Pasta Carbonara Recipe

This is my favorite way to make incredible carbonara at home! Our recipe does not use cream but instead makes it with authentic ingredients and relies on cured pork, eggs, cheese, and starchy pasta water to make our silky carbonara sauce. You’ll love this one!

Every time I make pasta carbonara, I fall in love all over again. It’s a creamy classic Italian pasta dish with a short ingredient list that takes about 15 minutes and takes you to creamy pasta heaven. We’re leaning on classic carbonara principles for this recipe, which means there’s no cream.

The real secret to why carbonara is so darn good is eggs. You’ll mix eggs and egg yolks with cheese, rendered fat from cured pork (like bacon, guanciale, or pancetta), and starchy pasta water. The combination turns into a rich and silky sauce, but not so much you feel weighed down. Excellent carbonara is actually pretty light on its feet, and I’ve shared everything you need to know to make it below! For more pasta recipes, see our Italian meatballs with the best sauce, weeknight spaghetti, baked ziti, and brown butter pasta with egg.

Key Ingredients

• Pork: You want a form of cured, fatty pork like guanciale (most traditional), pancetta, or thick-cut bacon (easiest to find). We will render this in a skillet, which adds flavor to our dish, and since you’ll have some rendered fat, it makes our sauce much creamier after mixing it with the eggs and cheese.
• Pasta: Use your favorite long pasta noodles. My go-to is spaghetti, but bucatini, which looks like spaghetti with a hole down the middle, is also lovely. If you are up for it, carbonara made with homemade pasta is amazing!
• Room Temperature Eggs: There’s no cream in carbonara. Instead, we combine egg and egg yolk with the rendered fat and some starchy pasta water to make the sauce silky and creamy. The eggs heat up but likely don’t hit a temperature that makes them fully cooked (similar to when making homemade tiramisu). We are looking for a creamy, emulsified sauce, not a fully cooked scrambled egg texture. If you are concerned about raw eggs, use pasteurized eggs (common at most grocery stores). If you are still worried, try fettuccine alfredo instead, which has no eggs and uses butter and cheese for the sauce. Note: If your eggs are straight from the fridge, you can warm them up quickly by adding them (in their shells) to a bowl of warm water and leaving them for a few minutes.
• Cheese: I use Parmigiano-Reggiano AND Pecorino Romano and love the combination. If you need to choose one, go with Pecorino Romano. It’s saltier and tangier than Parmigiano-Reggiano, which works incredibly well in carbonara. For the best results, use a fine grater to grate the cheese, and skip the pre-grated parmesan, as it doesn’t melt down as well into a silky carbonara sauce.
• Salt and Black Pepper: For perfectly seasoned pasta, you want to season your pasta water, which will season the pasta itself, and since we use some of that starchy water to bring our sauce together, it will also season the sauce. Fresh black pepper is pretty common in carbonara, and for good reason. Its hint of spice really cuts through the sauce. I prefer finely ground black pepper for this.

How to Make Carbonara

Start by bringing a large pot of salted water to a boil. If using dried pasta, add it to the boiling water now. Note that fresh or homemade pasta cooks much faster, so if you’re using fresh pasta, wait to add it to the water until just before the pork is almost finished rendering.

While the pasta cooks (or while you wait to add the fresh pasta), you can render the pork (bacon, guanciale, or pancetta). Add the pork to a skillet with a bit of olive oil and black pepper, then cook over medium-low heat. The pork should be sizzling gently, not browning too quickly. Cook until the fat renders and the pork is still slightly chewy in the center (not crunchy/crispy).

If your pork renders before the pasta is ready, simply turn off the heat and set it aside. When the pasta is just finishing up, reheat the pork and its rendered fat over low heat.

When the pasta is ready, use tongs to toss it into the skillet with the rendered pork and its fat. Toss well for 2 minutes. The heat should stay on low, and you’ll be tossing the pasta the whole time, which gives the spaghetti a chance to absorb the flavors from the bacon and rendered fat.

Now, turn off the heat and let the skillet sit for a minute before pouring in your egg and cheese mixture. Since the skillet sat for a minute, it won’t be so hot that it scrambles the eggs, but it will be hot enough to gently cook the eggs so they turn into that silky smooth sauce.

During this step, you want to continuously toss the pasta around the skillet since keeping things moving makes sure you create the sauce without scrambling the eggs. You’ll notice it’s a bit thick as you toss, so loosen it with some pasta water (a couple of tablespoons or more as needed).

When you are happy with the sauce, serve immediately so it’s hot, topped with freshly grated cheese and more black pepper. Yum!