For such a simple dish, pasta carbonara can seem intimidating. There are, after all, either raw or very gently cooked eggs to deal with, along with plenty of people on the internet proudly proclaiming their recipe to be better, or more bona fide, than all others. It’s a shame, though, because carbonara is a fantastic weeknight dish, requiring nothing but pantry staples and a smattering of fresh herbs if you’ve got them.
The only real trick is to pay close attention to the sauce in the last few minutes of cooking.
The ingredients list is easy: long pasta (both spaghetti and bucatini, which is preferred in my house, will do), bacon or guanciale (if you can find it), eggs, Parmesan cheese and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Chopped fresh parsley is a nice finishing touch if you’ve already got it on your shopping list, but it isn’t necessary.
When it comes time to cook, you only need to multitask a bit: boil the pasta while you render the bacon and grate the cheese. You’ll whisk that cheese into a combination of whole eggs and egg yolks; I like a relatively high ratio of egg yolks to whole eggs for an utra-creamy sauce. Mix the cooked pasta, a half-cup of its cooking water and the bacon with all its fat in the bowl with the eggs and cheese. It will not cook the eggs, but that’s okay.
You’ll cook the eggs in the next step, when you pour the whole lot back into the skillet and heat it very gently. Use tongs to stir the pasta constantly while the egg mixture turns from what looks like a watery mess into a thickened, custard-like sauce. Once it reaches this point, move fast to pour it into a serving bowl. After all, no one wants scrambled egg carbonara. And that’s it. Add parsley if you like and then head straight to the table. This is a dish best served hot.
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