Classic Italian Spaghetti Carbonara | Lovefoodies (2024)

FAQs

What is in classic Italian carbonara? ›

Carbonara is made with guanciale (cured pork), eggs, Pecorino Romano cheese, spaghetti pasta, and lots of black pepper. Italians don't add extra ingredients like cream, milk, garlic, or onions. Try this recipe if you want to make an authentic, creamy carbonara that comes straight from Italy, where I live.

Should carbonara have cream? Typically carbonara sauce is only made of eggs, bacon, parmesan, olive oil, seasoning, and sometimes, vegetables. As for cream, Italians will tell you that is a big no no.

The golden rule of cooking carbonara is to never cook the sauce over direct heat once the eggs are added. Instead, remove the pasta from the heat and toss it with the egg and cheese mixture off the heat, allowing the residual heat from the pasta to gently cook the eggs into a creamy sauce.

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 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.

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 difference between alfredo and carbonara is that carbonara contains an egg while alfredo sauce does not. Carbonara is usually thinner in consistency than alfredo sauce, using the egg to coat the noodles instead of relying on the cream.

As the fat renders, he removes some of the molten liquid with a spoon. The lean part of the meat ultimately caramelises and becomes a sort of "popcorn guanciale": crunchy outside and tender inside. His carbonara is very yellow in colour since he only uses egg yolks – one per 60g of pasta.

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.

Roasted garlic cream sauce can be delicious with strong seafood or by itself on pasta. But you don't have to garlic everything. Humble ingredients—eggs, pasta, cheese, and pork—combine to create glossy, glorious spaghetti carbonara that's just as good at dinner as at 4 a.m.

Do you put raw egg in carbonara? ›

What distinguishes carbonara from other pasta dishes is its technique of combining eggs, hard cheese, cured pork, and black pepper into a rich, silky sauce. This recipe calls for raw eggs that are gently cooked by the hot sauce. If you prefer, you can use pasteurized eggs instead.

It's higher in fat, which gives a velvety texture and richer flavor to the carbonara. I'd rather not go overboard on the richness, so I'll use whole eggs, and typically I'll add an extra yolk to the pan. If guanciale is not available, I'll use pancetta.

Peas don't detract from the dish in any way, other than smack the face of tradition. They lend color to an otherwise pale plate of pasta and give it a nice pop of sweetness. Not in an authentic carbonara. Peas can go quite well in a cream-based sauce.

Italians have reacted with fury after being told they have been cooking spaghetti carbonara wrong for the last 70 years. Luca Cesari, a leading food historian, found what he believes is the first recipe for the dish, published in an Italian cookery magazine called La Cucina Italiana in 1954.

It's sort of its own thing. Mostly it's salty, rich, peppery, and a bit smokey. It's such a simple recipe that you should taste the individual components; egg yolk, cured pork fat, salt, pepper, Parmigiano cheese.

Carbonara Spaghetti is an Italian pasta dish from Rome based on eggs, cheese (Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano), bacon (guanciale or pancetta), and black pepper. Spaghetti is usually used as the pasta; however, fettuccine, rigatoni, linguine or bucatini can also be used.

Like we said before, guanciale is the traditional cured meat used in central Italy's classic carbonara recipe, but it's also commonly used in another dish, bucatini all'amatriciana, which you can save time making at home with Paesana Marinara Sauce.