The Best Spaghetti Carbonara
Yet another day of indulgence and waving my diet plan goodbye. It is hard to chew on salad greens when outside temperature keeps dropping below zero. I do have a really good salad recipe that I will share with you in the near future. Store it for warm days ahead. They are coming, right?
You might be wondering what makes this spaghetti carbonara recipe the best. I’d like to say the bacon…the bacon makes it the best but there’s bacon in every carbonara recipe. For me, adding onions is really making this recipe stand out. Without the onions and garlic, this dish is flat. I like it better Jas’d**up. I wouldn’t be Bosnian if I didn’t add onions to it.
When you think about it, this is basically pasta with scrambled eggs. Strange, right? I know people who eat their pasta in even stranger ways, like covered in sour cream (ahem, daughter) or tossed with sugar. Yuck. But bacon makes all the difference. Add bacon to it and suddenly you get the most desired Italian pasta dish. Some carbonara recipes don’t use peas, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. They add color, hint of sweetness and texture. Although Husband wouldn’t be caught dead eating peas, he didn’t die eating this dish.
**the term Jas’d (pronounced jazzed) was made up by my office peeps. Whenever I criticize them for not following procedures they consider themselves being Jas’d. No one takes me seriously, but they are a good bunch of people. 🙂
Ingredients:
Serves 2-3
½ package (about 8 oz.) dry Spaghetti
6 slices Bacon, cubed or sliced into small strips
1 tablespoon Oil
1 small Onion, chopped
1 small clove Garlic, minced
2 large Eggs
½ cup Parmesan Cheese, plus more for serving
1 cup frozen Peas
Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper
Directions:
Cover frozen peas with warm water and set aside.
Prepare the sauce while the pasta is cooking. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 8-10 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and sauté, stirring occasionally, until bacon is crisp, 5-8 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.
Drain off the bacon fat, reserving about 3 tablespoons. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until golden brown, about 3-5 minutes. Toss the garlic into the skillet and sauté for less than 1 minute to soften.
In a mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and parmesan. Drain the spaghetti, reserving ½ cup of the starchy cooking water. Add the hot spaghetti to the pan and toss for 2 minutes to coat in bacon fat. Remove from heat and immediately pour in egg/cheese mixture, mixing well until the eggs thicken. Toss with reserved pasta water, bacon and drained peas. Season the spaghetti with several turns of freshly ground black pepper and taste for salt. Serve sprinkled with additional cheese.
If you like pasta, you would love Pasta alla Norcina. That one feeds the crowd and is always a big hit. Highly recommended!
The Best Spaghetti Carbonara
INGREDIENTS:
- Serves 2-3
- ½ package about 8 oz. dry Spaghetti
- 6 slices Bacon cubed or sliced into small strips
- 1 tablespoon Oil
- 1 small Onion chopped
- 1 small clove Garlic minced
- 2 large Eggs
- ½ cup Parmesan Cheese plus more for serving
- 1 cup frozen Peas
- Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper
DIRECTIONS:
- Cover frozen peas with warm water and set aside. Prepare the sauce while the pasta is cooking. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 8-10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, heat the oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and sauté, stirring occasionally, until bacon is crisp, 5-8 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate. Drain off the bacon fat, reserving about 3 tablespoons. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until golden brown, about 3-5 minutes. Toss the garlic into the skillet and sauté for less than 1 minute to soften.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and parmesan. Drain the spaghetti, reserving ½ cup of the starchy cooking water. Add the hot spaghetti to the pan and toss for 2 minutes to coat in bacon fat. Remove from heat and immediately pour in egg/cheese mixture, mixing well until the eggs thicken. Toss with reserved pasta water, bacon and drained peas. Season the spaghetti with several turns of freshly ground black pepper and taste for salt. Serve sprinkled with additional cheese.
This recipe is featured at Weekly Rays of Sunshine and Talented Tuesday
Jas
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Weekly Rays of Sunshine #117 | Recipes and Ramblings with the Tumbleweed Contessa
February 21, 2015 at 11:01 am[…] in a creamy sauce is perfect comfort food to me. All That Jas has a delicious Spaghetti Carbonara. I’m thinking this for dinner watching the Academy […]
Carole
February 22, 2015 at 3:35 pmLooks delish! Stopping by from Sweet & Savoury Sunday and pinning to Pinterest!
allthatsjas
February 22, 2015 at 8:06 pmThank you Carole! XO
bacurran
February 22, 2015 at 4:55 pmFabulous looking dish, beautiful pictures too. I love carbonara. Thank you so much for linking up to the first Share Your Style link party. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
XO Barbara
allthatsjas
February 22, 2015 at 8:06 pmThanks for visiting Barbara! Hugs
joylovefood
March 1, 2015 at 4:37 pmThis does sound amazing and your photos are gorgeous! Thanks for sharing at What’d You Do This Weekend? I hope you will join us again this Monday morning 🙂
allthatsjas
March 1, 2015 at 6:34 pmThanks Joy! Sure will 🙂
Sherry
March 1, 2015 at 8:04 pmThe photos are just wonderful! Thanks for linking up to Funtastic Friday. Hope to see you again this week.
