Sometimes you just need a carbonara—it's my favorite dish!

Pasta alla carbonara is a recipe of Roman origin, traditional and always delicious. Preparing a good carbonara is quick and easy, let's see how to do it.

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.

A symbolic dish of Italian cuisine, capable of bringing everyone together when eating it, but dividing opinions when discussing the original recipe.

This is a slightly adjusted recipe from someone else on here that my wife and I love. Serve with a vegetable or other side.

Serving a dish like carbonara used to intimidate me, but now I make it with ease. It's a classic dish you'll find in the best trattorias in Rome, but now it's made all over Italy. It's a simple recipe with just a few ingredients, and the star is guanciale (which I trim of excess fat).

There are hundreds of versions of this amazing dish. With cream or without? Whole eggs or just yolks? Pecorino, Parmesan cheese, or both? Guanciale, pancetta or bacon? This superb version is based on a recipe by food writer Daniel Gritzer.

From Lazio, the classic Carbonara recipe! Who could say no to this dish?

A troublemaking French heretic invites two Italian heretics to lunch. They arrive to find their host grinning, a 25 oz (750 ml) bottle of tripel beer, and Bauhaus's 'Mask' playing in the background. "Let's do something outrageous and post it online to stir things up," says the snail-eater. "Remember last year when a Frenchman posted a carbonara with cream? They say the controversy still hasn't died down," replies one of the Italians, who, as it happens, is from Lazio. "I've got an idea," exclaims the second Italian, a crypto-anarchist from Bolzano. "Instead of messing with just one tradition, why not three?" The look they exchange says it all, except for two words: "To the stove!"

Here’s a lighter version of zucchini carbonara without guanciale. It keeps the creamy texture of the traditional recipe but is more delicate.