Simple pasta carbonara recipe

A carbonara is a basic Italian pasta dish made with pork, cheese, egg, salt and pepper that originated in central Italy. This version uses thickened cream to make the sauce even richer and silkier, and I think you’ll love it.

How to make simple pasta carbonara: key tips

Cook your pasta until it is just al dente and reserve ¼ cup of cooking water to mix in with the creamy pasta mixture at the end. The pasta water contains starch from the pasta and will thicken the sauce and help it cling to the pasta.

It’s important to remove the pan from the heat before stirring in the egg yolks so that the egg has a chance to combine with the mixture instead of cooking in clumps. 

In my opinion, a carbonara can never have enough freshly cracked black pepper or parmesan cheese, so feel free to ignore the weights in the ingredient list, and be liberal when serving!

Key ingredients in this simple pasta carbonara recipe 

Spaghetti is the typical pasta used in a carbonara, however you could combine the sauce with any pasta, if you desire. The cook also says this recipe works well with a gluten-free penne pasta. 

Using cream and just the egg yolks makes this carbonara particularly rich. If you don’t want to waste the whites, you can use these, too. Just be sure to whisk the eggs together in a jug before adding them to the pan so that they combine evenly. 

Here are 20 more creamy carbonara recipes to stick your fork into, as well as this traditional bacon carbonara which is sans cream.

This recipe was originally submitted by Leimaycherry, a member of the Australia’s Best Recipe community. Introduction and additional recipe notes by Natasha Shaw.