Creamy Chicken Carbonara Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the golden rule of cooking a carbonara? ›

The golden rule to silky carbonara is to whisk your egg whites so that they're completely incorporated with the egg yolks. This will create a smooth, velvety sauce. As like any pasta dish, including carbonara, cook the pasta perfectly al dente so that it's soft but still firm, with some bite.

“It's the main ingredient, so egg yolk is one of the most important aspects of carbonara. The quantity is crucial: the right amount is two egg yolks for each person. As with all pasta, you have to keep the pasta water – the starchy water is how you get a perfectly creamy sauce.

What not to put in Spaghetti Carbonara? Don't put garlic, cream, milk or butter. It is not needed. It is fine if you want to make a dish with those ingredients, but if you want to learn how to make this dish correctly, use only pecorino, eggs/egg yolks, black pepper, guanciale, and pasta water.

While a simple spaghetti carbonara recipe uses pancetta as the meat and a traditional Italian recipe may use guanciale, a cured pork, De Laurentiis combines bacon and pancetta to give her dish a unique salty kick. But she ups the ante even more with a secret ingredient — cinnamon.

Must-have ingredients

that there are only five ingredients: pasta, pork cheek, eggs, cheese and pepper. That's it. A real carbonara does not contain onion, garlic, or cream.

Using a large mixing bowl and setting it over the boiling pasta water to create a makeshift double boiler helps prevent you from accidentally scrambling the eggs.

Whisking your eggs so that the whites are completely incorporated into the yolks will give your sauce a more uniform texture. For an extra creamy sauce, it's best to use mostly egg yolks. The egg whites tend to make carbonara watery, but too many egg yolks can make the sauce too custardy.

Now quickly pour in the eggs and cheese. Using the tongs or a long fork, lift up the spaghetti so it mixes easily with the egg mixture, which thickens but doesn't scramble, and everything is coated. Add extra pasta cooking water to keep it saucy (several tablespoons should do it).

It's higher in fat, which gives a velvety texture and richer flavor to the carbonara. I'd rather not go overboard on the richness, so I'll use whole eggs, and typically I'll add an extra yolk to the pan.

Do Italians put cream in pasta carbonara? ›

Taste.com.au Food Director, Amira Georgy, confirmed this, saying: “Traditionally, carbonara sauce contains no cream, just eggs and cheese. The eggs and cheese are added to the hot pasta and tossed together until a silky sauce forms.”

That means an egg provides two of the three ingredients we need to make an emulsion: the fat and the emulsifier. In fact, both the fat and the lecithin are mainly concentrated in the egg yolk. So we can actually make the carbonara sauce without the egg whites. Using just egg yolks will give us a richer, thicker sauce.

The creaminess of classic carbonara comes from the emulsion of egg yolks, cheese, pasta water, and the rendered fat from the guanciale. Typically, the guanciale is sauteed first, then removed from the pan with the leftover fat reserved. Then, the egg and grated cheese are beaten together with lots of black pepper.

Egg whites will provide texture but too much could make the eggs curdle. Meanwhile, egg yolks help to bind the pork fat to the sauce. This also helps to enhance the creaminess. So a good rule to follow is to include one egg yolk per person and one egg white per four people.

I like to use a ratio of 1 whole egg to 3 egg yolks because it balances the richness. If you are looking to avoid using raw eggs, I would recommend making my Cacio e Pepe recipe – this is another one of the four classic Roman pastas but requires only three ingredients (cheese, pepper, and pasta).

Should carbonara have cream? Typically carbonara sauce is only made of eggs, bacon, parmesan, olive oil, seasoning, and sometimes, vegetables. As for cream, Italians will tell you that is a big no no.