Mmm proper carbonara
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Ah, just today I committed a sacrilege because I had no parmesan and was too lazy to go out buy one
Can you provide the recipe you used, please? I've tried out different recipes for Carbonara but I feel like I can never achieve the same creaminess as they do in my favourite Italian restaurant. I'm hopeful though.
Fry giuancale/bacon.
Boil pasta.
Mix eggs and so much Pecorino cheese that it looks like an absolute joke. Add a bunch of pepper. Stir.
Save some pasta water in case this was the day you actually went overboard with the cheese (you never do).
Take giuancale/bacon off heat. Throw everything together and stir.
What makes the difference in creaminess for me (I use something similar to this. I think fewer yolks but I'm not at home and I haven't made it in a while) is how much pasta water and therefore starch I add to the eggs. It's not an exact recipe, tweak it a T or two either way until you get what you want.
I'm partial to Chef John's Carbonara. It's been a favorite of mine for a while and his videos help me get the hang of tricky techniques.
I second Chef John. He's excellent at providing foolproof techniques for cooking.
My recipe (speaking as someone from Rome, my tastes might be different):
Ingredients:
- 1 egg yolk per person + 1 full egg. (E.g., 2 people = 2 yolks + 1 egg)
- pecorino romano (a lot). I put also a 20%-ish of parmigiano to balance the taste.
- black pepper, freshly ground.
- guanciale (traditionally, I live abroad and often use pancetta - which is less fat and might require a little bit of olive oil)
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.
I make this by heart, but I'll try.
- beat 4 eggs (I make 4 portions of pasta) with a handful of Pecorino Romano, set aside
- fry guanciale in a pan, remove when crispy, keep the fat
- meanwhile, boil pasta according to package instructions, I usually take them out 30-45 seconds earlier, as they will continue to cook in the pan
- transfer pasta to pan, mix with the guanciale fat, add a little pasta water to deglaze the pan
- add about a cup of pasta water to the egg mixture, slowly, continue to mix until it reaches the liked consistency
- turn the pan heat off, add egg mixture, drown the pasta in sauce. Add more pasta water if needed, the starches will work wonders on the creaminess.
That's it. Plate with the crispy guanciale, some freshly cracked pepper and a hefty amount of pecorino on top.
Awesome, thank!
Try using a bit of pasta cooking water ("tears of the gods") with whatever pasta sauce you're making. In fact it is wise to save a cup/glass of pasta water when you're draining it to adjust the possible dryness of the pasta later, or you'll end up using tons of olive oil which won't work as well.
That was a game changer to me, that's what was missing in most of my pasta sauces!
There are atleast 400 versions recorded in Italy alone. Cream is the cheat code, but if you actually wanna learn how to make a cheese sauce with pasta water, you should skip the cream.
no offence to any Italian, but cream is also yummy.
why can't we accept that American Carbonara and Italian Carbonara are both distinct dishes that tragically share name.
How’d you spread the sauce so evenly? I usually end up making twice the sauce that I need to get such a proper distribution.
I don't have a formula... I know that for the usual quantity of pasta, I beat 4 eggs with some pecorino in a bowl, and I add enough pasta water to fill it up. The pasta water must not be too hot, or the sauce might curdle. Even if I made this so many times, I still mess up once in a while and my kids eat pasta with scrambled eggs :)
The trick is to keep the right¹ volume of noodle-water before mixing pasta and sauce in the noodle pot. The starch in the water gives the sauce the right consistence.
¹tricky
For carbonara the cooking pot is too hot and IMHO cooks the egg too much. I just remove spaghetti with a "whatever the tool is called", so that I have all the cooking water at my disposal and I can dose it with a ladle. Too much cooking water messes the carbonara really bad, since if you already mixed it with egg, you will need to dry it and the only way is really keeping it in the pan, which will also cook the egg.
*Tongs, spider skimmer, inverted pan
Thanks! Ironically, I searched now and the one I use is called "spaghetti ladle".
you could get a little silicone wizard on the end and call it your spaghetti wand
Temperature is just as tricky. Let the pasta and the rest of the water cool down about a minute. Some obviously bored physicists have experimentally found the "perfect" way (egg not denaturalizing, sauce homogenous) a couple of months ago and published a paper about it. The search engine of your choice might find it.
There is also a famous Italian chemist who deal with food (recipe [IT]).
I remember that egg doesn't need to go above 65C, but now I don't know if this paper also addresses what the minimum should be, I will have a look!). I usually put the bowl with the egg briefly on top of the boiling water, just to warm it up a little bit.
Cream should be harmed! I want it whipped!!
Sure, but call it ~~alla~~ a la panna if you do so.
alla panna
That's not her name
https://1001-songs.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-whipped-cream-other.html
Oh, I love me some whipped cream! Not in carbonara though :D (whipped or otherwise).