Creamy Chicken Carbonara Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is chicken carbonara sauce made of? ›

The creamy sauce is made by tossing eggs and Parmesan with cooked pasta and its still piping hot cooking water. It's so simple but can be intimidating.

Only use egg yolks, not the whole egg. And never, ever use cream! Thinking of cooking tips, lightly toast the freshly ground pepper in the pan before adding the guanciale, so the meat has a slightly peppery taste from the start. No oil is needed and the fat of the guanciale is enough to flavour it beautifully.

Whisk Like You Mean It

You're using more egg yolks than whites here, which is what makes carbonara so rich and luxurious. But there's still two eggs-worth of whites in there. Whisking your eggs so that the whites are completely incorporated into the yolks will give your sauce a more uniform texture.

Carbonara is a classic, 5-ingredient Roman pasta dish made with 5 simple ingredients: pasta, eggs, guanciale, Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper. It's made by tempering eggs, cheese and starchy pasta cooking water into a luscious creamy pasta sauce. The taste is rich, salty and addictive!

The difference between alfredo and carbonara is that carbonara contains an egg while alfredo sauce does not. Carbonara is usually thinner in consistency than alfredo sauce, using the egg to coat the noodles instead of relying on the cream.

Alfredo is made from butter, parsley, heavy cream and minced garlic, whereas carbonara is made from pecorino romano, eggs, black pepper and guanciale (ingredients seem to vary for the sauces depending on the recipe). In Italy carbonara is made without cream, adding cream to the sauce is an American thing it seems.

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.

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.

Equally important is that the fat that melts out of the guanciale is required to thicken the carbonara sauce to make it creamy. Basically, what happens is that when the fat from the guanciale and in the egg yolks is mixed with starchy pasta cooking water, it thickens.

Because in the traditional recipe there is no garlic, if you add it you will lower quality of a very good food. Why is there no garlic in carbonara? Because it's an Italian dish, not an Italian-American dish, and Italian cooking does not use garlic as heavily as Italian-American cuisine.

Should there be garlic in carbonara? ›

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.

Pecorino Romano: This aged sheep's cheese is always traditionally used in the Roman pastas, and its salty, grassy, earthy flavor is absolutely delicious in carbonara. That said, if Pecorino is unavailable at your local grocery store, you can use Parmesan as a non-traditional substitute.

No! Carbonara is effectively an egg yolk, cooked with the heat of the pasta. It's delicious but it's not “white sauce” . White sauce starts with a roux.

Alfredo is basic – pasta, cream, parmesan, parsley. Carbonara is a little more complicated – pasta, onion, pancetta, garlic, egg yolks, cream, parmesan, parsley. Because this is a gluten-free version we have to use spaghetti – if you're not gluten-free use anything from penne to linguini.

Does Pasta Carbonara taste like eggs? No, you do not have to worry about your Spaghetti Carbonara tasting like eggs! Although the sauce contains eggs, it also boasts an almost ridiculous amount of sharp, salty, tangy, and pungent Pecorino Romano cheese and rich, salty, savory pork.

Flavor: Adding pancetta to the carbonara recipe gives the dish its sharp, salty taste and cuts through the creaminess. Alternatively, Alfredo sauce is creamier and richer, without the textural and flavor variation of pancetta.

Carbonara: History

Because the name comes from the word carbonaro, “coal burner,” some believe the dish was created as a hearty easy-to-make meal by men working outdoors for long periods.