What is the golden rule of cooking a carbonara (2024)

FAQs

What is the golden rule of cooking a carbonara? ›

What is the golden rule of cooking a carbonara? The golden rule of cooking carbonara is to never cook the sauce over direct heat once the eggs are added.

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.

Egg whites will provide texture but too much could make the eggs curdle. Meanwhile, egg yolks help to bind the pork fat to the sauce. This also helps to enhance the creaminess. So a good rule to follow is to include one egg yolk per person and one egg white per four people.

In Italy, the golden rule for cooking pasta is 1, 10, 100 or 1 liter of water, 10 grams of salt for every 100 grams of pasta. Converted for American cooks, the rule should be 1/3, 3, 30, referring to 1/3 oz of salt, 3 oz of pasta and 30 oz of water.

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.

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.

Should carbonara have cream? Typically carbonara sauce is only made of eggs, bacon, parmesan, olive oil, seasoning, and sometimes, vegetables. As for cream, Italians will tell you that is a big no no.

Is raw egg in carbonara safe? ›

The sauce is made with raw egg yolks and is cooked by using only the heat from the cooked pasta. Some people have concerns about the safety of this dish due to the possibility of egg yolks be contaminated with salmonella. In fact, the hot cooked pasta does fully cook the egg. I hope that this answers your question.

Now quickly pour in the eggs and cheese. Using the tongs or a long fork, lift up the spaghetti so it mixes easily with the egg mixture, which thickens but doesn't scramble, and everything is coated. Add extra pasta cooking water to keep it saucy (several tablespoons should do it).

If you want your carbonara to be as authentic as possible, you should be using guanciale, not bacon or pancetta. Guanciale is cured pork cheek. It looks a little like bacon, but isn't smoked, so its flavor leans more towards pancetta. Rich, unctuous and packed with umami, guanciale is what real carbonara is made from.

The pasta should be “al dente”, which means it should be “firm to the bite”, yet cooked through. It's better to taste the pasta before draining it. When it's ready drain the pasta but don't rinse it with cold water. The pasta should be hot when mixed with the sauce.

Guanciale – This is a key ingredient in carbonara, and is a cured fatty pork that is similar to bacon and pancetta. It adds adds flavour into the dish and the fat makes the sauce creamy when mixed with the egg and starchy pasta cooking water.

Add a few ladles of pasta water and stir until the mixture begins to resemble a sauce. Take another ladle of the pasta water and add it to the egg bowl, whisking it all together. THIS MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO COOK THE EGG WITHOUT SCRAMBLING IT.

A sauce of mostly yolks has a richer, silkier, tighter texture than one made with only whole eggs. A mixture of Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano delivers that essential Roman flavor without making the pasta taste excessively salty or sharp.