Easy Carbonara in 15 Minutes

hey what's up today I'm going to show you guys how to make a proper plate of creamy luxurious carbonara it feeds two people and it only takes about 15 minutes to get started I'll drop a 12 inch saute pan full of water on my stove and bring it up to a boil I'm using a shallow pan here instead of a deep pot because it comes up to a boil way faster and for the pasta shape that I'm using for this dish I definitely don't need all that extra space next I'll drop a heavy bottom pot in this case a six and a half quart dutch oven on my stove and warm it up over low heat I'll give those both five minutes to do their thing while I get some cured pork cut up for this carbonara today I'm using a very thick cut bacon and when I say thick I mean like eight slices per pound thick one of the joys of carbonara is biting into a hefty meaty piece of crisped up rendered pork and you just can't get that with thin sliced bacon traditionally instead of bacon carbonara uses guanciale which is a cured and aged pork cheek it's not smoked like bacon but it is delicious and very fun tasting it's got a little Funk to it from the drying process and it's usually real peppery which I like most people watching this video won't be able to get guanciale though so thick cut bacon is the next best thing to get it ready for the pot I'm going to take four pieces or about eight ounces worth cut it in half then cut that half in half skinny wise then I'll give that a nice clean dice to get pieces that are small enough to render quickly and Fry till crisp but still large enough to have a meaty bite and that looks good once I've got that all diced up I'm gonna head over to my preheated Dutch oven and add in a little squeezer of olive oil that little bit of fat in there is going to help jump start the overall rendering process then in goes all of my bacon again that was about eight ounces or 225 grams in total and then a quick stir to get things spread out and from here this bacon is going to take almost exactly the same amount of time to render and crisp up as it does to cook my pasta speaking of that over at my saute pan the water is at a boil so I add a strong pinch of salt and then 12 ounces of spaghetti I'll spread that out as I drop it so that it's not all stacked in one place and then I'll come back with tongs to make sure everything is getting fully submerged again this shallow cooking Mac method works really well for quick spaghetti dishes like carbonara or Cacho Pepe because the water comes to a boil in like three to five minutes instead of 15 to 20. the package on this pasta claims it takes 12 minutes to reach Al Dente that is not accurate in my experience plus we want to undercook this stuff just a little bit for reasons I'll get into so I'm going to simmer this pasta on high for only eight minutes once the pasta is down I'll come back for a quick check in on the bacon it's been rendering for about three minutes at this point and it's getting there but it still needs another six to seven minutes so I'll check back then for now I'm gonna spend that time prepping the rest of this dish the first thing I'm going to get into is grating some cheese for this carbonara I'm going to be using two different hard cheeses in conjunction the first is an 18 month imported parmigiano reggiano it's salty nutty sweet Umami and more than just about any other ingredient I can think of worth every single cent of its relatively high price tag to prep this for the pot I'm going to shred it on the feather side of my box grater normally I would go with a cheese dust or like a very fine grate on this but I find this a slightly thicker texture melts slower which is good for carbonara you're basically cooking eggs and melting cheese at the same time and if your cheese melts too quickly your sauce thickens before you can tell how cooked your eggs are getting and you could end up with a scrambled broken sauce pretty quick in total I need 50 grams of parm I'll scoot that into a bowl then I'll grab cheese too which is pecorino Romano this salty picant sheep's milk cheese is a perfect way to bring a sharpness to this dish that you just don't get with round mellow aged parmesan I'll grate 50 grams on the feather side of my box scoop it into a bowl then I'll add in one whole large egg and then three large egg yolks this egg cheese combo basically is the sauce for this dish and combining them ahead of time is going to make getting a uniform silky sauce with perfectly cooked eggs and perfectly melted cheese so much easier once it's mixed together it should look like polenta kind of or very runny scrambled eggs now one last little prep item before I check back on my pasta is to pre-grind some black pepper I usually go about one gram per portion or maybe a half teaspoon for this entire dish if all you have is pre-ground black pepper that's totally fine back at the stove it's been about eight minutes since I started this whole process and my bacon is fully rendered and getting nicely crisped up check out how there's no large areas of translucent flabby stuff that's what we're looking for next I'm gonna scoot this bacon onto a little plate to hang out while I finish up everything else note that I'm not draining the fat onto a paper towel here that stuff is going to be a major part of the flavor and texture of this dish so it needs to be saved back at the pot over medium low heat I'm actually