Italian Bacon Based Spaghetti Carbonara - Bacon Recipe

Posted by Mrs. Ziffel on Apr 25th 2019

This recipe begins with bacon, but rather than sliced strips of bacon, a portion from a slab of bacon is used in order to cut small cubes, or lardons, that render their fat while cooking, but don’t become crispy.

Although this recipe is simple, and uses only few ingredients, it is unusual in that you don’t cook the egg before adding it to the cooked pasta. If this step is not done properly you end up with bits of scrambled egg in your pasta. And if it is done properly, you end up with a delicious creamy coating on all your pasta. The raw egg can only cook properly with a pasta shape that has a sufficiently large ratio of surface area to volume, such as spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine.

Ingredients

• salt & coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 eggs plus two additional egg yolks, room temperature
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup grated Romano cheese
• 1/2 cup lardons or cubed bacon (1/4 inch cubes)
• 3/4 pound of spaghetti

Instructions

Fill the serving bowl to be used with hot water, to warm the bowl, and set aside.

Cut enough of the slab off to fill 1/2 cup with 1/4 inch lardons (cubes of bacon)

Whisk together the room temperature eggs and additional egg yolks and the grated Parmesan and Romano cheeses. Season with a pinch of salt and plenty of coarsely ground black pepper.

Fill a large pot with water, add two tsp salt and set on the stove to boil.

Place the lardons in a fry pan and heat until they render the fat and are slightly browned, but not crispy; remove from pan and set aside.

Once your salted water is boiling add the 3/4# pasta and cook until almost al dente. (To achieve almost al dente, reduce the cooking time as directed on the package by 30 to 60 seconds.)

When the pasta is cooked, turn the heat back on for the fry pan and reheat the bacon fat as you are straining the pasta. Once well strained carefully add the pasta to the hot bacon fat in the large fry pan as well as the cooked reserved lardons and mix well.

Empty the hot water from the serving dish and dry it.

Add the pasta from the fry pan to the serving dish. (Now comes the make or break moment, as in scrambled eggs or rich and creamy sauce moment.) Add the egg and cheese mixture to the pasta in the serving dish while the pasta is hot but NOT steaming. Toss all of the pasta with the egg cheese mixture until well incorporated and the cheese is melted.

Top with freshly grated Parmesan and or Romano cheese. Adding some Italian seasonings (rosemary, basil and thyme), warm petite peas or button mushrooms can add some additional color and flavor to this recipe.