Spaghetti Carbonara

The creamy richness of Spaghetti Carbonara comes together in just 20 minutes with a few ingredients. This pasta dish is the perfect easy dinner; or simple date night or dinner party idea.

Pasta Carbonara recipe

I love a good creamy pasta – and especially spaghetti with a close to authentic carbonara sauce!

Let me just preface this recipe by clarifying that when I say “authentic” I mean as authentic as I know it to be from my many trips to Italy and my encounters with actual Italian Nonnas. Your Nonna might know a different and even better way to make it – in which case, please share it with me! I’d love to hear.

Ingredients you’ll need

Here is a visual overview of the ingredients in the recipe. Scroll down to the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post for quantities!

Ingredient notes

Fatty pork: Sorry for the cryptic language in the photo above 🙈 but there are many different variations of carbonara out there, so I wanted to be thorough.

• The most traditional cut I have found (this is according to my own research and my own research only) is Guanciale, which is made from pig cheeks/pork jowls. As far as I know, it is not widely available outside of Italy – especially depending on where you live. You may find smoked pork jowl in the US, but Guanciale is cured and not smoked. It’s a fatty cut, and often heavily flavored with herbs.
• Pancetta is definitely a great substitute, but make sure to buy diced pancetta and not the thinly-sliced pancetta used for sandwiches.
• Bacon yields a slightly different flavor, because it is often smoked – while pancetta and Guanciale are cured. I do personally like a carbonara-inspired dish made with bacon, but it is most definitely not authentic. I highly recommend using thick-cut bacon you slice into batons yourself, or using diced bacon over thin breakfast-style bacon slices.
• If your butcher offers lardons (cured fatty pork cut into batons – which is what you can see in my ingredient photo above), they make for a very decent substitute, too. Lardons can be made from different pork cuts and tend to be budget-friendly.
• I have seen people make carbonara with diced ham (and I have actually been served carbonara made with ham at a restaurant before!) – it’s much leaner and I guess a choice made popular by the low fat craze back in the day. If you’re craving the flavors of carbonara but are watching your fat intake for whatever reason, diced ham works to create a delicious meal – but it’s definitely different in taste, still needs some oil to create the silky sauce… And better not serve it to an Italian guest.

Cheese: As with the pork, I have seen, tasted and used different cheese varieties in this dish. Some recipes swear by using only Pecorino Romano, some swear by using only Parmigiano and some swear by using a mix of both.

I recommend using what you enjoy most, and what you have available. For Parmesan, I strongly recommend using freshly grated – and not the stuff from the green can. Pecorino is not as widely available, but it definitely is delicious in the dish if you can get your hands on it.

Eggs: I’ll sound like a broken record at this point, but people are very divided over the usage of whole eggs vs egg yolks only in their Carbonara sauce.

I’m a firm believer in tweaking recipes to make them suit your family’s needs – maybe someone in your family is medically required to watch their cholesterol, in which case you might not want to use a ton of egg yolks in the dish. Yes, even if some people believe it makes the recipe less authentic and therefore nil and void.

• For an extra-rich pasta sauce, use 6 egg yolks in the sauce.
• For a rich pasta sauce, use 4 egg yolks and 1 whole egg.
• For a medium-rich sauce, go for 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks.
• For the lightest dish, use 3 whole eggs.

I personally wouldn’t use more egg whites vs egg yolks, because at some point the sauce will taste strange when yolks are missing.

Parsley: I promise, this is the final ingredient I will write about for this recipe.

So, the story of why I put parsley in my family’s Pasta Carbonara? It’s because I ate it like this at an Agriturismo (which is agricultural tourism in Italy, aka we vacationed on a campsite attached to a working farm; which also had an on-site restaurant maintained by the Mamma of the family) in one of the southernmost places on mainland Italy.

Southern Italy generally has a less rich cuisine compared to northern places, so I’m assuming they made the dish to please the tourists looking for stereotypical Italian comfort food (hello, me!) but added a fresh, southern twist? Or maybe a new prep cook accidentally chucked in the parsley 😂 Either way, I loved it, and now I always do it. It’s absolutely not at all considered authentic, so feel free to skip it.

How to make Pasta Carbonara

1. Make each component:

Carbonara comes together quickly, but there are three separate components to it:

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• Egg and cheese mixture, which you need to temper with just-cooked pasta cooking water (remove ½ cup of pasta cooking water from your boiling pot and slowly (!!) trickle it into your egg and cheese mixture while whisking well.)
• Cooked spaghetti (which need to finish cooking right before you’re pulling the dish together – they need to be steaming hot in order to gently cook the eggs as you’re tossing the dish together)
• Choice of cured pork, which you’ll want to cook in olive oil until crispy. Use a wide, deep sauté pan, as you’ll use it to toss the dish together.

2. Finish the dish:

Toss the cooked pasta with the bacon in the skillet (this works best with tongs), then take the pan off the heat.

Keep tossing the pasta as you add the egg and cheese mixture, until the pasta is coated in a silky sauce. Serve immediately!

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Note: I always save an extra ½ cup of the spaghetti cooking water, in case the pasta doesn’t come out as silky as I want it to be. That way, I have some extra I can toss into the dish to create more sauce.

Recipe tips

• Add the boiling water carefully and slowly to the egg mixture, while continuously whisking. If you add it too fast or don’t whisk, you risk the eggs scrambling and curdling – which is not reversible, so you’d have to start with a fresh batch of egg and cheese mixture.
• Likewise, add the egg mixture to the hot pasta slowly while continuously tossing and stirring the pasta in the pan. Always take the pan off the heat before adding the egg mixture.
• I highly recommend setting aside an extra ½ cup of pasta cooking water, so you can add a few splashes more if needed to create a silky sauce.
• This is a dish you need to serve as soon as it is finished – otherwise, the pasta will start soaking up the sauce and the spaghetti will be too dry and too mushy at the same time.

Serving ideas

• Add a tossed salad with white balsamic vinaigrette on the side
• Serve roasted asparagus or air fryer asparagus on the side
• Sautéed green beans or air fried green beans are very nice, too – and so is roasted broccoli
• Toss the pasta with cooked peas for an extra quick and easy way to add some vegetables to your meal

PS If you try this recipe, please leave a review in the comment section and add a star rating in the recipe card – I appreciate your feedback! Follow along on Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram. Sign up for my email list, too!

Recipe first published in 2014. Updated for the first time on 10/14/2019 with improved recipe, updated again on 05/08/2021 with new photos and better text.

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