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carbonara spaghetti original italian recipe
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Carbonara, the original recipe with spaghetti

Spaghetti Carbonara with original recipe and ingredients to prepare this first course: how to make Carbonara pasta.
Course First course
Cuisine Italian, Roman
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Doses for 4 servings
Calorie per porzione433kcal
Cost Low

Other details

  • Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

Ingredients of Roman Carbonara Pasta

  • 400 g Spaghetti (or mezze maniche, or bucatini) 14.11 oz
  • 280 g Guanciale 9.88 oz
  • 200 g Grated Pecorino Romano cheese 7.05 oz
  • 5 Medium egg yolks 4.38 oz
  • as needed Whole black peppercorns (not an optional for the original italian recipe)

Instructions

How to prepare Carbonara

  • Fill a pot with plenty of water and heat it on the stove until boiling. Add half of the salt required to salt the pasta because the ingredients of Carbonara are already very flavorful. When the water boils, add spaghetti to the pot and stir for the first minute. Boil for the time indicated on the pasta package for al dente cooking.
  • While the pasta is cooking, prepare the Carbonara: Take guanciale, remove the rind, cut it into half-centimeter thick strips and pour it into a hot pan to fry in its own fat for a few minutes over moderate heat.
  • Turn occasionally to get a nice crispy guanciale, do not add oil because no additional fats are needed in the pan. In fact, when the guanciale is ready, we can drain the fat into a bowl while keeping the crispy guanciale strips on a separate plate.
  • Take a bowl, pour in the egg yolks, grated Pecorino Romano cheese (keeping some aside for final decoration of the plates) and a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper to give more aroma.
  • Combine with a spatula until obtaining a yellow and creamy mixture, then add the melted guanciale fat using a ladle. At this point, the egg and cheese mixture will become even creamier because the Pecorino Romano cheese melts. Combine again with the spatula.
  • When the pasta is al dente, keep a few ladles of cooking water in a bowl and then drain. Finally, pour the al dente pasta into the pan where the guanciale was fried and with the heat off, add the Pecorino Romano cheese and egg cream, including a ladle of cooking water. Mix everything together, with the heat off to prevent the egg yolks from cooking, until the spaghetti becomes completely yellowish.
  • The Carbonara pasta is now super creamy (not liquid, beware!) and we are ready to add the crispy guanciale strips (always keep some for final decoration of the plates). Mix everything together and then form the plates. Finally, sprinkle grated Pecorino Romano cheese, crispy guanciale and a sprinkle of black pepper (in this order). Your Spaghetti Carbonara is ready to be served!

Tips

Do not forget to add the guanciale fat to the egg and Pecorino mixture: in addition to making the Carbonara more fragrant, shiny and velvety, this step is essential in pasteurizing the egg without cooking it. Alternatively, you can use cooking water, taking care not to make the mixture too liquid.
Instead of pouring the pasta and the egg mixture into the pan where you cooked the guanciale, you can also drain the spaghetti from the boiling water and then transfer them into a steel or glass bowl where you add the egg mixture to mix them. In this case, the bowl should be placed on top of the pot still full of boiling cooking water, so that while we mix the spaghetti alla Carbonara, the egg is pasteurized with the indirect heat of the water in the pot.
It is necessary to add water only a little at a time, so that it perfectly amalgamates and melts the cheese to the right point (although this depends a lot on the level of aging of the typical Roman cheese). Using freshly grated Pecorino cheese will help make the Carbonara creamier, it is recommended to avoid taking the already grated pecorino.

Conservation

Spaghetti alla Carbonara can also be eaten the day after, reheated in a pan, however, the taste will never be the same as the original and neither will the texture. Due to the egg that cannot cook to give creaminess to the dish, it is impossible to have a good reheated Carbonara. The advice is to consume your Spaghetti alla Carbonara as soon as possible. Alternatively, you can store it in an airtight container in the fridge for a maximum of one day.