/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Proper carbonara:
olive oil, as needed
bacon or pancetta, chopped, 100g
whole eggs, 2
egg yolk, 1
grated cheese, pecorino or parmigiano (though any hard grating cheese will do), 75-100g
peppercorn, fresh cracked, as desired (traditionally, lots)

Thinly coat a pan bottom with olive oil.
Add bacon and set to high heat.
When fragrant, lower heat to medium-low/low and cook until the bacon has crisped; meanwhile, beat the eggs, yolk, cheese and peppercorn together to uniform yellow colour.
When the bacon has crisped and rendered its fat, add it, still hot, a little at a time to the egg mixture while beating the eggs quickly in order to temper them.
When half the hot bacon render has been added, stream the rest in while still beating the eggs.
>If thicker sauce is desired, thicken by warming it in a double boiler.
Toss sauce with cooked pasta.
Serve.

Americanised carbonara:
same basic recipe, but adding ¼ cup heavy cream to the beaten egg mixture, chopped onion with the bacon and olive oil and peas to the onion/bacon mixture just before tempering the eggs. This variation does not exist in Italy, but is still good.

Anglicised carbonara:
Swap bacon for ham, add mushroom, onion and pease, reduce egg to a single whole one, add flour (to make a roux with the olive oil/ham render) and whole milk. This dish actually does exist in Italy and is called boscaiola alla panna.

Whichever you decide to make (or even some other recipe or guideline) I hope you enjoy it.

>>4337557
Thank you for this. Just a bit confused on a couple things:

What is meant by bacon "render"? And am I supposed to add the bacon to the egg mixture or the egg to the bacon?

>>4337566
Render is the fat/grease that escapes (renders out) when cooking meat or solid fat. Render from different animals will have different names. For example, uncured/unsmoked pork render is called 'lard' and beef, mutton and lamb render are all called 'tallow.' In English, the German/Yiddish loanword 'schmaltz' is used to describe chicken render while the render of cured pork products, such as ham and bacon, doesn't have an English language name.

Anyway, you want to beat in a little of the bacon and its render to the egg mixture at a time at first until you've added about half of the render to the eggs. This is called 'tempering.' Tempering eggs makes them less likely to curdle/scramble when they're heated. After you've tempered the eggs, you want to re-heat the render just a bit, then stream it into the egg mixture while beating the eggs furiously so as to avoid scrambling them.

Spaghetti Carbonara
1/2 box spaghetti
8 ounces pancetta or bacon, diced
1 shallot, diced or 1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
opt; 1 1/2 tablespoons white wine
1/2 cup pasta water
1-2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup grated parmesan
black pepper, to taste
3 teaspoons chopped parsley
Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. Drain.
In a large skillet, fry pancetta or bacon until slightly crisp. Drain bacon fat, add shallot and cook until translucent. Then add garlic and wine and cook for a few minutes. Add pasta water, eggs, parmesan, black pepper and spaghetti. Toss to coat and heat through until melted.
Serve with parsley and more parmesan.

I highly recommend the pancetta. I had been making it with the bacon and it was good, but the pancetta really makes the dish.

>>4337566
>What is meant by bacon "render"?

>>4337586
Much appreciated. Made it and it came out excellent.