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Linguine Carbonara

Seemingly simple Linguine Carbonara can be an exceptional challenge for home cooks. However, those willing to take a risk will achieve creamy, dreamy rewards. Our Linguine Carbonara recipe will give you the key to unlock this classic Roman pasta dish.

Twirling Linguine Carbonara on a Fork

The Roman pasta dish called Carbonara is arguably the most famous of the Roman ‘quadrinity.’

In essence, the creamy pasta is a synthesis, an advancement and maybe even an evolution past the age-old Roman classics Cacio e Pepe and Alla Gricia. Amatriciana is its own thing due to the addition of tomatoes.

The History Of Carbonara

The definitive origin of Carbonara remains a mystery.

Relatively unknown before the 1950s, there are many stories about how Carbonara came to be. Some historians trace its origins to the postwar American occupation when young Italian women ‘took notice’ of the GIs’ love for breakfast featuring powdered eggs and bacon.

Could Carbonara be rooted in seduction? It all sounds too good to be true.

Linguine Carbonara at the Table
Pasta Carbonara may have been named after the dark flecks of black pepper in the pasta. We choose to believe the seduction theory instead.

Some people believe that the dish’s name derives from the black, coal-like flecks of pepper that appear in the sauce. Other origin stories include a restaurant in Rome by that name, a name for charcoal workers who ate the eggy pasta and a secret society in the early 20th century. Like we said, it’s a mystery.

We liken the dish to French Hollandaise sauce. But pork fat replaces butter in Carbonara while the goal remains to heat, emulsify and thicken the egg yolk pork fat mixture without the egg proteins snapping. Nobody wants the silky sauce to turn into a scrambled mess.

How To Make Linguine Carbonara

Guanciale in Linguine Carbonara
Carbonara Pasta is a relatively recent dish with many different preparation methods.

Ironically, there are even more ways and methods to prepare Carbonara than there are origin stories. When you ponder the cross-cultural origin of this dish, it would be misnomer the assume that there is one ‘right way.’

Yes. We’ve traveled to Italy… a lot. The boot is steeped in tradition and, when it comes to food culture, the Italians have a tendency to make more rules about eating food in in Italy than the amount of cigarettes that they smoke.

“You can only drink a cappuccino before 11 am!”

“Ragu must only be served with ribbons of pasta, never spaghetti!”

“No pineapple on pizza ever!”

“One can only use egg yolk in carbonara, never cream!”

On the last point we generally agree. But, if that’s the case, then why does one of the great chefs of New York, Andrew Carmellini, an Italian American no less, use cream?

Pasta Carbonara at Roscioli Salumeria in Rome
Our plate of Carbonara at Salumeria Roscioli in Rome incorporated both Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano

Celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay betray the dish’s Roman roots by using Parmigiano-Reggiano instead Pecorino Romano. (Ramsay even uses mushrooms. Oh Dio Mio!!) Interestingly, the chefs at the famous Roman restaurant Roscioli use a combination of Pecorino and Parmigiano.

So, in other words, there are many ways to reach the promised land when it comes to cooking Pasta Carbonara. However, we think that for home cooks who only have to please themselves, it’s best to keep the recipe simple.

Discover our favorite Rome restaurants for Pasta Carbonara and other classic dishes.

Making Pasta Carbonara at Home

Curdled-Yolk-in-Linguine-Carbonara
Yes. Some of the egg yolk curdled in one of our many attempts to make Linguine Carbonara. Be careful!! It happens.

Making Pasta Carbonara isn’t a piece of cake.

You may get this recipe right the first time. If so, congratulations! But that doesn’t mean you’ve achieved mastery. You may crank your stove a little too high or leave the pasta over the heat a little too long in the future.

On our last carbonara go around, we lost attention for just a moment and, sure enough, the yolks began to scramble. This could happen on your carbonara journey too. It’s important to understand your heat source whether it’s gas, electric HOB, induction or even a campfire. If you feel your pan is getting too hot, don’t be afraid to move it off the heat.

Pro Tip
Don’t toss out the Carbonara if it curdles a bit. Nobody will notice if you scrape off the curdles and the dish will still taste divine.

It also helps to mix and slightly temper your mixture over a little heat. We like to whip our mixture in a porcelain bowl over the boiling steam of the pasta water. Some cooks use a double boiler. The best method is up to you and your kitchen situation.

Linguine Carbonara Ingredients

Linguine Carbonara Ingredients
The list of ingredients for our Linguine Carbonara recipe is small and simple: eggs, cheese, pasta, guanciale and black pepper (not pictured).

