Spaghetti Carbonara
WHEN PASTA CARBONARA—a Roman dish of pasta, cured pork, and sharp cheese—is done well, its bold flavors and creamy texture are a revelation. But it’s also one of those seemingly simple dishes that can go wrong at several turns. The two most common failures are unbalanced flavor caused by the wrong ratios of ingredients and a gummy or runny texture from an improperly emulsified sauce.
As for the ingredients, sharp, bold Pecorino Romano is the traditional cheese. This cheese’s pleasantly funky flavor is the key to a potent but well-rounded carbonara. You can make this dish with Parmesan and it will be great, but it won’t be quite as assertive. With Pecorino, you generally get what you pay for, and this is the time to splurge on the good stuff if it’s available to you (see “Parmesan’s Funky Cousin”).
The cured pork product we use is salty, meaty guanciale (see “The Cheekiest of Cured Meats”). We cut it into chunks and render some of the fat; this fat, in turn, serves as the backbone of the sauce. With ingredients this potent, balance proved to be key; through weeks of testing, we landed on just the right proportions of cheese and meat.
One last note on flavor: Use freshly ground black pepper if possible, as the dusty preground stuff is too mild to hold its own here. Freshly ground pepper makes a big difference.
The keys to ensuring that your carbonara has great texture are threefold: the eggs, the pasta water, and the tossing. We call for three whole eggs
