Pasta Carbonara the American Way (With Bacon)

need to understand carbonara does not need cream or peas or ham or whatever else people are putting in it it's so simple today hang out for a second and you're going to learn how to do it right let's not waste any time now let's go traditionally you're going to see spaghetti carbonara made with guanchali which is the jowl meaning the cheek of a pig that's been cured so for this video of course i could have ordered guanciale but i know most of my audience is american so i want the most people possible to actually make this so we're going to use bacon and thick cut bacon would be best you could also use pancetta so i'll take about a half pound of bacon and we're going to slice this just pretty thick this way that's about three quarters of an inch turn this pan on to medium heat i'm doing a tiny bit of olive oil i don't think it's traditional but when i'm cooking italian food it just feels right then go ahead and break your bacon into that pan and what we're going to do here is slowly render out the fat from this bacon get it nice and crispy we'll use most of it in the pasta and then we'll actually use some for garnish because who doesn't like crispy bacon on top now bacon is rendering pasta water is coming up to a boil and we're gonna season our pasta water just a little bit about a tablespoon of salt kosher salt into about four quarts of water usually i'm going to put more salt in because there's so many salty elements in carbonara i want to put less salt in the pasta water so first is very important we need to talk about the cheese here we have pecorino romano it's a sheep's milk cheese this one is aged i think this is what is traditionally used when you're making spaghetti carbonara but as always if you watch this channel you know i love parmigiano leggiano that's not to be confused with parmesan make sure it says parmigiano reggiano and it's from italy and you'll know you have the good stuff so what i'm going to do is a mixture of both these cheeses and you want them to be pretty fine so i'm going to be using this cheese grater and if you don't have one of those just use this setting on a box grater and just get to shredding i'm going to do about three ounces of each of these cheeses so half and half but as always with my videos the full recipe is going to be down in the description underneath this video you just gotta click that little arrow and it'll open up so here's all our beautiful cheese okay now time for the eggs a lot of recipes call for all whole all yolks i like to do a mixture of both so i'm doing three whole eggs as well as two egg yolks the way i see it carbonar is already so rich it doesn't need all egg yolks go ahead and whisk that all up and then we'll start whisking our cheese into our egg mixture and you'll see all that and it looked like so much cheese right but as this breaks down it won't look like that anymore add that all in and so now we have a consistency like this now this is a very important time for our good friend sergeant gilbert i'm gonna put quite a bit of gilbert's insides into this egg mixture if you didn't know already gilbert is just fresh ground black pepper he's a sentient being a pepper grinder who became self-aware in 2020. you know and this is preference put as much pepper or as little pepper as you like and whisk it in as you can see there's a lot of fat coming out of this bacon just want to turn this occasionally and we are going to be using some but not all of this fat in the actual spaghetti carbonara another thing you can do is just take a little bit of that boiling water and add it to the eggs quickly whisk that in we're kind of equalizing the temperatures here and loosening up this egg mixture a little bit and it's going to make the whole pasta come together a lot easier in the end i put just about a quarter cup in here our bacon is almost rendered so now we'll drop our spaghetti we'll try to do that twisty thing kind of worked just get a little bit of water up on it let that roll check it on the bacon i turned the heat down in the end be careful not to overcook this looks pretty much perfect first i'm gonna take some out for garnish drain it on a paper towel now i'm turning off the heat of this pan and i'm gonna drain off most of the fat all except for about two tablespoons or so and then just set that back over there remember now heat is off this is so important okay and of course we're going to put some olive oil in this pasta no we're not going to do that why do people do that it's a myth it's a myth just like msg is going to give you cancer or whatever it's just not true and it serves no purpose so don't do it don't do it okay another thing i want to share with you there are tons of expensive pasta brands out in the world but honestly like i like these cheap italian brands like this one deco i don't know how to say it but like i don't know why i just prefer the cheap one so if anyone's wondering this is what i use so we'll cook this spaghetti about 10 minutes in this pot just slightly al dente and then we'll finish it over in this baking pan remember still no heat on this pan i'm going to explain all this soon but you want to leave this water in this pot this will make sense in a minute so here we go it's been 10 minutes we're just going to use our tongs here drop that in there trust me this spaghetti is generating a ridiculous amount of heat turn that pasta water down to a simmer once you have all the pasta out now we're going to add in that beautiful egg and cheese mixture the whole trick here and what you really need to keep in mind is that we do not want to scramble these eggs the eggs are going to cook from the heat of this pasta [Music] and very gently and beautifully in a velvety fluffy creamy way coat it all up right don't worry you're not eating raw eggs and gentle with the pasta you don't want to break it oh man and the pasta water the bacon fat the cheese and egg mixture is now emulsifying all over this pasta you see how creamy this is i'm also using these la crusade pans which i'll link in the description and they hold a lot of heat so i don't think i even need to do my plan but i can show you why i left that pasta water on because if it doesn't thicken up like you like literally what you can do is set that pan back on top of that pasta water and like a double boil or ban marie [Music] it will keep cooking the egg mixture but i don't think i even really need to do this but that's a good option especially if you're using a pan that's not as thick as this oh my god looks so good and if it looks too thick to you also what you can do is just add a little bit of that pasta water that's going to loosen it up and help establish that creamy sauce that has no cream done no scramble nothing go ahead and plate this up just get it off the tongs like so oh man now to finish a little more parmigiano-reggiano all over nothing wrong with that and of course some of your crispy bacon just for an added crunch that is a bonus no one is going to complain about trust me i mean how bad do you want to tuck into this treat allow me to try oh allow me to try it for you here we go a little bacon oh my gosh i see a lot of people who leave my youtube videos right now it's such a big mistake they obviously don't know about the fridge god that's good you gotta make this here's my rolling pin i just feel like this is what an italian grandmother would do [Music] what well i hope that helped until next time my friends you know i love you when i'm out

Channel: ThatDudeCanCook

Views: 317,638

Keywords: carbonara recipe, spaghetti carbonara, pasta carbonara, how to make carbonara, dinner ideas, carbonara (dish), easy carbonara recipe, pasta recipe, carbonara pasta, carbonara pasta recipe, carbonara sauce, carbonara spaghetti, easy recipes, how to cook carbonara, easy recipe, pasta carbonara recipe, carbonara recipe easy, easy carbonara, carbonara recipe italian style, carbonara recipe italian, thatdudecancook, spaghetti carbonara recipe, homemade carbonara, carbonara

Id: dzyXBU3dIys

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021