The Pasta That Teaches You Tomato Sauce

This is hands down my favorite pasta on the planet. It's a Roman classic for a reason, and it's only four ingredients. But if you learn to make this the right way, it'll change the way you make pretty much any tomato pasta forever. So let's get going, because today we're making. Welcome. This is going to be the third of four in our Roman pasta series. I already made pasta alla gricia and cacio e pepe, which were both my highest viewed videos of all time. And if you master these four pastas, you should be able to translate it to making virtually any pasta dish properly at home. But for now, let's get to building some flavor with a nice piece of guanciale. Guanciale comes from the cheek or jowl area. It's cured like bacon but it's not smoked so if you want to use bacon here I'd steer clear of any smoked varieties. And it looks like we got a string on here that I guess they use to hang it during the curing process. Yeah it's really kind of stuck in there so I'm just going to cut it out before I start breaking this down. There we go. Anyway, if you can't find guanciale, your best substitute is going to be pancetta, which has a similar curing process, but comes from the belly. Here I got guanciale on the left, and pancetta on the right. Most US grocery stores carry pancetta, but you'll usually find it pre-cubed, like in a package. So your best bet at a slab of it is going to be at an Italian market, which is where I found both of these. For now, we're just going to slice these lengthwise into long strips before we cut across into mini strips, usually referred to as lardons. Similar to bacon, these are going to shrink up quite a bit in the pan, so I'm going to be slicing these into pieces that are roughly around 50% larger than I want the final bite to be. You can go super thin here if you want them to almost melt into the sauce, but usually I like to have somewhat substantial bites of guanciale, totally up to you. This particular guanciale doesn't have the skin on it, so if yours has the skin, you want to make sure to remove it so it doesn't burn or become bitter. You can compensate for the pepper loss by adding a bit of extra pepper later on. Let's get these rendering, and then we can start to address how to process the tomatoes, the pasta, and the cheese. We're going to cook these the same exact way we cooked them for the alla gricia, which starts off in essentially just a cold pan, brought up to temp on a medium-low heat, so we can start rendering and melting the fat to lubricate the pan. You can also add some olive oil here to get things going, but I didn't really find it necessary. While those get going, I'm going to wash my knife and cutting board because the health department has been after me for a while now. Also, if you have a carbon steel knife like I do, you know it'll start to rust the moment you turn your back, so keeping these clean and dry are critical if you don't want to have a bad time. Okay, let's see how our friends are doing here. Alright, we're getting there. The fat has turned translucent. Now we're heading into the crisping stage. The key from here on out is to keep them moving. Then, what I like to do once I have a good amount of fat initially rendered is to just tip the pan up so it all pools to one side. Then just keep rotating the pork around and now it's basically acting like a deep fryer that's cooking all the pieces fully submerged as they go in. This is going to help with a nice gentle and even crisping. That way the lean and meaty parts don't burn and become bitter before the fattier parts have a chance to really render and become nice and tender versus chewy. Now we can talk tomatoes. I've got some whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes here. They're nice and bright, and cut through the richness of the guanciale really nicely. I'd highly recommend them for this, but you can use whatever tomatoes you can find. I'm going to use a food mill to break these down into a nice smooth sauce. The reason I like using a food mill for these is because it preserves more of the natural texture and removes the seeds without breaking them up, which many people say can make it a bit bitter, but I haven't tested that myself. We also don't really want to aerate it too much if we don't have to, but with that said, it's really not that big a deal if you blend them or just buy a passata. But for me, in recipes where there's only a few ingredients, I think maximizing each one is really part of the key to something spectacular versus something that's pretty good. While I'm at it, I'm just going to transfer these back into the original container in case I don't use all of it. That way I can save the rest for a pizza or something. Alright, so I got our pan with the guanciale fat and fond heated back up a bit. I removed about 40% of the fat we had, but I'll have the full amounts of everything in the description down below, as always. We'll get everything in, and then I'm going to add a sprig of basil for flavor, which we'll extract later on. We'll give it a quick taste and add some initial salt to it. We want to go a little under salted for now, and adjust later on. I like to cook this down and reduce it for around 30 minutes or so to allow some of the flavor to develop