Savoring home: You had me at “bacon”.
The title of this post comes from the first time I made this dish for my husband. Since then, it has become an All-Star recipe at our house. This is the old-school Italian bacon-and-eggs pasta, made of items you probably have in your fridge right now. It is fast, clocking in at around 20 minutes once you have made it a few times. It is real comfort food. (Did you see the title?) Without further ado…
CARBONARA
(pronounced: kar-bon-NAR-rah)
Ingredients:
- 1 pound/454 grams of spaghetti or linguine or fettucini — We prefer linguine, but any of these three will work.
- 5 large eggs
- 2 small cloves or 1 large clove of garlic, peeled
- 1/2 tsp./3 mL ground black pepper
- 1 cup + more/235 mL + more of shredded parmesan cheese
- 1 pound/454 grams of bacon, fat trimmed and diced —Canadian/British/European readers: this requires “American” or “streaky” bacon. Americans: don’t bother with turkey bacon here, use the real thing and enjoy it!
Preparation:
- Start pasta water to boil. Add a palmful of salt to water, then put in pasta to boil for “al dente” directions on the pasta box.
- During pasta boil, cook/render bacon in pan over medium-high heat for 2 minutes.
- Grate garlic cloves into pan and mix well with bacon.
- Continue to cook bacon until crispy, about 6-7 minutes, then remove pan from heat. Don’t remove bacon from pan or drain.
- While bacon is cooking, whisk 5 eggs and pepper well in a small bowl.
- When pasta is done, drain, immediately return to hot pot and pour in egg mixture.
- Use tongs to toss egg mixture thoroughly as it cooks/scrambles in the hot pasta. Be sure to toss the noodles at the bottom of the pot thoroughly to ensure all the eggs scramble.
- Add all bacon and bacon oil to pasta and toss well.
- Add parmesan cheese and toss well. You can add more cheese here, if you want, but not too much or you won’t taste the bacon.
- Serve immediately.
Notes:
- Makes 4-5 servings.
- Need a veg? Try a simple green salad with a tangy Italian dressing or mix some freshly cooked green peas into the pasta when you add the cheese. Delicious!
- Carbonara does not freeze well, but re-heats from fridge well for up to two days.
Sound easy for your weekend? Let me know how it turns out for you! The picture are a little unbalanced in the focus/light area, and I’ll try to improve this for future recipes. European readers: I heard your request and added the metric for the ingredients list! Does this format work for you?
I tried it and it was great! I read this post this morning and wanted to give it a try. I happened to have all of the ingredients but garlic, but I got some and tried it. After narrowly avoiding spilling pasta water on my laptop (my printer is out of ink), I managed to get everything together and it tastes really good. Thanks for the great recipe!