There is an open war in the Italian pasta world over the reality of the carbonara recipe. Purism defends that the authentic carbonara is the one made with eggs, but then a bastard version at the expense of cream as protagonist.
If you still flagellate yourself for thinking that it was you —or yours— those responsible for starting to put cream in the carbonara and offending Italy, perhaps you should take a look at this report where we tell you how Italy’s greatest chef was the one who put cream in the carbonara for the first time.
Wars aside and with purism as our flag, we must recognize that making a carbonara with egg well is not that simple and that requires some skill. Especially because we want it to be creamy, silky and elegant and that the egg yolk does not cook more than necessary, giving a sensation of an omelet or scrambled eggs that we do not want.
And if, in addition to being clumsy—like the person writing to you, who resists carbonara—and you are terrified of fact of consuming beaten egg not very cooked due to the risk of salmonella, we have a practical, easy and cheap solution to make a carbonara with egg and the result is wonderful.
As explained in lacucinaitaliana.it, There is a home remedy that allows us make easy carbonaras free of salmonella without us getting more complicated than necessary. The only secret, as you may be able to interpret, is in the boiled egg.
In this case, the recommendation is that Let’s cook the eggs before making the carbonara, but without going overboard, obviously. For this reason, they recommend cooking the eggs for eight or nine minutes—once the water is boiling—and, after that time, cool them and then, after peeling them, remove the white and keep the yolk.
The advice follows already mixing the grated pecorino cheese, the yolk – also grated -, a little pepper and reserving all this mixture. Once we have cooked the pasta and we have already cooked the guanciale or bacon, we use a couple of small spoons of the cooking water to mix it with the egg, pecorino and pepper, which will adopt a consistency similar to a cream.
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Once it is ready, just we will have to add the pasta to the guanciale pan and, off the heat—important—add the egg and cheese cream that we have prepared. Then you will only have to grate some more cheese on top and our carbonara for clumsy people will be ready and will hit perfectly.
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