Risotto Alla Carbonara Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

What pasta is better for carbonara? ›

Carbonara is almost always served with spaghetti or linguine, but you can use whatever pasta you prefer. For a more unusual take on carbonara, try spinach fettuccine tossed with warm pasta and fresh baby spinach; you'll get a vibrant, beautiful dish with some additional health benefits.

The ingredients are simple—just spaghetti (or another long pasta), and the carbonara is made with pancetta or bacon, eggs, Parmesan, a little olive oil, salt and pepper. The silky carbonara sauce is created when the beaten eggs are tossed with the hot pasta and a little fat from the pancetta or bacon.

Take the pan of spaghetti and pancetta off the heat. Now quickly pour in the eggs and cheese. Using the tongs or a long fork, lift up the spaghetti so it mixes easily with the egg mixture, which thickens but doesn't scramble, and everything is coated.

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.

The golden rule to silky carbonara is to whisk your egg whites so that they're completely incorporated with the egg yolks. This will create a smooth, velvety sauce. As like any pasta dish, including carbonara, cook the pasta perfectly al dente so that it's soft but still firm, with some bite.

Why is there no garlic in carbonara? Because it's an Italian dish, not an Italian-American dish, and Italian cooking does not use garlic as heavily as Italian-American cuisine. You can either make a carbonara, or the same dish with added garlic (just don't call *that* carbonara, it's not).

Creamy sauces like carbonara sauce are usually made from butter, cheese, and heavy cream, all of which pile on the saturated fat and calories. A healthier option would be a lighter sauce such as the olive oil-based one in aglio olio, which is rich in good fat and cooked with fresh ingredients like garlic and chilli.

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.

The ingredients are the classic ones: aged guanciale, egg yolks, Pecorino cheese (with the addition of Grana Padano to balance the saltiness), and freshly ground black pepper.

Spaghetti carbonara

And indeed, there's plenty of recipes that cheat by adding in cream. But today, we're making spaghetti carbonara properly, the authentic, traditional way. No cream. Just egg, cheese and a splash of starchy pasta cooking water.

Does carbonara use whole eggs or just yolks? ›

Traditional carbonara sauce is made with whole eggs, not just the yolks. However, some recipes do call for just yolks. In the traditional recipe, the eggs are beaten together with grated Pecorino Romano cheese, black pepper, and sometimes a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

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.

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.

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.