Easy Spaghetti Carbonara is comfort food at its best. Made with crispy bacon and delicious combination of Italian cheeses, this flavorful pasta will quickly become your favorite hearty meal.
Easy Spaghetti Carbonara
I have to tell you, I fell in love with spaghetti carbonara right after I tried it the first time. Its silky texture and rich taste made it my #1 choice of pasta recipe for many years.
Pasta Carbonara is quite popular in lots of American chain restaurants. But to my biggest disappointment, they don't make it right.
Sorry, if you've had it there and you liked it. It's delicious, I won't argue, but in most cases it's not Carbonara.
Many chefs love to add heavy cream to their pastas and it just makes it super heavy and loaded with fat.
Real and authentic pasta Carbonara doesn't have heavy cream. Major ingredient is raw egg!
Don't be alarmed, you won't feel it!
Instead, you will taste a silky, flavorful and extremely delicious sauce, that makes this pasta stand out among other pasta recipes.
And I know what you're probably thinking - "there's no way I'm consuming raw eggs"!
But if prepared right, the eggs will be cooked to the right and safe to eat temperature.
How?
If you add a really hot pasta (right out of the pot) into the egg sauce and quickly toss it altogether, the heat from spaghetti will cook the eggs and make the sauce thicker.
Really easy and so delicious!
Italians usually cook this pasta with Pancetta, which is Italian bacon or Guancile. You can certainly use any of those. I'm just not a huge fan of Pancetta and it's certainly difficult to find Guancile in the grocery stores.
Normally, you'll see Carbonara with Parmigiano Reggiano only, but I found it really interesting to use a combination of cheeses such as Parmigiano Reggianoand Pecorino Romano.
Latter, gives the sauce nice and tangy flavor and further intensifies the incredible taste of pasta.
More 30 minute pasta recipes
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Pasta Carbonara Video
Recipe
Ingredients
Instructions
- In a large pot of salted boiling water, add spaghetti and cook until al dente.
- Meanwhile, in a medium non-stick skillet and on a medium heat, add bacon and saute until it's nice and crisp and the fat is rendered, about 4-5 minutes. Transfer the bacon onto a paper towel.
- In a large bowl, whisk the eggs. Add salt, pepper, garlic, Pecorino-Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano.
- Set the bowl of egg and cheese mixture over a pot of boiling water or place it on a slightly heated stove. Let it warm up for a few minutes before adding pasta, whisking from time to time to prevent eggs from cooking.
- Using tongs, quickly add spaghetti into the egg and cheese mixture and mix well until sauce thickens. If it seems too dry, add more pasta cooking water 2-3 tablespoons at a time. The sauce should become silky and smooth. The trick is to use hot pasta right out of the pot.
- Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in bacon.
- Serve immediately and garnish with chopped parsley.
- Enjoy!
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Iryna Bychkiv is the founder and writer of the culinary website Lavender & Macarons, where she shares clean, European-inspired recipes that are delicious, easy to prepare, and made with wholesome ingredients. Iryna loves creating meals that are simple yet healthy and unique, including vegan and vegetarian recipes.
Iryna is also a freelance writer for MSN and Associated Press Wire.
BRIAN FORD says
Carbonara, at the very least needs pancetta, not standard bacon. Never, ever use garlic. The flavors of carbonara are soft and subtle, garlic just over powers all the wonderful flavors and creaminess that a good carbonara offers.
Kulia says
So beautiful! And I think it's very tasty.
Iryna says
🙂