With this simple ingredient, carbonara pasta has never tasted so good…
Ah carbo pasta, this hearty dish of Italian cuisine that makes you salivate and fills your stomach! While there are a multitude of interpretations of this traditional dish, the French usually add cream. According to Italian culinary tradition, cream has no place there, and that would even be heresy. In the real Italian recipe, a secret ingredient makes the sauce so creamy and much better. So, put down your pot of crème fraîche and read the following lines carefully.
Preparing Italian carbo pasta will take you less time and will definitely change your mind about this traditional dish. Real “pasta alla carbonara” are actually lighter and tastier with these original ingredients: pasta of course, preferably made from durum wheat like spaghetti or linguine, grated pecorino or parmesan, pepper and pork charcuterie (preferably guanciale – pig’s cheek – but pancetta cut into bacon or coppa will do the trick)… And finally this secret ingredient which makes all the difference: fresh raw egg, of which we don’t ‘will only use yellow! You will only need 3 minutes of preparation and 10 minutes of cooking time in this recipe for real carbo pasta for 4 people:
- Boil a large pot of 5 liters of water.
- When the water boils with large bubbles, add 50 grams of coarse salt then immerse 500 grams of pasta
- Cook the pasta “al dente” and during this time, brown 200 grams of guanciale, pancetta cut into bacon or coppa in a large frying pan and season with pepper.
- In a salad bowl, mix 4 fresh egg yolks with 4 tablespoons of cooking water and 80 grams of grated pecorino or parmesan. Beat vigorously until the mixture is foamy.
- Drain the pasta and pour directly into the charcuterie pan. Then add the mixture from the salad bowl and stir well to coat all the pasta.
- Serve hot on 4 plates then sprinkle with parmesan and pepper. And it’s ready!
We might as well tell you that the real Italian recipe, with zero cream, is quick! It is in fact the combination of the egg yolk with the grated pecorino and the cooking water that makes the Carbonara sauce so creamy and much less cloying than with crème fraîche. In cooking, Italians have a taste for simple things, and this works quite well for them. Buon appetito!