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.

The creaminess comes from the eggs and the rendered fat from the guanciale or pancetta. The key to making a creamy carbonara is to toss the spaghetti with the egg mixture and the rendered fat immediately after draining it. This helps to cook the eggs and thicken the sauce.

Spaghetti carbonara

And indeed, there's plenty of recipes that cheat by adding in cream. But today, we're making spaghetti carbonara properly, the authentic, traditional way. No cream. Just egg, cheese and a splash of starchy pasta cooking water.

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.

Cooking process: Thick, creamy Alfredo sauce involves cooking down butter and heavy cream in a sauté pan or saucepan to make a thick, rich cream sauce. On the other hand, carbonara involves combining pasta and a bit of pasta water with rendered guanciale, raw eggs, and grated cheese.

The golden rule to silky carbonara is to whisk your egg whites so that they're completely incorporated with the egg yolks. This will create a smooth, velvety sauce. As like any pasta dish, including carbonara, cook the pasta perfectly al dente so that it's soft but still firm, with some bite.

Because in the traditional recipe there is no garlic, if you add it you will lower quality of a very good food. My personal opinion is that garlic flavour does not fit with the egg nor the guanciale (pork cheek fat) flavour at all.

There's one other reason and that's if they've failed to emulsify the egg, pasta water and cheese, they may add cream to 'rescue' the dish. Why don't traditional pastas use cream? The reason is that cream isn't used in Italian pasta dishes is that it can be overpowering.

“The tips for the perfect carbonara are essentially: dried spaghetti not fresh; guanciale not pancetta; and a mixture of parmesan and pecorino. Guanciale is a much fattier pork than pancetta and it is not smoked.

Do you use whole eggs in carbonara? ›

Traditional carbonara sauce is made with whole eggs, not just the yolks. However, some recipes do call for just yolks. In the traditional recipe, the eggs are beaten together with grated Pecorino Romano cheese, black pepper, and sometimes a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Should carbonara have cream? Typically carbonara sauce is only made of eggs, bacon, parmesan, olive oil, seasoning, and sometimes, vegetables. As for cream, Italians will tell you that is a big no no.

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.

You can substitute half and half or light cream for the heavy cream to save on fat and cals, and you can also use bacon instead of the proscuitto as it's quite expensive."

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.

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.

Alfredo and carbonara are totally separate dishes. Carbonara traditionally consists of guanciale, beaten eggs, black pepper, and pecorino Ramano cheese. Traditional alfredo contains Parmigiano Reggiano and butter.

It tastes sort of like cheesy bacon and eggs. The pasta really doesn't have much flavor on its own, so the rest of the ingredients are most of the flavor. It's sort of its own thing. Mostly it's salty, rich, peppery, and a bit smokey.