Molly Makes Mushroom Carbonara | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

mark I just ate a piping hot mushroom and it's currently stuck right here burning my lungs here we are about to make mushroom carbonara which is a meatless version of the classic dish which normally would call for guanciale pancetta or sometimes bacon but we've taken the meat out of it don't worry there's still plenty of cheese and eggs and instead we're using mushrooms which have a ton of depth of flavor I don't want to go through a meat substitute but they can certainly hold their own in this dish so I'm starting with a good amount of mushrooms these are cremini and I'm gonna take all of these tough stems off and save them for stock and then any of them that are large we will tear into quarters and any of them that are smaller will just tear in half the most important part of this recipe is waiting patiently to develop good color on the mushrooms so you guys have probably all heard about the fear of overcrowding your pan when you cook mushrooms and it's not not a thing but you actually don't have to cook mushrooms in batches and worry about overcrowding the pan as long as you cook them for a long time and allow all of the moisture to evaporate off so I'm not gonna cook these in three different batches making sure that none of them are touching the way you'll see in some recipes I'm gonna add them all at once and we're gonna just be patient and wait until all the moisture within them cooks off and they begin to brown and it will happen and it's a beautiful thing when it does so you could use fancy mushrooms if you wanted to but the thing I like about this dish is that these are just Remini mushrooms they're widely available they're not that expensive and we're gonna coax a lot of flavor out of them all right so these are all relatively similar in size so we'll set them aside then there are some other aromatics that are going into this as well and that is good amount of garlic and some shallots so the trifecta of these 3 3 ingredients together is what creates a lot of depth of flavor in the absence of meat I have two medium shallot so finely chopping a shallot you do the exact same way you would an onion you make a bunch of small crosswise slits and then perpendicular slits as well avoiding the root end so that it all stays intact and then you just cut across the same way you would an onion to create that crosshatch pattern that gives you a nice even dice so lightly smash and peel six garlic cloves I'm gonna thinly slice these and that's because I don't want to get a big chunk of garlic in my mouth as I'm eating a bite of pasta so then I have a small bunch of parsley here and I'll pick all of the tender stems and leaves off of it and then we'll chop that and that'll be what we finished the dish with okay and then I'm just gonna coarsely chop this so I'm getting all of the ingredient prep out of the way here in the beginning because once we head over the stove this dish comes together pretty quickly so you want to have everything at there ready okay so the beauty of this sauce comes from the eggs and the cheese and the pasta water and how they all come together over heat to create a really rich yellow thick delicious sauce so for a one pound box of pasta I'm gonna use five egg yolks and one whole egg the egg yolks are gonna help create that rich yellow glossy saucy four whole yolks one egg whisking just till it's homogeneous so this is four ounces of finely grated parm and you'll see it'll start to get nice and thick and to this I'm going to add one and a half teaspoons of black pepper which is a lot of black pepper but that's what carbonara calls for so just keep at it we gotta get some color on our mushrooms before anything else happens so let's go over to the stove and get that going first things first our pasta water is boiling I'm going to throw a couple of handfuls of salt in there and then I'm preheating this pot for about three minutes I want to make sure that the surface of this pot is really ripping hot when I put those mushrooms in because otherwise it's gonna take forever for them to Brown so just took the time in here we are hot three tablespoons of olive oil you'll be able to tell when it's really hot when you first start to see wisps of smoke coming off the oil and that's when you know it's okay to put in the mushrooms wait a moment here we go we're smoking in the pot I'm going to stir to make sure they're all getting nice and coated in that oil and then that you just got to be patient and let them cook this is a really key moment these have been cooking for about five minutes they are letting off a lot of water you can see it's bubbling it's steaming I am NOT gonna touch these mushrooms right now as much as I want to because that water needs to cook off before they can start browning and I'm not stirring until they brown so we need to let's get continue to cook okay we've finally arrived and the water is cooked off and if you take a look in here you'll see that now we're getting some good ol browning so now it's okay to stir so we keep on keepin on meanwhile these have been cooking for about ten minutes and this is a good time to drop your pasta but it can cook simultaneously so I've chosen use orange kept safe for this dish but you could use any small pasta shape that you want I just happen to