going to drain most of this Bacon fat back in then in goes that little pile of black pepper that I cracked up just a second ago now a quick stir to get that toasted off and I'll also scrape up the bottom of the pot to get some of that fond loosened up so it doesn't burn and then from here I'll check back on my pasta but first Ramen from the sponsor of this video Vite Ramen I'll start by saying that white Ramen looks exactly like Ramen and it tastes very good but that's just about where the comparisons to tread Ramen and Vite actually packs a ton of nutrition 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taste test so I'll jump in with some tongs and snatch a few out textually I'm looking for what I call pre-al Dente or just a Touch of crunch in the middle if these get overcooked in too noodly they're not going to do a good job of holding that silky luxurious sauce that we're shooting for and that's right in the sweet spot so I'm going to grab a ladle and move just about one and a half cups or 300 mL of this pasta water into my bacon pot this serves as the base for our sauce but it's also going to help me deglaze all that tasty fried bacony stuff on the bottom of the pan to get that up I'll jump into the pot with a wooden spoon to give everything a scrape while also trying to be quick because that pasta is still cooking over there so only about 10 to 15 seconds messing around with this maximum then I'm going to use some tongs to move these spaghettis from the saute pan into the Dutch oven once both portions of this pasta are moved over to the pot I'm going to save some additional pasta water so that I can adjust the consistency of this sauce as we go I'm pouring off 500 mils here just to be safe but I'm probably only going to need about 200 to 250. in fact I'll add 100 mils or about a half cup of that water right into my egg cheese mixture and stir that to combine so that the hot water doesn't cook anything adding warm water to these eggs tempers them so that the likelihood of them scrambling when they hit the hot pasta is a lot lower I'll come back to this egg cheese in just a second for now back at the stove I'm going to add in another 100 ml or about a half cup of this pasta water into the pot so that the pasta is sitting in about an inch and a half of liquid I'll give this a good stir to get some extra starchiness going on and then I'll simmer this pasta in the shallow water for about 90 seconds or so doing this last 10 of pasta cooking in less water ensures that we don't overshoot the landing and overcook the noodles after 90 seconds I'll give this a quick taste to determine pasta doneness and I'm happy so now it's time to make the sauce for that I'll take this pot off the heat then add in all of my rendered bacon and any of the fat that's left on the plate then a quick stir to combine and then in goes my egg cheese mixture I'll immediately jump back in with my tongs and stir that vigorously so that the eggs cook evenly and the cheese melts evenly I prefer this heavy Dutch oven to say a saute pan for finishing this pasta dish for two reasons one is obvious it's tall and thus easy to slosh a bunch of food around in it and two it stays hot for a while so I can get most if not all of the melting of the cheese and thickening of the eggs to happen without even having to have this over a burner but of course I needed to move some cameras around and this Dutch oven cooled off a little bit more than I would have liked so now my sauce is just a little bit looser than I'd like to finish thickening this I'm going to put it back on the stove over the lowest possible heat and stir it constantly for 30 to 60 seconds or however long it takes to get your sauce from a wet juicy texture to a luxurious velvety creamy one this happens super fast though so don't push it too far and keep a close eye if you go too far it will start to get Gloppy and then eventually scramble as you can see this sauce is thickened but still Saucy it's got a little tiny bit of looseness to it but it still clings perfectly to the noodles the only word for it is Silky a lot of restaurants will add heavy cream to their carbonara at this point to cheat the texture and it kind of works but it also adds so much weight to the dish and extra fat that in my opinion makes this dish no longer a nice light carbonara but instead a gut bomb bacon in alfredo it sounds a lot better than it is to finish I'll make sure to get a bunch of bacon that's still sitting in the pot set up on top then a big pinch of aged parmesan cheese and then finally a few cranks of fresh cracked black pepper and there we go you guys a carbonara that only takes 15 minutes start to finish and is as good as anything that I've had in Rome honestly it's luxurious cheesy and most importantly not heavy the beauty of this dish is in its Simplicity and I really hope you guys treat yourself to it sometime soon let's eat this thing [Music]

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 1,223,596

Keywords: carbonara, spaghetti carbonara, pasta carbonara, easy carbonara, quick carbonara recipe, carbonara recipe, carbonara with bacon, how to make carbonara, carbonara pasta, spaghetti, recipe, easy pasta recipe, 15 minute dinner, dinner recipe, pasta recipes, pasta, Brian lagerstrom pasta, Brian lagerstrom, weeds and sardines, how to make carbonara sauce

Id: 4nAfxzE02Gw

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022