Chicken Carbonara Recipe - Ready in 15 Minutes! - Fun Cheap or Free (2024)

FAQs

What is the golden rule of cooking a carbonara? ›

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.

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.

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.

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.

Because in the traditional recipe there is no garlic, if you add it you will lower quality of a very good food. My personal opinion is that garlic flavour does not fit with the egg nor the guanciale (pork cheek fat) flavour at all.

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.

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 dish offers some nutritional benefits. Eggs provide protein, while Pecorino Romano cheese contributes calcium and flavor. However, carbonara is also high in saturated fats and calories due to the use of cheese and cured pork. Additionally, the pasta itself is a source of carbohydrates.

The carbonara sauce in pasta primarily consists of egg yolks. Achieving a smooth and creamy consistency is often the most challenging step. Since the raw egg yolks have to be mixed with the pasta, you have to make sure to add the egg yolks to the pasta OFF the heat so the eggs don't scramble.

Does garlic belong in carbonara? ›

that there are only five ingredients: pasta, pork cheek, eggs, cheese and pepper. That's it. A real carbonara does not contain onion, garlic, or cream.

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.

Traditional Carbonara is a pasta sauce that gets its famously smooth, silky texture from the special way eggs (with extra egg yolks added) are cooked in the hot pasta itself. There is also the addition of hard Italian cheeses like Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano that add to the smoothness.

If your idea of a Carbonara is a thicker creamier dish then you should add egg whites. Although you can achieve the same effect by using more cheese. Add the pasta to the pan on a high heat, keep adding finely grated cheese and ladle in the water you cooked the pasta in. Too loose more cheese, too dry more water.

There's one other reason and that's if they've failed to emulsify the egg, pasta water and cheese, they may add cream to 'rescue' the dish. Why don't traditional pastas use cream? The reason is that cream isn't used in Italian pasta dishes is that it can be overpowering.

This might be the most important step in making carbonara. Before adding the eggs and cheese to the pasta, you MUST turn off the heat. If you don't, you could overcook your sauce and turn it into scrambled eggs. The residual heat from the hot noodles and pasta water will cook the egg yolks without scrambling them.

You're using more egg yolks than whites here, which is what makes carbonara so rich and luxurious. But there's still two eggs-worth of whites in there. Whisking your eggs so that the whites are completely incorporated into the yolks will give your sauce a more uniform texture.