How to Make Authentic Pasta Carbonara _ The Stay At Home Chef

Today , I'm a stay at home chef .

I'm showing you how to make authentic pasta carbonara .

Pasta carbonara is an Italian dish that originates in the Rome region of Italy .

Since I just went on a trip to Rome .

I made sure that I ate around the town and found the best pasta carbonara I could possibly find .

And I'm replicating it for you at home today , start by adding a tablespoon of salt to a large pot of water and bring it to a boil .

It's important that you see the water that we're cooking our pasta in .

Not only does the pasta absorb some of the water and flavor .

We're also going to use the pasta water in our sauce .

Then we're going to cook a pound of spaghetti noodles .

According to package directions , you could also use bucatini or Elli .

Any long pasta will work .

But there's a reason why they call this spaghetti carbonara .

While the pasta's cooking , we're going to move over to a sauce pan and cook some bacon .

You want to get a pound of diced , thick cut bacon into a skillet that's cold .

I always start my bacon in a cold skillet because it just cooks better that way .

Instead of bacon , you can also use pancetta .

I just like to make sure that it's a really thick cut one so that you have really thick pieces of bacon or pancetta .

Next , we're going to turn up the heat and get this cooking until it's crispy , which will take about 7 to 10 minutes .

The best carbonara we had in Rome had these really thick pieces of pancetta that were crispy on the outside and then they just melted in your mouth and it was so good .

So make sure you use a really high quality bacon or pancetta , whatever you can find while the pasta and bacon are cooking , we'll put together our sauce .

You'll need four egg yolks , two whole eggs and one cup of grated Pecorino Romano cheese .

You just want to whisk that together .

You can also use grated Parmesan if you can't find Pecorino , Romano .

But I highly recommend the pecorino just a minute or so of whisking and your mixture will be ready to go set that aside for a second and let's head on back over to the stove and check on our bacon .

Looks like it still has about five minutes to go .

Now , just before your pasta is done cooking , you want to take a glass measuring cup , dip it in and reserve about a cup and a half of that pasta water .

You don't want to forget this step because you need that starchy water for our sauce .

Once the bacon is nice and crispy , we're going to go ahead and leave it in the pan , but drain off the excess grease .

If you'd like , you can leave in 1 to 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease for extra flavor .

Turn the heat to low and add in your cooked spaghetti pasta and the egg mixture .

Just scoop that right on top of the pasta and then add in about half a cup of the reserved pasta water and start tossing this together .

You want to work quickly on this and then gradually pour in some of the remaining pasta water until you achieve your desired consistency for the sauce .

And then just keep tossing this and cook for about two minutes over that super low heat .

Serve this up hot topped with a little bit of freshly chopped parsley , some black pepper and a little bit more of that Pecorino Romano cheese .

Thanks for watching .

You can find the full written recipe in the video description .

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See you later .