This recipe is the second post in a two-part series. The first post explains the science behind this recipe. If you want to understand how this recipe works before you start, click here.

Foolproof Carbonara Recipe: You Can’t Fail

In my last post, we explored the science behind the legendary carbonara. We discussed emulsifiers and starch, even considering how to create an eggless carbonara, if desired.

If you’re looking for a traditional Roman carbonara recipe, this isn’t it.

In this carbonara recipe, we’ll apply these scientific principles to create a foolproof carbonara. Make sure to read the notes to understand the logic behind the recipe steps.

Foolproof carbonara recipe

Ingredients

Serves: 1

• 2 egg yolks (egg whites discarded)¹
• 70g long pasta (e.g. spaghetti)
• 12.5g finely grated parmesan (or other hard cheese)
• 1.5 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 50g diced cured pork (e.g. pancetta, guanciale or bacon)
• Pasta water (reserved from cooking the pasta)
• Black pepper
• Salt

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil – just enough water to cover the pasta, but no more. Add salt². Add the pasta and cook until al dente (see packet instructions for timings).
2. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, parmesan and black pepper and 2 tbsp of the pasta water³.
3. Heat up a large frying pan on low heat. Add the olive oil and pork and cook until the fat has rendered.
4. Once the pasta has cooked and the meat fat has rendered, add the drained pasta to the pan with tongs. Don’t worry if water also ends up in the pan – this is a good thing.
5. When the pasta is added, turn off the heat (if you have an electric hob, physically move the pan)⁴, add the egg/cheese/water mixture and vigorously mix together until a cohesive sauce has formed.
6. Garnish the carbonara with parmesan and black pepper, serve immediately.

Notes

1. The primary challenge with the traditional carbonara recipe lies in controlling the temperature. We need to cook the eggs just enough to form a tight sauce but not so long that the eggs scramble. So how can we achieve that? Once thing that will help is getting rid of the egg whites. Eggs are mainly made up of protein, but eggs aren’t made up of just one kind of protein. They’re made up of dozens of different proteins, and different proteins have different denaturing and coagulation temperatures. The proteins that are in the egg whites are different from the proteins in the egg yolks. Those in the egg yolks actually denature at a higher temperature than those in the egg whites. That means if we remove the egg whites from the sauce, we increase the sauce’s coagulation temperature and, in turn, increase our margin for error in this carbonara recipe.
2. According to conventional wisdom, your pasta water should be as salty as seawater – but in actuality the water should be 1.5% salt by weight. But really, that’s such an effort! Just add a few tablespoons and hope for the best. That’s my strategy, at least.
3. We need to add our hot pasta water to the egg and cheese mixture directly, instead of adding it to the pan. Now, this might sound inconsequential, but if we do it this way around, we can reduce the chance of the egg scrambling. You see, as we’ve already discussed, as we cook an egg, its proteins begin to latch onto one another. But if we dilute the egg mixture with other ingredients, we’re literally adding more space between the proteins. And by doing this, it makes it harder for the proteins to grip each other as they unfold. And that’s simply because they’re further away from each other. This, in turn, increases the time it takes for the eggs to coagulate. Think about it like this: it’s a stupid example, but imagine two people trying to hug each other. If they’re right next to each other, they’ll be able to hug each other straight away with no problems. But now imagine there are loads of people between them. It’s going to be a lot harder for them to make contact, right? Of course, where there’s a will, there’s a way. They will hug eventually, but it’ll just take them more time to reach each other. In the same way, when we dilute the egg with other ingredients, we’re making it harder for the proteins to make contact. They will eventually still coagulate. We can’t stop that from happening. But by diluting the mixture, we’re increasing the time it takes for that to happen, further increasing our margin for error in this carbonara recipe.
4. We need to make sure that we’re only adding the egg and cheese mixture to the pan when the pan is off the heat. If we rely on the direct heat from the hob’s burner, we’d have to keep a very close eye on the pan to make sure that the eggs don’t coagulate and scramble. If we instead only add the mixture to the pan while it’s off the heat, we can gently cook the eggs using the heat of the pasta, the pasta water, and whatever heat is left in the pan. This massively reduces the chances of the eggs scrambling in this carbonara recipe.