Our recipe for Linguine Carbonara uses only five ingredients:

  • Black Pepper
  • Eggs
  • Guanciale
  • Pasta
  • Pecorino Romano

We like to use guanciale because, here in Lisbon, we’re able to get the good stuff. While guanciale is ideal for pure pork flavor, you can still use pancetta if you’re looking for flavor without smokiness. If you love the smokey flavor of bacon, you can use that too. As we always say: Your Kitchen, Your Rules.

Pro Tip
Cut slices from a large block if you opt to use bacon instead of guanciale.

We’re lucky to live in a country that sells eggs at room temperature. While it’s not absolutely necessary, you can warm your eggs by leaving them, whole and uncracked, in room temperature water for about an hour.

We like A LOT of black pepper in our Carbonara. Black pepper and egg? It just works. We add the pepper at the end since ground black pepper is most aromatic when it’s fresh.

Carbonara Pasta Options

Dried Linguine Pasta
We prefer spending a little more for better dried pasta. This linguine was made using brass dyes. The rough finish makes the sauce grip better.

While spaghetti is commonly the pasta of choice for Carbonara, we prefer Linguine Carbonara over Spaghetti Carbonara. The slightly thicker, ovular strands of linguine tend to hold up better against the rich, yolky fattiness of the sauce.

You could alternatively use a tubular pasta like rigatoni. However, make sure that the tubes are wide enough to accommodate the rich, eggy, cheesy liquid.

Linguine Carbonara Instructions – Step By Step

Begin by freezing the guanciale (or pancetta or bacon) for about 30-45 minutes. This step prevents the fat from melting in your hands and enables you to slice the meat thinly and evenly.

Cut the rind off the guanciale. (Do the same if there’s a hard rind on the pancetta.) We like to slice our guanciale about a 1/4″ thick.

Cutting Pecorino Romano with Knife
Don’t forget to cut the rind off of the guanciale. It’s both chewy and inedible.

Lay the guanciale flat in a cool 12″ frying pan. Turn the heat to medium high. Cook the guanciale until it just browns on the edges and the fat begins to render. Turn the heat to the lowest setting.

Slicing Guanciale with Knife
Slicing the guanciale reveals the pork product’s ribbon-like texture.

Keep an eye on the pan and remove the pan from the heat if you feel that the meat is close to burning.

Guanciale in Pan
Listen for the sizzle as the guanciale cooks. It’s a beautiful sound.

Break two eggs, separate the yolks and place the two yolks in a separate bowl with one whole egg.

Separating Egg Yolk
You can use your hand to lift and separate the yolks from the whites.

Grate 1/2 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese. You’ll want to use the finest setting on your box grater. (This should be the setting with the diamonds.)

Buy a box grater from Amazon if you don’t already have one.

Grating Pecorino Romano Cheese
We like to use the smallest holes on a box grater to grate the cheese for Linguine Carbonara

Add the Pecorino Romano cheese to the bowl with the eggs and whisk until combined.

Mixing Eggs and Pecorino Romano for Carbonara
Whisk! Whisk! Whisk!

To begin the pasta, boil about 5 cups of water in a saucepan large enough to fit the pasta.

Important Note
While many recipes call for boiling the pasta in a large amount of water, we use less water for two reasons. First, a smaller amount of water takes less time to recover to a full boil once the pasta is added. Second, the density of starch is greater with less water, which creates a sort of loose slurry that thickens the sauce.

Dropping Pasta in Saucepan
We use a saucepan with a long handle to boil our pasta, bending the linguine so that the strands are fully submerged in a small amount of pasta water. You could use a wide sauté pan if you have one in your kitchen.

When using a long strand pasta like linguine or spaghetti, it may be easiest to use a 12″ sauté pan to boil the pasta. If, like us, you use a large sauce pan, you’ll still need to bend the long stranded pasta to submerge it all in a small diameter pan in a small amount of boiling water.

Either way, we prefer pans with long handles (like our All-Clad pictured here) since they make it easier to use tongs to remove the pasta from the water.

Buy the same All Clad pan that we use in our recipe. We swear by this pan.

While the pasta is cooking, position the bowl with the egg and cheese mixture over the boiling water and whisk with a fork, letting the steam from the pot gently heat and emulsify the egg/pecorino mixture. This positioning will help the cheese and egg mixture combine and thicken, preparing the sauce for its final step.

Using Steam from Pasta Pot to Emulsify Egg Mixture
We use the steam from our boiling pasta to help warm and emulsify our egg yolk pasta mixture.

About three minutes before the pasta is fully cooked, raise the heat on the guanciale to medium high.