like how the little ears scoop up the little trim ease little ears or cafe and the mushrooms the shrimps get stuck in the little ears and fun alright so give that a stir gonna set a timer for two minutes shy of al dente because I want the pasta to finish cooking in the pot later on so that it can absorb all the flavor that we're developing in here I'm feeling pretty good about the color of these shrooms okay so we're nice and roasty-toasty golden brown and delicious and it's time to throw in shallots and garlic these are going to cook pretty quickly because of how much heat there is going on in this pan so keep an eye on things sweat out I'm gonna reduce the heat to medium-low very pretty constantly here because they're cut so small that they have a tendency to burn so you want to keep them moving around in the pan these are at a good place now and our pasta so is a couple of minutes on the timer so I'm gonna turn the heat off so that they don't overcook and burn I know I'm said it a million times but pasta water is liquid gold you should never let go of it so in this recipe we call for pulling out two whole cups of the pasta cooking liquid before we drain it this is your saving grace in creating a really creamy emulsified pasta sauce so don't pour it all out so the pasta is now has now been cooking for seven minutes it's ever so slightly crunchy in the middle but that's okay because we still got a couple minutes of cooking to do over here so this is a good time to drain it you don't have to worry about draining off too much of that water cuz it's all going right back into the pot anyway so back we go so now I will return my mushrooms to medium heat and I'm throwing the drained pasta in there along with about one cup of this cooking liquid having the pop to liquid to this pot at this point is gonna help deglaze the pan and pick up all of that browned shallot garlic and mushroom bit that is stuck to the bottom of the pan and it will then bring it into the sauce so that you don't lose any of that flavor pretty much all of that water is cooked off now so I will turn off the heat now and let this cool for about three minutes so another way to prevent against scrambling the eggs when they go from cold to hot is by tempering them so I'm going to add a half a cup of this pretty hot pasta water into my egg mixture and that will help loosen them up and temper them a bit so they don't go into shock when they go back into the pan don't rush it action okay this has been cooling for two minutes as you can see it's still really hot there's a little bit steam coming off it's not cold it's just not piping up anymore so now we can slowly stream in this egg mixture so I'm going to go little by little working in circles as I go to make sure that everything gets incorporated and nothing gets stuck at the bottom of the pan scrambling the cheese is melting as the eggs are starting to cook a bit and then here's where the reserve pasta sauce comes in handy I feel like this is a little bit thick still and so I want to add a little pasta water to thin it out lastly I'll add that chopped parsley which is nice and bright after all of that deep carmelization that we've gotten um the mushrooms and then always be tasting it's great just take my word for it I overheard Chris Rocco saying even though he hates turnips he does not hate a cooked mushroom which i think was his way of saying can I have some first you're always here um Andy do you want some is this in your diet oh my god that's just a little too much part for him I don't think you should be putting cheese on your pasta before I taste a bit okay so take my word for it jeez how much it's five yolks one whole egg and then oh dude it need a sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle of basil it is so savory yeah between the mushroom and the yolk and the cheese and the garlic I mean wow but are you missing the bacon no you get good texture from the mushrooms there's that you brown them well thank you and there's something about the way they belly up with the orecchiette that I quite like so there you have it super simple mushroom carbonara it happens to me meatless but I'm not gonna go around promoting that cuz that's not what it's about it's about celebrating these beautiful mushrooms it has seven ingredients and it's a cinch right you can make a lovely meringue cookie out of that or you could make a tasteless omelet out of that be what you do that was what they were about to get a shirt that was classic you didn't get that lower back oh please you want it obviously takes the shirt off

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 2,737,232

Rating: 4.932837 out of 5

Keywords: molly, test kitchen, carbonara, molly baz, from the test kitchen, molly bon appetit, molly makes, molly makes carbonara, molly makes mushroom carbonara, molly makes pasta, mushroom carbonara, carbonara recipe, how to make carbonara, make carbonara, making carbonara, vegetarian carbonara, mushroom pasta, mushroom carbonara recipe, how to make mushroom carbonara, make mushroom carbonara, making mushroom carbonara, mushroom pasta recipe, mushrooms, mushroom, food, bon appetit

Id: L3cJG44VPKU

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/kneadthat]

Molly ❤️

[u/TheRecipeJournal]

Not sure if the Italian’s would be happy to called this “Carbonara “but the dish looks good