How to Make the Perfect Spaghetti Carbonara

Carbonara is a dish that you probably order at your favorite Italian restaurant. I'm going to show you how easy it is to make at home. So we're going to make a little pasta carbonara. We're going to make it with spaghetti. Now, if you're not familiar with a carbonara, what it is, it is guanciale, the jowls of a pig, which is rendered out, is tossed with pecorino cheese, sometimes a little parmesan cheese, and egg yolk. And if you do it the right way, it creates this beautiful creamy sauce, and it's really a spectacular fan favorite, so to speak. So I'm going to show you how to do it. I'm going to add a little half pecorino, half parmigiano. I love the richness of the parmigiano cheese, and I love the sharpness of the pecorino. And I think in balance, it really showcases this pasta perfectly well. I'm going to start with this guanciale that I have here. And what I like to do with this guanciale is normally I would slice it on a slicer in one of the restaurants, but I don't have a slicer here. So I'm going to do it by hand, and I'm going to slice this super thin. I'm not going to dice it. I'm going to just slice it super thin. The thinner I get this, the better. Kind of shave it almost. And then I'm going to put it in a pan, and I add a touch of oil to it just to kind of help it along. You could use pancetta. A lot of people use bacon. Listen, let's face facts. People say, you know, this pasta became really popular post-war Italy in the 1950s. I seriously have a hard time believing in post-war Italy. People were saying, no, you can't make that pasta because it doesn't have guanciale, when post-war Italy was a really challenging time for people, obviously. I'm just causing all kinds of trouble here, aren't I? So guanciale is the guancia, the jaw, the jowls of the pig, which is cured. And it has a little bit of a different spice mixture in that cure than a pancetta. And pancetta is the pancia, stomach of the pig. So that's where the bacon comes from, from the stomach as well. This is the jowls, and it's just one of my favorite things. I love guanciale. I love the flavor profile. Oh, this smells so good as it's rendering out. This whole place is going to smell so good in a moment. So by starting this in a cold pan the way I did, it allows that to really slowly render out. And you start to see, you know, that translucence and the importance of how thin that guanciale is and why I cut it that way. Because when it starts to cook in its own fat, which it will momentarily, you're going to start to see how crispy it gets and how beautiful it is. So this is going to render out for about 20 minutes or so. It just looks so good. So happy with this. I have a little parmigiano here that's grated. I have a little pecorino. I'm going to grate a little bit more of it. So I really love to grate the cheese and then put it through a tammy like this. I've referenced this in past videos, but this is pecorino Romano. Obviously you're going to use the cheeses that are kind of local to the region that the pasta stems from. So carbonara is a very typical Roman pasta. So carbonara being one of those top four Roman pastas, carbonara, matriciana, cacio e pepe, and the gricia pasta. Each one is kind of related to each other in different ways. Matriciana has guanciale and tomato. Gricia has guanciale and pecorino. All of them have pecorino cheese. Cacio e pepe is pecorino and black pepper. And then of course, carbonara, this one, egg, pecorino, and guanciale. So that guanciale is coming together really nicely. We're almost there. We got to hurry up and get this pecorino done and then we'll pass it through this sieve, through this tammy. So you see this tammy and how much I use it in these videos. You want to get one, check out the Amazon link and you can buy it there. Pecorino, I'm just going to kind of force it through this tammy right here. I really love the texture and the powdery consistency that this creates. I do the same thing with Parmesan cheese. What's left over on top is what we serve the guests to put on top of pasta in the dining room. So nothing goes to waste. Look at that. See that beautiful consistency of this, the difference between the two? Big difference. And when you start out with beautiful product, chances are you're going to end up with an even better product once it all comes together. So I got the pecorino here. A lot of people swear that you should use one or the other. A lot of people don't like pecorino because of its sharpness. I think that's a great reason to use pecorino because of its sharpness. Parmigiano adds a beautiful richness as well, which is, you know, specific