but still preserve the brightness and freshness of the tomatoes. For the pasta, I'm using some half or meze rigatoni, but you can use whatever pasta you want. What's less negotiable in my opinion, though, is to use pasta that's been cut on bronze dies. Because A, it has more surface starch that leaches into the pasta water, which acts like a glue to marry the sauce to the pasta. And B, it has a roughly textured surface that the pasta wants to stick to more easily. And to aid in the starch concentration, I'm going to try to use just barely enough water to keep the pasta submerged throughout the cook. That's part of why I'm using such a small pot today. And we'll give it a decent pinch of salt. I think we should have just enough water to make it to the end, but we'll see. We'll cook these to a very firm al dente to finish in the sauce. Since the package said 14 to 16 minutes, I'm going to check on it in about 12. Amatriciana is the third of the four Roman classic pasta dishes that we're covering. It's the only one that has tomatoes, and probably my personal favorite. We started off with alla gricia, which is basically this minus tomatoes, but with extra cheese added. Then we did cacio e pepe, which takes away the guanciale. And finally, there's carbonara, which brings back the guanciale and adds egg. Feel free to let me know your disappointment in my pronunciation in the comments. Alright, that means our pasta should be ready. So I'll give this one last taste and adjust for salt. The flavor has concentrated, but it's still bright and fresh like we wanted. Then we'll extract our spent basil. Its sacrifice won't be forgotten. We got a couple rigatonis peeking out above the waterline, but I've been stirring it a bit so we should be in good shape I think. Next, we're going to take the pasta straight from the pot into our tomato pan that I've got on a medium-high heat. I'm using this spider strainer, but I'm intentionally not being too thorough to strain the water because we actually want a decent amount of that pasta water to make its way in. In fact, we'll be adding a bit more as we go forward. So we laid the groundwork nicely, but from here on out is where all the magic happens. Our goal now is to get all the tomatoes and the fat from the guanciale to create a nice emulsion with the help of the starchy pasta water. And later we'll boost it a bit further off the heat with some cheese too. If at any point it looks a bit too thick or dry, just add in a bit more pasta water. It's got a nice starchy flavor to it and the amount that we're using isn't going to dilute or loosen things like you might expect. Now we just want to move things around vigorously and constantly on a medium heat. I'm going to add in half the guanciale to integrate into everything while holding off on the rest for a crunchy topping at the end. Then we're back to moving things around, giving a few tosses if you're brave. I overcrowded the pan a bit, but that's kind of my thing at this point, and I'm sticking to it. Now for the cheese. All four Roman pasta dishes call for pecorino romano, which is like the sheep's milk version of parmesan. It's sharper, saltier, stronger, and has a bit of an addicting flavor to it. I used a microplane to get the thinnest layer possible, and the whole off the heat thing is more important than you might think. If we had the heat still blasting, the cheese would seize up and get grainy, as opposed to helping to boost the creamy factor even further. Just keep working it like this for another 30-60 seconds, adding pasta water as necessary. We want this to be a little saucier at this stage because it'll tighten up a bit once we plate it, and this is the kind of pasta that you want to serve right away. Alright, I'm going to show you how I like to plate this up, but real quick, if you've been liking the background music, I write it all myself, and it's available on streaming platforms under the artist name Jondre FM. And you can download the files for free on my Patreon, no sign up required. I don't have sponsors today, but on Patreon I'll be posting additional recipes, behind the scenes, and more, so consider supporting my channel with a paid membership. You'll even get your name in the end credits, and I'll leave a link in the description. Alright, Amatriciana waits for no man, so I'm going to get this into my favorite little bowl here as quickly as possible. I also learned somewhat recently that there's another dish that's kind of like a variation of amatriciana called sozona. I'm pretty sure it adds egg yolk like carbonara and then sausage. To me, that sounds like one that's reserved for the coziest of winter nights. I'll test it out and report back. So for the finishing touches here, I'm just gonna add our reserved crispy pieces of guanciale for a bit of textural contrast, and then a bit of fresh pecorino cheese cuz why not. And there it is, my favorite Roman pasta dish, and hopefully soon to be yours too. Alright, let's see how it is. Oh man. It's a masterclass in simplicity every time. Just a few ingredients, but if you can nail the emulsion and texture with a little attention to detail in the right areas, you can master just about any pasta out there. Alright, we did it. Give a like, subscribe. Until next time, I'll see you guys later.