When I promoted this I found a clip of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" where it's just a person
repeating "mom's spaghetti." Have you seen that? I would reckon this is about four
ounces for one person but again yeah like a palm full of spaghetti.
Spaghetti. I just hear that person. Hello, I'm Alison Roman and today I'm gonna
be making Spaghetti Carbonara. This recipe is obviously an iconic pasta dish. This is my
version. It first appeared in A Newsletter, which is my newsletter. I take some creative
freedoms but at the end of the day I still think it's a really perfect skillet full of
pasta. Okay so there's four pastas of Rome if you've been there or read about it,
or thought about it, or dream about it. There's Alla Gricia which is pork plus
pepper plus cheese. It's delicious. There's Cacio E Pepe. Which is cheese plus black
pepper but no pork. Amatriciana. Which is pork, tomatoes, cheese, and red onion. And then there's
Carbonara. It's a sauce emulsified with pork fat and egg yolks and cheese and that cheese is either
Pecorino Romano or Parmesan. I feel like I am what is it going into the lion's den.
What's that phrase? When you're like ... I'm stepping into the lion's den. I don't know. By
even attempting this recipe. I'm not Italian. My last name is Roman. No affiliation with the city
or the people. I've been, I love it, I ate a lot of pasta there um that said I am not an expert in
this. It's more just I've read a lot of recipes, I've seen it done, I've had it a bunch and so I'm
sort of cobbling together from those experiences. Ultimately what we're going for is a super silky
like very creamy pasta and it's all gonna happen in the skillet. So this is sort of like a
three-step process right: you boil the pasta, render the fat from your pork (that can be either
pancetta or guanciale we'll talk about that in a minute), and then it's your sort of egg mixture.
The reason I love this pasta is because it is a perfect pasta for one or two people you probably
already have the ingredients on hand and it comes together really, really quickly. I have to find
a pot. It's like every time I look down here it's like the first time I've looked down here. like
do I not live here/ I need that pot behind you. Just like with any pasta you want to make sure
that this is highly seasoned water. Very salty. So I have two different pork products. This is
pancetta. Pancetta is from the belly of the pork cured with salt, sugar, spices, garlic and then
rolled and that's how it's sold. And this is guanciale, which comes from the cheek of the
pork. So guanciale is gonna have less meat and a lot more fat. And for this dish you need the
fat to make that emulsification. That's what's going to make your sauce so creamy. You can see
this is like 80-20 meat-fat and this is almost like 90-10 fat-meat. So if you have the option
to get guanciale that's what I would go for. If you are a person who really enjoys like
those crispy bits of meat in your carbonara, then you might want to go for something like
bacon or pancetta. For me it's just about like the creaminess of the sauce and so I don't necessarily
need those bits on top, I'm just gonna put this away. I opened it for you. Everything I do here
I eat and use don't worry. I hate food waste. So this guanciale, it doesn't
have to be cut perfectly. Just like a little hunk and then I'm gonna slice it. Because obviously this is mostly fat, it's going
to shrink a lot as it cooks so don't worry about getting it like super tiny now. The important
thing to know about cooking guanciale or pancetta or bacon for that matter is that you want to start
the pan around medium heat and the reason being is that we're not trying to crisp anything up to
start. If you crisp up the meat at first, the fat is going to kind of like seal itself in. Think
about a piece of meat like a steak or chicken breast that you're searing. You're like searing
in the juices, like everything is contained. We're trying to cook it really low and slow and
let all the fat kind of come out and after about 10 minutes the edges will start to be browning
and I'll notice little crispy bits forming and they'll be about double or triple the fat in this
skillet which is exactly what we're looking for. So while that's happening, I'm going to prepare
the eggs. This doesn't need to happen right now but you know. I'm using a whole egg and a yolk.
The yolks are mostly protein and fat and the white is water right so that water is going to help the
emulsification process. If you'll notice anytime you're making a mayonnaise or an aioli, you add
a little bit of lemon juice or water to kind of make it a bit creamier that's why the whole egg
is in there rather than just using all egg yolks. I'm grabbing the parmesan which is what I'm going
to use instead of pecorino, although both would be great, pecorino is a little bit saltier.
Parmesan I find to be a bit creamier. You can always add more later and then the garlic clove
this is probably the most controversial addition to this recipe. I don't care. I think it tastes so
good with it and I really miss it when it's gone. It's so annoying. And then pepper. I think
in the recipe I say add more than you think this black pepper is working overtime in this
recipe. It's a small ingredient. Something that you use every day that you probably
barely notice you're going to really notice in this recipe and it really makes a huge huge
difference. This all just gets whisked together. Sorry things are happening over here.
So the bits are getting browned. See how much more fat is there? That's a lot of
fat. So if you're deciding to make this at home and you're like okay what what are my steps?
How do I do this without feeling panicked? You can cook your guanciale to the
point that it needs to be cooked and just remove it from the heat while like
everything else happens while you wait for your pasta water to boil, while you whisk your
eggs, while you do all that stuff and sort of set yourself up for success. Like this can just
be done and you can just hold it. It doesn't need to you know, you shouldn't be worried that you
have to act now so that's like if I had to guess three to four tablespoons of fat which is nice. I
like it. And we're gonna let that hang out until everything is ready to go. Uh our water's boiling.