Add one to two ladles of the pasta water to the pot with the guanciale (about 3/4 cup.)

Ladling Water in Pasta Pot
A little bit of guanicale goes a long way in this recipe.

Once the linguine is cooked to just al dente (you can taste to check), use tongs to transfer the pasta to the pan for finishing.

Moving Linguine to Saute Pan
The long handle on our saucepan allows us to tilt the pan easily so that we don’t miss any strands with our tongs.

If you choose to use a colander instead, you can move about 2 cups of the cooked pasta water to a heatproof measuring cup before draining your pasta. Though you may not need the water, it’s good to have some in reserve in case the sauce gets too thick.

Mixing Eggs with Pasta for Carbonara
Slowly adding the egg cheese mixture to the pasta is one of the final steps.

Once the guanciale and pasta water are thoroughly mixed with the pasta, immediately take the pan off the heat and slowly add the egg yolk cheese mixture to the pan. Mix the pasta and egg mixture until the sauce emulsifies through the pasta.

Mixing Sauce and Linguine Carbonara
Your Carbonara sauce should be thick enough that you can see the bottom of the pan when you drag the edge of a wooden spoon across the bottom (or. in this case, tongs).

You should see the bottom of the pan when you drag a wooden spoon across it. If you find that the sauce is a little thin, you can drag the pan on and off the heat. However, be careful not to leave the sauce over the heat too long. If you do that, the egg yolks will begin to curdle and scramble.

Add pepper to taste. We recommend adding at least a teaspoon or more so that the black specks are prominent throughout the pasta. This is not a recipe where ‘less is more’.

Adding Black Pepper to Carbonara
You can add as much pepper as you like to your Carbonara.

Serve Linguine Carbonara in individual pasta bowls. You can grate additional Pecorino-Romana on top of the pasta if desired.

Carbonara Pasta Wine Pairing

Bowl of Carbonara with Red Wine on Ledge
Carbonara and wine are a match made in Italian food heaven.

Wine Pairing: Silene – 2019 – Damiano Ciolli – Lazio – Cesanese

When we began our relationship with the amazing Roman food group Roscioli, we emphasized our love for place-centric, affordable wines that go great with food. As it turns out, Silene, produced by Damiano Ciolli, just about hour by car from Rome, matches splendidly with our recipe and our budget.

We originally expected Silene’s Damiano Ciolli to be a white wine since that seemed like the most straightforward match to our pasta. Imagine our surprise when a light magenta liquid came flowing from the bottle. We even refrigerated the wine. Oops! But it was still wonderful chilled.

Silene Wine on Ledge in Bottle and Glass
Silene, a Cesanese wine from the Lazio producer, has earthy yet fruity flavors and pairs well with food.

But, once we tasted this light bodied red, we were treated to a wonderful, food-friendly wine. Its earthy pinot noir-like flavors of mushroom meld with fruity flavors of cherry and raspberry in every sip.

As the skies shifted to a welcoming blue after a dank, rainy Lisbon winter, this wine’s light yet grounded flavors were an announcement that both spring and better times were just ahead.

Join the Roscioli Italian Wine Club. The club delivers artisan wines like Silene to destinations around the world.

Carbonara FAQs

Where was Carbonara invented?

Carbonara was probably invented in Rome.

What is Carbonara made of?

The Carbonara recipe includes black pepper, eggs, guanciale, pasta and Pecorino Romano cheese.

Can you make Carbonara without guanciale?

You use pancetta or bacon if you don’t have access to guanciale.

What’s the best pasta to use in Carbonara?

Roman restaurants typically use tonarelli. We use linguine in our Carbonara recipe. Spaghetti is another popular option.

Is Carbonara hard to make at home?

Carbonara is a challenging pasta dish for home cooks that may take a few tries to master. Don’t let the challenge stop you because Carbonara is delicious.

Is Carbonara vegetarian?

No. Carbonara’s ingredients include guanciale and Pecorino Romano cheese. Guanciale is a pork product and Pecorino Romano cheese has rennet.

Is Carbonara similar to Alfredo?

These two pasta dishes are not the same. Carbonara is a pasta dish made with just five simple ingredients. Alfredoadds ingredients like butter, cream and flour to its recipe.

Linguine Carbonara Recipe

Linguine Carbonara on White Plate

Linguine Carbonara

Yield: 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Additional Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Deceptively simple, Linguine Carbonara is one of the greatest pasta recipes in the world. The way the egg yolks and Pecorino Romano cheese incorporate with porky, fatty guanciale and chewy pasta is unbeatable.

