always go for penne or fussilini. More air and faster cooling could make the difference. I need to try your technique at some point too so thanks for writing about it!
As a general rule, you shouldn't salt the water "generously" because the pecorino is already quite salty itself. Also, you wouldn't need to use parmigiano to balance the taste, but that's up to you to modify the recipe how you like it.
In my experience, if I don't salt the hell out of the water it'll end up bland. That's just what I found through trial and error
I am saying to salt generously for people not used to make pasta, anyway, not adding any other salt anywhere it is not a problem to oversalt pasta really (I put the same I put everyday).
Even some traditional chefs use a mix of parmigiano, it helps counter a bit the acidity of the pecorino (in fact, I copied this from one of them!). It also depends on the pecorino, I live abroad, so I don't have much choice.
Makes sense!
Awesome, I'll try it that way next time.