Spaghetti Carbonara is a quick, easy dish that can be made in a flash with the right ingredients and a little practice. What I love about Carbonara is its silky, creamy texture. Who wouldn’t, right? Traditionally, It is made with spaghetti, you can use any pasta you like. Be creative.

The Connection

Carbonara crossed my path many years ago, when I was craving pasta and needed a quick fix. I started looking through my mom’s old recipe cards, and true to form, I found some instructions scrawled onto a card, with no measurements and not much in the way of technique. On the rare occasion she took the time to write a recipe, they ended up as hints and suggestions with very little instruction.

The Spaghetti Carbonara instructions:

2 egg yolks, 1 egg, 1 handful of grated pecorino romano cheese, pasta water, salt, pepper, cooked spaghetti, and guanciale (fried like bacon). Guanciale? Clearly, I had a little research to do before trying this recipe, and needed a little more direction from mom.

After learning a bit more about guanciale, a cured meat made from pork jowls, I set out on a mission to find it. I was living in Dallas, Texas at the time. It was 1989. Moreover, I lived there for 2 years, at that point, and had yet to find an Italian grocer like the ones in the Midwest. I was catering meals, on weekends, at a local law school, so I tapped into all of my food connections, to no avail. Did I say I needed a quick fix? While my craving had subsided, I still wanted to to finish what I started and that was to decode her recipe and prepare it.

The Epiphany

The lightbulb didn’t go off for me, until about a week later, when describing guanciale to a friend who said, in the thickest of thick Texas drawls, “why don’t y’all just throw some bacon in it?” That was it! Not bacon! Pancetta! Likewise, Pancetta was familiar to me and is related to bacon in that it is made from pork belly. When I shared that idea with my mother, she assured me that pancetta was a perfectly fine substitute for Spaghetti Carbonara, in fact, the choice of many people since guanciale was so hard to find. Thankfully, today, I have several neighborhood options for both guanciale and pancetta.

Today, ingredients are so much more abundant and available to us. Therefore, Carbonara is also more widely known with what seems like a renaissance of food infatuation and the ginormous numbers of food sites on the internet. Similarly, people have become more knowledgeable and therefore the demand exists.

I went to Caputo’s today, my local Italian grocery store in Chicago, to pick up the guanciale shown above. While the woman behind the counter was preparing my order, the man next to me in line said, “I’m coming to your house”. He knew! People know.

Spaghetti Carbonara

Through the years, I’ve made Carbonara, but only in small quantities. Consequently, I’ve never made it for a crowd as I have always been worried about the use of raw eggs. I’ve felt my way through my mothers instructions for years, and ordered it in restaurants on occasion, to see if our recipe measured up. What I learned is that homemade is best as you have full control over the end result. This recipe serves two.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound of spaghetti

1/3 c. guanciale or pancetta (cubed)

1 cup grated pecorino romano cheese. Reserve 1/2 cup to use when serving

1 cup of reserved pasta water

3 eggs (2 egg yolks, beaten with 1 whole egg)

Pepper (to taste)

Extra Virgin Olive oil (1-2 Tablespoons)

Step 1:

Fill a pot with water and bring to a boil. As the water begins to boil, add in a few tablespoons of salt. Stir to incorporate and allow to sit at a rumbling boil until step 2 is completed.

Step 2:

Cut the guanciale into small cubes. Sprinkle a little olive oil in the bottom of a large sauté pan. Add in the guanciale (or pancetta) and cook until just crisped. Do not allow to brown too much as it can become bitter. Turn off the heat and let sit while preparing the remaining ingredients.

Step 3:

Add spaghetti to the pot of boiling water. Follow package instructions for proper cooking time and subtract a minute or two to avoid overcooking in step 5.

Step 4:

While the pasta is cooking, beat the eggs thoroughly and add in 1/2 cup of firmly packed pecorino romano cheese along with a dash or two of fresh ground pepper. The consistency should be thick, so if the mixture is still runny add in more cheese.

Step 5:

Check the pasta for doneness, and when ready, use tongs to add the pasta to the guanciale pan. If the guanciale pan has cooled too much, turn the heat back on (low) and continue to incorporate. Add in the egg and cheese mixture and continue to toss and mix, taking care not to scramble the eggs. Add in 1/2 cup of pasta water and incorporate. At this point, you should be stirring and turning the mixture constantly, as shown. Once it starts to get creamy it is ready to serve. If it starts to get a little dry, add in the remaining pasta water and stir again until creamy.

Step 6:

Plate the pasta and serve immediately, adding a sprinkling of olive oil and reserved pecorino romano cheese as desired.

Tips:

Make sure your pasta pan and saute pan are side by side or one in front of the other on the stove. This will making the transfer of pasta to the saute pan a lot cleaner and easier. Use tongs to remove the pasta from the water and transfer to the saute pan. There is no need to drain as you will need some of the pasta water to finish the dish.

Read all steps before you start. When you get to step 5, you will need to give your pasta your full attention. The eggs will cook while the pasts turns, but if you stop and let it rest in the pan, it can curdle like scrambled eggs.

Some people drain the grease out of the pan after the guanciale or pancetta is cooked. Don’t. If you are going to make Spaghetti Carbonara, make Spaghetti Carbonara. Enjoy the extra flavor it adds to the dish.

Enjoy!!