Carbonara

Name: Carbonara
Total time: 600 s
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 450 g dried spaghetti; 4 strips high quality, fatty bacon, chopped; 2 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks; 75 g pecorino romano, finely grated (plus more for garnish)

Robert Gonzal @robert

Vancouver BC

We had a potluck at work a couple of days ago and someone brought in a dish that they called carbonara. Now, I'm guilty of being an experimenter myself and making carbonara that's not really carbonara, at least traditionally speaking (see mushroom carbonara, recipe posted previously). But the potluck version was way, way, way out there. In fact, another coworker said it tasted like chicken soup. Which is...weird, but also accurate. The pasta was actually good; it just wasn't carbonara. Anyway, this motivated me to make my own version, sticking much more closely to the dish's roots. The one concession made, out of necessity because it's not a readily available ingredient around here, is the substitution of bacon for the traditional guanciale. Bacon's good, but it's not the same. Don't worry, though, because the pasta still turned out creamy and delicious.

Robert Gonzal @robert

Saved

Ingredients

10 minutes

4 servings

450 gdried spaghetti
4 stripshigh quality, fatty bacon, chopped
2large eggs plus 2 egg yolks
75 gpecorino romano, finely grated (plus more for garnish)

Saved

Steps

10 minutes

1

Drop the spaghetti into a large pot of boiling salted water.
2

Add a tiny splash of olive oil to a large pan on medium heat. Sprinkle in the bacon and let it fry gently. You want to render the fat and lightly crisp the meat. Aim for a little chew, not super-crispy, breakfast bacon. Once the bacon is done, turn off the heat and add a few splashes of pasta cooking water to stop the frying.
3

Add the eggs and egg yolks to a mixing bowl. Add the 75 g of pecorino plus several grinds of freshly cracked black pepper and whisk to combine. Temper the eggs by whisking in a splash of pasta cooking water.
4

Once cooked, drag the spaghetti into the pan with the bacon. Pour in the sauce and toss immediately to emulsify the sauce and coat the noodles. If the pasta is clodgy, loosen it with a splash or two of pasta water. Serve with the remaining cheese on the side.