I once met a girl who was a vegetarian except for bacon. Because bacon is awesome. Yes it is trendy, but it is also a great way to add some background flavor to soups and stews. Today I begin an occasional column on foods that make use of bacon. Today: Pasta Carbonara.
This is comfort food to the max. It will make you feel full and happy, though I can’t promise it will do your arteries any favors.
Ingredients
- 1 lb pasta such as linguini or spaghetti
- 4 eggs
- 1 lb bacon (if you’re feeling fancy, get some pancetta)
- 1.5 cups shredded parmesan cheese
- At least 5 cloves of garlic, chopped, though please add more if you love garlic
- Handful of parsley, chopped
Instructions
1. Cut up the bacon into pieces about 1 inch wide. Toss it into a skillet to cook.
2. While the bacon is cooking, get your pasta water boiling. Don’t forget to salt it!
3. Keep an eye on your bacon. Once it’s crispy, pull it out and set to drain on a paper towel. DON’T dump out the grease in the pan. You need it.
4, Toss the garlic into the pan that had the bacon and cook it. Garlic is tricky since it can get over done very easily. I wouldn’t keep it cooking for more than a minute. After a minute, pull the garlic out and toss it into whatever bowl it is you’re going to serve things in. Now you can get rid of your bacon grease.
5. In your serving bowl, crack the four eggs. Dump in the cheese and mix everything together with a fork. Toss the bacon and garlic on top of that.
6. By now your pasta should be done, or on its way to being done. When it’s done, drain it (reserving 1 cup of liquid). Toss the piping hot pasta into your serving bowl and toss everything together. The hot pasta will cook the eggs.
7. Toss the parsley in. If the pasta sauce is a little thick, use a few spoonfuls of that reserved water to loosen it up a bit. Definitely don’t dump in the entire cup, but just add in a spoonful at a time until you get everything the consistency you would like.
This recipe makes 4 generous portions. I often make this for one by just using 3 slices of bacon, a garlic clove, 1 egg, a handful of cheese, and some parsley. The pasta I just estimate based on what I usually need for a single portion.
13 replies on “Put Bacon In It: Pasta Carbonara”
The boyfriend & I just made this for tea, it was absolutely lush! Thanks for the recipe :)
for some reason Pasta Carbonara is one of the few pasta-type dishes that I have never made. Methinks I must remedy this situation.
This sounds so easy that even I could do it. Yiha!
Pasta carbonara makes me wish I could eat eggs*.
*without pooping my brains out.
Update: Â It was dee-licious.
Ooooh I was just thinking about making some! I had some at a friend’s house last week and he forgot about it for a couple minutes, so we ended up having serving-bowl-shaped spaghetti cake (but it was pretty good so I was curious about it).
And lo and behold, a recipe. Magic.
Yummy! Â I need to try this!
I always wondered how they got the eggs to turn out like that, only not quite enough to google. Thank you for sharing :)! I rarely cook pasta, but this looks like an easy, but still kinda fancy option.
I am doing this tonight. Â TONIGHT.
Um. I am so hungry right now, and I have turkey bacon in the ‘fridge, and it is really, really calling to me.
Gorgeous! I love rosemary in my cabonara, just delicious.
My flatmates used to cook cabonara. It involved a flavour sachet made up of just salt, and 3 pounds of “bacon” which I’m pretty sure was left over pig, coloured pink, shaped into bacon shapes and them liberally salted and pasta. So basically it was salt and pasta and it makes me feel violently ill recalling those meals.
These were also the boys who made “Butter Mince”- which was ground beef, butter chicken flavour, cream and butter. It congealed on the plate into a fatty greasy mass. Ick.
This sounds amazing! You really don’t have to cook the eggs first? I’m paranoid about runny eggs and usually scramble them half to death, but I really want to try this.
Eggs cook at an extremely low temperature compared to a lot of other foods. You’ll be safe. :)