What a surprise. I'm gonna drop our pasta now. I'm using spaghetti because it's called Spaghetti
Carbonara. I don't know like why all of a sudden like I choose to get traditional now or I'm like
add garlic, do whatever you want but I'm like must use spaghetti. Mom's spaghetti. Bucatini would be
good if you can find it. If you ever break pasta in my presence I will be very upset. Once that
pasta is cooked, um I'm going to take it out with tongs I'm going to put it in this bowl and I'm
just going to toss it in here with some of that pasta water and then the contents of this bowl are
going to go into the skillet with that pork fat. And it's going to happen really quickly. Typically
with pasta you cook it al dente and that's like let's call it 85% of the way cooked through.
For this particular dish we almost want it like 60% of the way cooked through. We want it very al
dente like before al dente, pre-al dente, because it really needs to kind of cook in that sauce for
it to do its thing in the skillet. So while we wait for that to cook uh nothing's gonna happen.
I'm gonna eat a piece of cheese, cause I'm hungry. If I had to pick one cheese to eat for the rest
of my life, it would be parmesan. Really is the king of cheese. One day I was home and it
was just like bad weather and it was like a random weekday and I kind of decided that I
was just gonna like phone it in for the rest of the day and like watch a movie and do some
self-care. And so I watched Heartburn and there's like a really amazing scene in both the book and
the in the movie but it happens early on in the movie where Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson meet
at a wedding, she takes him home after a date, and they've just done it, and she makes him
spaghetti carbonara. This is the best spaghetti carbonara I've ever had. When we're married I want
this once a week. It's a beautiful scene it's like vulnerable and emotional but also funny and
like they're just having an absolute blast together in bed and I was like damn that is it,
that's living. I want that for me. More cheese. It's weird, it's weird to be like I want that
it's weird to ask that it's it's weird but I do, I want that. All right I think our pasta
is almost done. Enough vulnerability. It's still pretty starchy but it's exactly where
we want it to be to finish our carbonara because also if your pasta gets too mushy, not only is
that not a good texture for the finished dish, it'll fall apart in the skillet. So I'm just going
to put this on low again which is exactly what we're going to cook our carbonara on and I'm going
to go ahead and using tongs because I don't feel the need to like drain pasta and then like reserve
the water and all that I'd rather just keep the pasta in here. And then immediately just kind of
stir it so you don't scramble any eggs. I feel like that's the number one fear of people making
carbonara is they're going to make scrambled eggs. No scrambled eggs here. I'm just going
to do a ladle full of this water. So you can see this is super watery, you're like
how will this ever be a delicious creamy treat. If you haven't spilled creamy pasta water,
cheese and egg yolk all over yourself that's like boiling, you haven't lived. So this doesn't look
like much it looks kind of like dishwater with your pasta and you're like how is this ever gonna
become like a creamy thick sauce? Trust me it will happen. Trust in the magic of this pasta. So this
is going to go back in the skillet with our fat. The thing is is that you kind of need to
really just keep it moving this entire time. I never discard the pasta water because you
might need more as it cooks you never know. But this will simmer. It'll start to thicken.
You don't want to increase the heat any more than medium because you do not want your eggs
to scramble. All that pasta water and a lot of that fat is going to help protect the eggs from
scrambling but it's still you're still at risk. You eat it and you say bummer next time I'll make
it better. The reason you add the pasta water and not water from the tap, is because you want that
starch that the pasta gave off. This is going to continue to give up even more starch as that pasta
cooks in this water. But don't walk away here. You don't want to, you don't want to miss the uh the
creaminess, the emulsification. As long as you keep it moving, you're, you're kind of not so much
in danger of it curdling or scrambling your eggs. It's looking more like alfredo, see? Carbonara is imminent. So I'm going
to remove it from heat right now. It looks a little runny but still really
thick. It's going to continue to thicken up. So I'm just going to keep
stirring it off the heat. And stir, and stir, and stir and stir.
You can see the bottom of the skillet it's thick now but still very creamy looking like it doesn't feel pasty. If at any point
this becomes too thick you can always add a splash of pasta water. All right so this is
extremely silky, extremely thick, extremely rich looking and I know it's like it came from
that bowl of weird water but now look at it. What a true glow up. Carbonara to me is not a breakfast
food people are like oh it's eggs and bacon. It's not it's not eggs and bacon. It's pasta and
cheese and a little bit of eggs and some pork product but it's definitely not like a breakfast
food. So it's going to get topped with parmesan or whatever cheese it is that you're using. More
black pepper again, very much being more here and then those little meaty crispy bits. Oh! Get in
there. They couldn't wait! To me, this is like a once every six month or once a year pasta, um, it
is so rich and so creamy, it does actually give me it gives me heartburn which I don't think was Nora
Ephron's intention and it sounds cheesy to say but it really does like I have it like makes me feel
bad sometimes because it's so intense but honestly worth it. Carbonara is like, obviously very easy
and it comes together really quick but it's not an unfussy dish. Like the timing has to be
right, they can't sit for too long, it's like there's like a bit of specialness to it. So I feel
like that they chose that dish to illustrate like the beginning of their relationship like really
cut me in a good way. I don't know she just like comes back, it's like post-coital, she comes back
and he's just like "Oh you just whipped this up?" and she's like "Yeah I just whipped this up"
and I don't know it was really I was like, it me Rachel.
