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Carbonara Sauce

Timing – 20 minutes
Difficulty – Medium

Ingredients:

– 100g Spaghetti grossi
– 80g Guanciale or Pancetta
– 30g Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano
– 2 Egg yolk
– Pepper

Carbonara is one of the most famous pasta dish around the world. Is a classic Roman Recipe based on another classic basic recipe call “Cacio e Pepe”. Cacio e Pepe is a mother recipe, form them you will have so many variant like “Amatriciana” – “Gricia” etc In my childhood I was completely addicted by this dish, I was asking for carbonara everyday. I use to eat it 3-4 times per week. My mother was preparing this dish only for me because everyone was obviously annoyed by eating the same things all the time, when sometimes she wasn’t prepare my carbonara I was complaining: “Mom I need my carbonara, why you didn’t prepare it for me?!” Unfortunately this recipe is been abused by so many home cookers and chefs. There is no cream! You’ll probably gonna go to Hell if you will use cream again, so don’t use it, you don’t need to.

Method

Place a heavy pot on the stove and turn your heat on maximum.When the pot is Feel up a pot with water and bring it to boil, then add rock salt. Start to cut your guanciale or pancetta, first of all clean the cured cut from the skin and the layer of pepper, then slice the meat around 1cm thick and then cut it in chunks (around 2cm). Place the Guanciale in a cold pan, without any oil and turn the heat on minimum. In this way you will melt completely the fat in your meat. It will take around 10 minutes, until the Guanciale it will be crunchy and with a nice caramelization. In a metal bowl (big enough to hold the cooked pasta) add your Egg-yolk, parmesan and pepper. Mix everything with a whisk or a fork until you will reach a thick mixture. Place your pasta in the boiling water and cook it until “al dente”. In the mean time you cook the pasta you can add to the eggs the fat that been released from the pork and mix everything together, keep the meat on a side, we want to keep the Guanciale crunchy. Place your bowl on the pasta water ( bain-marie ) and let the eggs mixture reach the temperature 30-40 Celsius, keep mixing the eggs during this process. Ad this point you can your pasta straight to the metal mixing bowl tighter with your eggs and give them a proper mix until smooth and creamy, add your guanciale and serve straight away. Carbonara is a game of temperature, the pasta dish have to be creamy and the eggs don’t have to be coagulate, when the pasta and eggs are together the temperature have to be below 60-65 Celcius. This recipe is a good tricks for beginners because you don’t add the eggs straight to the pan, sometimes even if you don’t realize the pan is still hot and this gonna let you coagulate the eggs.

Did you know that every time someone breaks spaghetti in half before putting them in (probably cold) water an Italian dies?

Did you know that every time someone breaks spaghetti in half before putting them in (probably cold) water an Italian dies?