Beautiful courgette carbonara | Jamie Oliver pasta recipes (2024)

FAQs

How does Gordon Ramsay make carbonara sauce? ›

Egg yolks and whole eggs – The egg combined with the guanciale fat is what makes the stunning creamy carbonara sauce that the world is obsessed with. There's no need for cream for a creamy sauce! See section above for why. We use a combination of whole eggs, plus egg yolks for richness.

It's made from egg, hard sharp cheese, pepper, and guanciale – a cured pork. If guanciale is a little too hard to find pancetta or bacon works in a snap. My carbonara recipe uses some cream to thicken it all up and ensure it really sticks to your ribs.

The golden rule to silky carbonara is to whisk your egg whites so that they're completely incorporated with the egg yolks. This will create a smooth, velvety sauce. As like any pasta dish, including carbonara, cook the pasta perfectly al dente so that it's soft but still firm, with some bite.

What not to put in Spaghetti Carbonara? Don't put garlic, cream, milk or butter. It is not needed. It is fine if you want to make a dish with those ingredients, but if you want to learn how to make this dish correctly, use only pecorino, eggs/egg yolks, black pepper, guanciale, and pasta water.

Because in the traditional recipe there is no garlic, if you add it you will lower quality of a very good food. Why is there no garlic in carbonara? Because it's an Italian dish, not an Italian-American dish, and Italian cooking does not use garlic as heavily as Italian-American cuisine.

The difference between alfredo and carbonara is that carbonara contains an egg while alfredo sauce does not. Carbonara is usually thinner in consistency than alfredo sauce, using the egg to coat the noodles instead of relying on the cream.

Spice It Up. Adding fresh herbs to your canned pasta sauce makes it taste like it came straight from the garden. While the pre-made sauce may already include some herbs, adding your own will help enhance those flavors. Tossing in strips of basil, a sprig of thyme or some oregano can take your sauce to the next level.

Carbonara is traditionally made with guanciale, or cured pork jowl, though pancetta is often substituted, and both are fatty, salty and deeply savoury.

Guanciale is the most commonly used meat for the dish in Italy, but pancetta and pancetta affumicata are also used and, in English-speaking countries, bacon is often used as a substitute. The usual cheese is pecorino romano; occasionally Parmesan, Grana Padano, or a combination of hard cheeses are used.

What kind of cheese is good in carbonara? ›

Pecorino Romano: This aged sheep's cheese is always traditionally used in the Roman pastas, and its salty, grassy, earthy flavor is absolutely delicious in carbonara. That said, if Pecorino is unavailable at your local grocery store, you can use Parmesan as a non-traditional substitute.

Barely enough egg whites will give the hot pasta the best surface and appearance, however an excess of will make it sour. The egg yolks help to tie the fat from the pork to the sauce, making a smooth, velvety surface.

Using a large mixing bowl and setting it over the boiling pasta water to create a makeshift double boiler helps prevent you from accidentally scrambling the eggs.

While it might seem simple, if your timing is off by even ten seconds, or your pan is even slightly too hot, you will end up with scrambled eggs as a sauce, as opposed to a velvety smooth and decadent sauce. Adding cream to the yolks ensures that this cooking process doesn't happen.

Using a large mixing bowl and setting it over the boiling pasta water to create a makeshift double boiler helps prevent you from accidentally scrambling the eggs.

Add a few ladles of pasta water and stir until the mixture begins to resemble a sauce. Take another ladle of the pasta water and add it to the egg bowl, whisking it all together. THIS MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO COOK THE EGG WITHOUT SCRAMBLING IT.