Creamy carbonara recipe | Jamie Oliver pasta recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the golden rule of cooking a carbonara? ›

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.

Because it tastes better like this, cream cuts and modifies taste for the worse, with cream is simply not a carbonara, menu of a serious restaurant in that case will have to specify “pasta with eggs and cream and guanciale and pecorino”, not carbonara. Do Italians not use cream or milk in pasta sauce?

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.

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.

What distinguishes carbonara from other pasta dishes is its technique of combining eggs, hard cheese, cured pork, and black pepper into a rich, silky sauce. This recipe calls for raw eggs that are gently cooked by the hot sauce. If you prefer, you can use pasteurized eggs instead.

Whisking your eggs so that the whites are completely incorporated into the yolks will give your sauce a more uniform texture. For an extra creamy sauce, it's best to use mostly egg yolks. The egg whites tend to make carbonara watery, but too many egg yolks can make the sauce too custardy.

Carbonara is made with guanciale (cured pork), eggs, Pecorino Romano cheese, spaghetti pasta, and lots of black pepper. Italians don't add extra ingredients like cream, milk, garlic, or onions. Try this recipe if you want to make an authentic, creamy carbonara that comes straight from Italy, where I live.

The difference between alfredo and carbonara is that carbonara contains an egg while alfredo sauce does not. Carbonara is usually thinner in consistency than alfredo sauce, using the egg to coat the noodles instead of relying on the cream.

What's the difference between carbonara and Italian carbonara? ›

The Italian version doesn't use cream or ham. It is made with pancetta (pork belly meat that is salt cured, also referred to as Italian bacon), Parmigiano Reggiano or pecorino romano cheese, eggs, and black pepper—called the basics. The pork is fried in fat, usually olive oil.

Taste.com.au Food Director, Amira Georgy, confirmed this, saying: “Traditionally, carbonara sauce contains no cream, just eggs and cheese. The eggs and cheese are added to the hot pasta and tossed together until a silky sauce forms.”

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.

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.

The use of thermal processing is the most effective method for Salmonella inactivation in preparations containing eggs. Consequently, according to regulatory agencies, it is generally mandatory that these preparations must be completely cooked to a temperature of at least 70 °C.

Place a single-serving of the pasta in a round or oval microwave-safe dish and drizzle a little extra sauce or water on top to keep the pasta moist and separated while it cooks. Then, cover the dish and microwave the pasta at medium heat for 1 to 1 ½ minutes.