Carbonara sauce: make the real one
You just need three ingredients to make a perfect carbonara sauce: guanciale, eggs, and pecorino romano.
Pasta Carbonara (pasta alla carbonara, literally translated as coal workers’ pasta) is one of the most well known and loved Italian delicacy: the creaminess of the eggs contrasting with the crispy guanciale makes it a pleasure to eat.
The origins of Carbonara sauce are still uncertain. However, the recipe doesn’t appear until 1944, which prompts some speculations on how this delicious recipe came to be. The most widely recognized theory is that this beloved Italian dish is an American adaptation of the traditional “cacio e ova”. When the allied troupes were stationed in Italy toward the end of WW2, they got fond of pasta cacio e pepe, but to give them a “back home” flavour, they added smoked bacon to the recipe.
Roman people enthusiastically adopted the new dish and quickly added it to their cooking. They changed the bacon with the guanciale, as they already had pasta recipes using guanciale (the fat coming from the pork’s cheek) and Pecorino.
- 360 gr spaghetti
- 120 gr guanciale
- 4 eggs yolks
- 1 whole egg
- 150 gr Pecorino Romano
- salt and pepper to taste
Carbonara is one of the Roman pecorino-guanciale recipe triads, the other two being Pasta alla Gricia and Bucatini all’Amatriciana.
Never use the parmesan cheese for this recipe, however, if having difficulties finding guanciale, pancetta can be used instead. Never add cream to the recipe: the creaminess is given by the sheer amount of grated Pecorino: so never skimp on it!
In a non-stick pan, fry the guanciale in its own fat until slightly crispy, taking care not to brown it too much.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs yolk and the whole eggs with salt and pepper. Stir in the grated cheese until a thick cream is obtained. Add the cooked guanciale and reserve.
Cook -al dente- the spaghetti or bucatini. Reserve about 100 ml of the cooking water. Drain well the pasta, and immediately pour the pasta into the bowl with the eggs. The heat of the pasta will cook the egg.
Add a little bit of the reserved cooking water, and mix well so to coat all the pasta. If the sauce is still too dense, add some more cooking water. If too runny, stir in more cheese.
If necessary, season with more salt and pepper. Serve immediately sprinkled with extra grated Pecorino cheese.
Originally published at pastartist.com on April 6, 2018.
