Pork
Salted Egg Carbonara
- Prep time 5 minutes
- Cook time 15 minutes
- Serves 3-4
Author Notes
People are deeply passionate about carbonara. So before I start, I think it’d be wise to preface this by saying that this is *not* an authentic carbonara. It’s not. It’s a version that takes the core tenets of the web’s favorite Italian pasta, and works in two of my favorite Asian ingredients — salted egg, and lap cheong (腊肠, also known as cured Chinese sausage)!
The reason for this is twofold. First off, I really like the savory umami of salted eggs. In Chinese cooking, we use salted eggs as an easy flavor-booster in stir-fried vegetables and rice dishes, congee, and even worked in a coating for deep-fried meats and seafood. So naturally I thought it’d instantly gel in a carbonara, and add a touch more umami depth to it.
Next, the reason for the lap cheong is accessibility. It’s pretty hard to get good guanciale at an affordable price throughout Asia, so I went with something a bit more common here, which is lap cheong or cured Chinese sausage. These taste super porky with streaks of fat marbled in. So I just cut them up into pieces and sauteed them until crispy. Yes I could’ve just gone with bacon, but you’ll see that lap cheong adds a different dimension to the dish!
So I fried up the lap cheong until they turned crispy and the fat renders out, and mashed up the salted egg yolks. The rest of the carbonara comes together just like how you would expect — boil the pasta, toss it in with the salted egg, regular egg, a big blizzard of pecorino, and lots of black pepper.
The result? A funky, fun version of a carbonara for those looking for an Asian slant on the classic! (And for the doubters, I’ll see you in the comment storm down below.) —Jun
Ingredients
-
1
lap cheong (cured Chinese sausage)
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1 tablespoon
(15ml) vegetable oil, or any other neutral oil
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10 ounces
(283g) spaghetti, or any other pasta (dry weight)
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2
salted egg yolks
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2
eggs
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2 ounces
(57g) grated pecorino, or parmesan
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Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Directions
- Chop up the lap cheong into small chunks no larger than ½-inch thick. Then, pour the oil in a saute pan, and heat it up over medium heat. Add in the lap cheong pieces, and saute them for 3-5 minutes, stirring and tossing occasionally, until the lap cheong pieces are crispy.
- Bring a pot of water to a boil and add salt until it’s salty as the sea. Then, add the pasta to the pot and cook it according to the package instructions for al dente.
- As the pasta is cooking, ready a large bowl, and mash up the salted egg yolks until roughly mushy. Add in the eggs, pecorino, and black pepper, and mix everything together with a spoon or spatula.
- Then once the pasta is done cooking, drain it out of the water with a colander, reserving about half a cup of pasta water. Transfer the pasta into the large bowl with the egg mixture, together with 1/4 cup of the pasta water, and mix vigorously to thicken and cook the sauce until it coats the pasta. You can add more pasta water if the sauce feels too thick or if there’s too little of it. Finally, toss the lap cheong into the pasta, along with its fat, until evenly mixed.
- Serve the pasta immediately, and top with a few more cracks of black pepper.
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