and amazing. So we're going to take all this rendered off fat and add it right to this bowl. Look at that. And we're going to hold this guanciale on the side, nice and crispy, to use a little later on. Got the guanciale fat here. Going to add five egg yolks and one whole egg. Again, I use this parmigiano because I love the richness. And I use the pecorino, number one, because it's tradition. And number two, I love the sharpness. All we got to do is cook the pasta. We'll toss it in the pan. Add a little bit of the pasta cooking liquid to this so it kind of smooths out once the pasta is finished. And I'll tell you, beyond that, I got nothing. It's all good. So I got the pasta water cooking here. I'm going to add a little bit of salt to it so it tastes like broth, like we do. Put some black pepper here. I'm going to add to this egg mixture as well. You know, I used to work with a guy who went really heavy with black pepper so you could really taste almost the spice as well. And so I always go a little heavier on black pepper because of that. That black pepper scent with the pecorino, with that guanciale fat. So bucatini or spaghetti is really traditional for a carbonara. In this case, I'm using spaghetti. I love spaghetti. It's my favorite. I love the shape. I love the texture. This particular pasta is pasta di graniano. Graniano is a small town outside of Naples that's known for their quality of pasta. They have days where you can walk through the streets and there's spaghetti pasta festivals in graniano where people are literally drying their pasta out on the balconies of their homes. So I love this because it has texture on the outside. I think you can hear that. Sharpen my knife while I'm at it. You can hear that texture on the exterior. You can feel the texture on the exterior as well. For me, once you have this, there's no going back to other pastas. So I'm going to take about three quarters of this pound, let it sit for a moment, and then we'll start to get it into this basket. The pound of pasta is a lot for this little basket. That's all. That's why I didn't want to add the whole thing. The pasta takes about 10 minutes to cook. Normally what I would do with this pasta, with any pasta, is cook it about, you know, eight minutes in, eight and a half minutes, and then finish it the rest of the way in the sauce itself. But with this, it's different because you don't want to cook this carbonara for too long. You don't want to continue to cook this because the eggs will scramble and you'll end up with the wrong dish. I'm going to cook it until it's all the way done in the pasta, take it out, put it in this pan, and then add a little bit of that pasta cooking liquid to this mixture, toss it all together, make sure that it's nice and creamy and cooked. And I'm even going to check the temp because I think it's really important that when you're doing this, you got to make sure that it hits at least 140 degrees so you don't have to worry about salmonella and all the things inside those eggs. So we are going to err on the side of caution, and I'll show you that it's really easy to get to that point. It won't be a real issue. I'll add a little bit of this pasta cooking liquid to this just to thin it out a touch. I'm going to dry this off a little close by. Ready? Vamanos. Everything we need is inside here. So the cheese, the egg, the guanciale fat, and we'll top this with the guanciale on the other side. You see, we're already at 160 degrees, so we got nothing to worry about there. Add a little bit more of this pasta cooking liquid just to make sure that the consistency is correct. So if you notice, I'm off the heat, and I'll go back onto the heat. When off the heat, I want to really gauge the temperature of this to make sure that it doesn't overcook, but also we get enough heat on it that it cooks everything through. So I think we have arrived. Look at that. I want to get, I'm using the rubber spatula because I really want to get all that delicious sauce here. Oh, yes. A flourish of black pepper to finish. Making it rain. I don't know about you. All I need is a fork and a loaf of bread, and I'm ready to go. Spaghetti carbonara. Let's see. That's not bad for an American guy, I got to tell you. Look at that. That sharpness of that pecorino comes through. The richness of the egg and the parmigiano. That guanciale is just something special. I really love that little spicy black pepper backdrop. Pasta is al dente. I don't know what else you want. Guys, get in here and taste this. I hope you guys like this. Wow, it's so rich. Thickness is nice. Stephen, come here, brother. I got to feed you because we have our moment together.