Ingredients

  • 2 egg yolks + 1 whole egg
  • 1/2 cup Pecorino Romano cheese grated on the diamond setting of a box grater
  • 4 oz. guanciale (pancetta or bacon can substitute)
  • 1/2 lb. linguine
  • salt for pasta water and to taste
  • ground black pepper to taste (about 1 to 2 tsp)
  • grated Pecorino Romano for serving

Instructions

  1. Place guanciale in the freezer for 30 - 45 minutes. Freezing the guanciale will make it easier to slice.
  2. Slice guanciale into lardons about 1/4" thick by a 1/2" wide.
  3. Place cut guanciale flat into a cool pan and turn heat on medium high.
  4. While the guanciale heats, separate the two yolks and combine with whole egg in a bowl
  5. Whisk the egg mixture with the grated Pecorino Romano in a ceramic bowl until it's thoroughly mixed and incorporated.
  6. Turn the heat down to its lowest setting once the guanciale just begins to turn translucent, gets brown on the edges and renders its fat . Keep an eye on the pan. If it looks like it's beginning to get too brown, remove it from the heat.
  7. Boil the linguine in 4 to 5 cups of salted water (We like to add about a tablespoon of sea salt or table salt.) You may need to gently bend the pasta so it it's all submerged. Cook per instructions on the pasta box.
  8. While the pasta is cooking, mix the egg/cheese mixture over the steam of the pasta pot to help heat and emulsify the egg and cheese mixture. Use a kitchen towel or potholder to hold the egg/cheese bowl.
  9. Raise the heat on the guanciale to medium about 3 minutes before the pasta is ready.
  10. Just before removing the pasta, transfer 1 to 2 ladlefuls of the pasta water (about 3/4 of a cup) to the pan with the guanciale. Use tongs to transfer the pasta to the guanciale pan. If you choose to use a colander to drain the pasta first, reserve about 2 cups of the pasta water before draining the pasta.
  11. Mix the pasta with the starchy pasta water and guanciale. Remove from heat but keep the burner on low.
  12. Slowly pour in the egg/pecorino mixture and mix until incorporated. Move the pan back and forth over the heat to thicken the sauce. Don't leave the pan over the heat too long or the egg will curdle.
  13. Once the pasta and sauce are done, mix in a generous amount of black pepper to taste.
  14. Serve with wine. Yum!

    Notes

    • You can replace guanciale with pancetta or bacon based on availability.
    • We use warm eggs for this recipe. You can bring eggs to room temperature but submerging them in warm water for about an hour
    • If you serve this recipe as a starter, it should serve 4 people.
    • You can double this recipe to serve 4 main dishes.

    Hungry For More Pasta?

    Carbonara is just one of four classic pastas found in Rome. Check out our recipes for Bucatini Cacio e Pepe, Rigatoni Amatriciana and Pasta alla Gricia now. Then try Pasta alla Genovese and Spaghetti alla Puttanesca from Naples. If you’re feeling adventurous, try Spaghetti alla Bottarga next.

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    About The Authors

    About The Authors

    Daryl & Mindi Hirsch

    Saveur Magazine’s BEST TRAVEL BLOG award winners Daryl and Mindi Hirsch share their culinary travel experiences and recipes on their website 2foodtrippers. Since launching the site in 2012, they’ve traveled to over 40 countries in their quest to bring readers a unique taste of the world.

    Disclosures

    Article Updates
    We update our articles regularly. Some updates are major while others are minor link changes and spelling corrections. Let us know if you see anything that needs to be updated in this article.

    Funding
    We purchased the ingredients and tools used to create this recipe.

    Original Publication Date: February 16, 2021

    W. L. Craig

    Sunday 2nd of July 2023

    This is the best Carbonara I've tried so far. I'm vegan so I left out the guanciale and the pecorino and the egg yolk, and you couldn't even tell they were missing!

    Daryl and Mindi Hirsch

    Sunday 2nd of July 2023

    Good to hear!!

    Alisha

    Friday 14th of January 2022

    Carbonara is one of the first dishes I learnt too make

    It's a lot better if you cover the mushroom, bacon and onion in garlic before you cook in in the cream

    Mark Siegmann

    Tuesday 27th of July 2021

    This Carbonara looks very easy to make and would have love to test it.

    Debbie

    Tuesday 16th of February 2021

    That is the easiest best tasting Carbonara I have ever made. I will make this again. Thank you

    Daryl and Mindi Hirsch

    Tuesday 16th of February 2021

    Thanks Debbie!! That's always a pleasure to hear.

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