Spaghetti Carbonara – Italian classic

Spaghetti carbonara is one of those recipes that everyone should learn to cook. It’s quick, simple and only uses 5 ingredients.

Spaghetti
Eggs
Guanciale (or pancetta)
Pecorino cheese
and black pepper

If, like me, you struggle to get hold of guanciale, then pancetta is an acceptable substitute and you can use parmigiana Reggiano instead of Pecorino, but try and get Pecorino, its really nice.

There are no real quantities as such, as you can make it to your liking. My kids wanted plenty pancetta in so I loaded it up.

If you have only ever had a spaghetti carbonara made with cream, I urge you to give this a go. Made properly it doesn’t need cream, and has its own mouthfeel and flavour.

I’m going to have a bit of a change today because we’re going to move away from British cooking just for a second because my kids want spaghetti carbonara carbonara so let’s get some of that done. Triton. First of all fill a pan with water for your

Spaghetti then light your stove get it on a medium heat. Now you want to put some salt into your water because otherwise your spaghetti will taste bland. Right now your pan’s of water is heating up get your spaghetti out. I normally use dicheco mainly because it’s available in the local

Supermarket but it tastes nice and it’s pretty cheap. What’s not available is Jim Carley so we’re going to have to use pancetta again from the local supermarket. Okay crack your eggs in a bowl I’m using three eggs in this I’m going to use

Two whole eggs and then just use one egg yolk it just makes the sauce nice and a bit more smooth tasty. Again don’t forget that your eggs are one of the stars that are showing this so get some nice really nice eggs fresh as you can and you can’t go wrong. Belting.

Right I went in my fridge and I found I thought I had pecorino but looks like I’ve just got parmesan um although 30 day come on that’s gonna taste nice so straight visit to the supermarket whatever you do don’t get the pre-grated stuff because it

Contains all the stuff and it won’t make the sauce nice. Nice pecorino there we go. Okay now we need to grate the pecorino as fine as we can when you finally get the packet open I always struggle with things like this. Um like I say don’t get the pre-grained stuff because

It has stuff to stop it plumping and you only use the very smallest that you’ve got on your grater make it as fine as possible whistle up to fix it all in. Also don’t forget that pecorino is naturally more salty than parmesan so if you’re using pecorino don’t use salt like that because

Otherwise you’ll end up with it being a bit too salty. Okay once you’ve got enough slap that in your eggs there we go and start to give that a good mix make sure it’s well mixed first before we do anything else. If you’re not a simpleton like me you’ll probably

Use a bigger bowl so that you don’t keep losing bits of cheese all over the edge of it but to fail. Once you’ve finally got it mixed eventually you can add very very carefully just very very small amounts of water that you’ve been cooking the

Pasta in and it should be nice and hot and what it’ll start to do is emultify it properly it’s also thick and thin the sauce out a bit for you. When it’s about as thin as cream just put it to one side we can come back to this later.

Okay no time to add your spaghetti or boiling water in your pan and other posh videos will show you how to wrap it round it all sinks in nicely. I just prefer the stuffing it under your fingers method because it works for me

And melts as it goes down and it’ll all fit in the pan eventually. Okay now it’s time to get the pancetta or the jem carlings in its next put a cold pan on put the pancetta in or the jem carlings in without any oil you don’t need any because the fat in the

Meat will drain the rot that’s the bit you want. So nice and gentle heat let’s get it on and start cooking. Nothing much will happen at first just keep moving the pancetta around so until it starts you’ll see the fat start to come out very

Slowly keep that going keep moving the pan around. Okay once you’ve got in a foil out of that it’s nice and crispy put the spaghetti in and give it a good stir. You might want to add some more of the pasta

Water into the pan and this will get everything nice and ready for you. Okay once everything is nice and loose take your pan off you definitely don’t want this pan hot particularly too hot should I say and what we’re going to do when it’s cooled down a little bit

We’ll start to add the eggs straight in nice and gentle it’s always eggs straight into the pasta what we don’t want to do is scramble them okay keep stirring your sauce if you need it thinning out just add some more pasta water in but make

Sure it’s nice and well stirred once you’ve done that it’s ready to serve. My presentation skills probably need polishing up but hey it’s for the kids so really who cares you can make you you do you fancy if you like and my kids will just eat

It as it is and if you don’t like it they can cook it themselves. Righty-oh ready for serving just before you serve a nice grind of black pepper on it makes it absolutely tremendous well I really enjoyed it anyway thanks very much for watching bye bye