allthatsjas
March 2, 2015 at 9:10 pmHi Sherry, thank you and thanks for visiting.
sgarrison05
March 3, 2015 at 9:43 amOh goodness this looks so good! You can’t go wrong when you mix bacon and pasta!! Thanks for linking up with us at Talented Tuesdays. I hope you’ll join us again this morning.
allthatsjas
March 3, 2015 at 10:42 amThank you, I’ll be there it’s one of my favorite places to party! 🙂
Talented Tuesday Link Party – No 18 | Threads & bobbins
March 3, 2015 at 10:01 am[…] cooking, I like things to be easy to make and tasty. This recipe for spaghetti carbonara from All That’s Jas is simple to follow and literally made my mouth water! It’s on my […]
Baking In Pyjamas
March 4, 2015 at 11:39 amI agree, it is hard to eat salads when it’s freezing outside, this meal looks perfect for warming the soul. Thanks for linking up to Sweet and Savoury Sunday, stop by and link up again. Have a great day!! Laura@Baking in Pyjamas
allthatsjas
March 4, 2015 at 1:44 pmThanks for visiting Laura!
Bernadyn
June 2, 2015 at 10:55 amI love carbonara! I’ll have to try this recipe, pinned it 🙂
allthatsjas
June 2, 2015 at 11:25 amThank you so much!! 😀
Luca Marchiori
August 7, 2018 at 9:40 amI am sure that this is a really tasty pasta dish, but as an Italian I cannot agree that this is ‘the best carbonara’ or even a ‘carbonara’ at all as we eat it in Rome, where it was born. We only use six ingredients: spaghetti, water, salt, egg yolks, pecorino Romano cheese, and black pepper. (Bacon and parmesan are sensible choices if making this in the USA as I know pancetta and pecorino Romano can be hard to get.) I can’t agree that it needs onion and garlic since the eggs and cheese together give it a real tanginess. Also, it’s a misconception that it’s like ‘pasta with scrambled egg’ because a true carbonara is creamy and doesn’t have bits of cooked egg in it. In fact, that’s the secret to making ‘the best carbonara’. I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m complaining, but we Italians are very proud of and protective of our cultural heritage as I am sure you are of your Bosnian cuisine.
Jas
August 7, 2018 at 11:15 amHi Luca, no need to apologize! You’re entitled to your own opinion. 🙂 I appreciate your feedback and your honesty. Perhaps I should’ve been more precise and say it’s the best carbonara I ever had.
I’ve learned that is hard to pinpoint what recipe is truly the original. They all vary not only from region to region but even household to household. Even my own family prepares traditional Bosnian dishes differently to some extent (the base is always the same) to make them better or to suit their taste and they are delicious and still portray the cultural heritage. I can’t say for sure the same is with Italians. I do know you don’t like change. 😉
While I lived in Germany I’ve experienced German cuisine has variations too. Not even all the pizzas from Italian restaurants there was the same as pizzas I had in Italy. No one is closing down the shop, though. LOL. Every single ethnic dish here has been Americanized over and over and yet still enjoyed. Thanks for stopping in!
Luca Marchiori
August 7, 2018 at 11:38 amNo problem, I’m enjoying browsing your blog. I was recently in Bulgaria where I experienced their version of Balkan cuisine and it was an amazing experience.
In Italy we acknowledge that there is more than one way to make a dish and that everyone has their own variations. For us though a dish is not about the technique, but the ingredients and the final texture. If we make a dish based on a traditional dish but add ingredients, we don’t use the original name, because it’s not the original dish. So, if an Italian made this, they’d call it ‘spaghetti with eggs, onion, cheese and peas’ not ‘carbonara’. A famous TV chef was vilified a few years ago as he added garlic to bucatini all’Amatriciana, so it happens to the best of us. This kind of conservatism is to protect the traditional dishes so that our children can continue to experience them as our grandparents did, not to stop the cuisine developing. There are new dishes being created all the time, but we don’t touch the old ones.
Italian cuisine is so popular outside Italy and has been so adapted that we hardly recognize it when we are travelling.
Jas
August 7, 2018 at 12:15 pmI see. Now I understand the reason behind it. This recipe is one of the old ones that need revamping anyway and I’ll adjust the name so it’s not offensive to the Italians. Thanks for the explanation and the chat! 😀
Luca Marchiori
August 8, 2018 at 2:19 amNo problem, it’s been fun. Just one final example for you. In the 1960s an Italian chef created a dish which was very similar to a traditional one called Zuppa Inglese, but he changed all the flavours. Instead of calling it Zuppa Inglese al caffè e mascarpone, he called it Tiramisù. The rest is history.
Jas
August 8, 2018 at 8:20 amHa! Interesting. Isn’t Zuppa a soup???
Luca Marchiori
August 8, 2018 at 10:28 amIt can be, but in this case it comes from the verb ‘inzuppare’ which means to dip something in liquid. The sponge in Zuppa Inglese is dipped in alcohol as part of the dish.
Jas
August 8, 2018 at 11:14 amOh, I learn something new every day. Thanks!