5 Ingredients or Fewer

Pasta carbonara, the Italian way

by:
January 19, 2015
3
2 Ratings
Pasta carbonara, the Italian way
  • Serves 2
What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 6 to 7 ounces spaghetti
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 1.7 ounces guanciale or smoked pancetta, roughly chopped
  • Freshly grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan
  • Salt & pepper
Directions
  1. Heat a large quantity of water in a large pan, covered
  2. In the meantime, separate the eggs. Season to taste and add about 1 tbsp cheese. Beat until creamy.
  3. In a frying pan, sauté the pancetta. Some advise to sauté the pancetta in olive oil, so do according to your taste.
  4. Once the water boils, add a handful of coarse sea salt, then the pasta.
  5. Cook about 6 minutes. The pasta has to be al dente.
  6. About 2 minutes before the pasta is done, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of the cooking water to the eggs and mix well.
  7. Drain the pasta and add them immediately to the bowl with the eggs and pancetta and mix gently.
  8. Serve and devour immediately (with extra Pecorino and Parmesan if you wish).
  9. Find more recipes on my blog http://alalemon.com
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  • Allyce Kimerling
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2 Reviews

Allyce K.
Allyce K. February 18, 2023
This is a very poorly written recipe right off the bat.

Step 2 says: "In the meantime, separate the eggs. Season to taste and add about 1 tbsp cheese. Beat until creamy." Once you've separated the eggs, you'd have separate dishes of yolks and whites. To which do you add the cheese and which do you beat? Steps 6 and 7 again refer to "the eggs" without specifying yolks or whites or both.

My hunch is that the separation of the eggs was totally unnecessary, but this recipe makes no sense as written.

And, perhaps more importantly, why did it initially show as having 5 stars when there were no prior ratings or reviews? Very misleading.
 
Ala L.
Ala L. February 18, 2023
The ingredients list states "egg yolks" so I don't understand why referring to "the eggs" or to which part you need to add the cheese is confusing.

The separation is not unnecessary, unless you want to drop your pasta into an omelette.

Last, please note that a) English is not my mother language and b) I wrote this recipe 8 years ago when I originally opened my blog so hw