How to cook pasta carbonara at home. How to cook carbonara with ham and mushrooms

08.03.2024

A great way to diversify your boring home menu is to prepare a popular Italian dish - Alla carbonara (carbonara pasta). If you cook according to the original recipe, you will need spaghetti and salted but not smoked pork cheek, guanciale, cut into pieces. In the domestic adaptation, it is customary to replace this ingredient with any type of bacon found in the store.

This dish appeared relatively recently. Historians say that when Allied forces entered war-torn Rome in 1944, they brought with them a lot of dried pork as humanitarian aid. Around that time, carbonara pasta became a favorite popular dish. It was first seen in a cookbook in 1957.

Carbonara pasta with bacon and cream - classic recipe with photo

This delicious dish is ideal for a romantic dinner or a festive lunch with friends. To master this recipe, you will need the most common set of products. The secret lies in the delicate creamy egg sauce, which comes to readiness from the heat of just cooked pasta.

Cooking time: 1 hour 0 minutes

Quantity: 4 servings

Ingredients

Durum wheat spaghetti: 500 grams
Brisket or bacon: 300 grams
Aged hard cheese: 200 grams
Cream fat content from 20%: 100 ml
Yolks: 4 pcs
Parsley: 1 bunch

Cooking instructions

All ingredients have been collected, let's start cooking!

Cut the brisket into thin oblong pieces. Try to grind it thoroughly. The brisket pieces should be approximately the same size, otherwise they will not be distributed evenly in the pasta.

Place the chopped brisket in a frying pan and add a little vegetable oil. Heat the brisket over low heat without burning. It should just brown slightly. If you use bacon, you don't need to add oil.

Carefully chop a bunch of parsley. When the brisket is lightly browned, add the chopped herbs and stir.

Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool on the stove.

Only egg yolks are used to prepare the sauce. Carefully separate them from the proteins and place in a deep container. Lightly beat the yolks with a whisk.

Gradually pour in the cream. Lightly salt. If desired, you can add a pinch of black pepper.

Grate the hard cheese on a coarse grater and add to the sauce. Mix gently with a whisk. The sauce is almost ready. All that remains is to combine it with the spaghetti until it is ready.

Lastly, cook the pasta. To prepare them, follow the recommendations indicated on the package. Drain the spaghetti in a colander and return to the pan. Don't try to prepare them ahead of time. They must be hot.

Add the fried brisket to the spaghetti and stir lightly. You can use two forks for this.

Quickly pour in the prepared sauce and stir vigorously. Within a few seconds, the yolks will thicken and the cheese will melt, enveloping the pasta.

Serve the pasta immediately without letting it cool.

How to cook carbonara with ham?

Required ingredients:

0.5 kg spaghetti;
0.2-0.3 kg of ham;
70 g parmesan or equivalent;
½ cup warmed heavy cream;
4 yolks;
2-3 garlic cloves;
a bunch of greenery;
40 ml sunflower oil;
sugar and salt to taste.

The process of preparing carbonara pasta adapted to domestic realities:

Chop the garlic and cut the ham into thin strips.
Fry the garlic in oil (sunflower or olive), add ham pieces to it, fry until the fat is rendered out.
Boil a pack of spaghetti, try not to cook it a little.
While the pasta is cooking, we can make the sauce. To do this, mix the yolks with cream, salt, spices and grated cheese.
Combine it with boiled spaghetti. Place the resulting mixture in heated plates, place the ham on top and sprinkle with herbs.

Variation of a dish with mushrooms

Required Products:

a pack of spaghetti (400-500 g);
0.25 kg bacon;
0.15 kg of hard cheese;
0.32 l cream;
40 ml sunflower oil;
salt, spices.

Steps for preparing mushroom paste:

Wash the mushrooms thoroughly. Using a knife, remove dark spots, cut the mushrooms into slices lengthwise, so they will look more appetizing when finished.
Rinse the bacon, dry it with a paper towel, and cut it into thin strips or cubes.
Grate the cheese on a fine grater.
Boil the spaghetti, trying to remove it from the heat a little undercooked.
Fry the bacon in oil until golden brown, add champignons to it, continue frying until all the liquid released from the food has evaporated. Pour in the cream, bring it to a boil, season, add cheese and reduce the heat. Continue stirring until it melts.
Pour the prepared pasta into the sauce, mix thoroughly, and cover with a lid for a couple of minutes.
Serve the pasta while still hot, chopped with herbs.

Pasta carbonara with chicken

You'll need:

a pack of spaghetti;
1 chicken breast;
1 onion;
1 garlic clove;
2 tbsp. heavy cream;
40 ml melted butter;
0.1 kg parmesan;
4 eggs;
dried herbs, salt.

Steps for preparing delicious and satisfying chicken carbonara:

Cook spaghetti. We throw them into a colander.
Cut the bacon into squares and fry it in a dry frying pan until an appetizing crust forms. Transfer the fried bacon to a paper napkin to remove excess fat.
Separate the chicken breast from the skin, fat and bones. Boil the meat.
Place the boiled chicken on a board, and after cooling, cut into arbitrary small pieces.
Chop the peeled onion and pass the garlic through a press.
To prepare the sauce, grate the cheese on a fine grater. We wash the eggs under running water, wipe them, carefully break them and separate them into white and yolk. We only need the latter, combine them with cheese, cream, dried herbs, and beat until smooth.
In the frying pan in which the bacon was previously fried, add butter, previously prepared onions and garlic (you can add any other vegetables - zucchini, leeks, celery, etc.). Fry until translucent, add chicken and bacon, continue frying for a few more minutes.
In a frying pan, combine all the ingredients, mix, and simmer for about 5 minutes. The dish is ready to serve.

Multicooker recipe

Take:

0.3 kg brisket;
3 garlic cloves;
1 ½ tbsp. heavy cream;
½ pack of pasta;
50 ml ketchup or tomato paste;
0.15 kg of Parmesan or its equivalent;
salt, spices.

The procedure for preparing Italian deliciousness in a slow cooker:

Fry the brisket cut into strips in the “Baking” mode for about a quarter of an hour. At the same time, we do without oil.
Add garlic passed through a press to the meat and continue frying for a few more minutes. We try not to lose consciousness from the amazingly appetizing aroma.
Pour cream and ketchup into the meat, crush with spices, add table salt. Let it simmer while baking and continue until the sauce begins to thicken. When this happens, you can put finely grated cheese into it and mix thoroughly.
We lay out the spaghetti, which we first break in half.
Pour hot water so that it covers the surface of the pasta.
Cook on Pilaf with the lid open.
After the beep, mix well again.
Serve the pasta while it is still hot, sprinkle with herbs and cheese.

Spaghetti Carbonara is one of the most common dishes in Italy. Simple, satisfying, incredibly tasty due to the thick sauce with a rich taste and aroma, pasta carbonara is loved in all Italian corners, and therefore is it any wonder that the authorship of this dish is attributed to themselves in different regions of Italy? We will tell you what the real Italian dish pasta alla carbonara is, how it was born, what variations it currently has, and how to prepare pasta carbonara in a regular kitchen.

Pasta carbonara recipe with bacon and cream is a popular and widespread recipe not only in Italy, but also in Russia. In fact, what could be tastier than fried bacon flavored with fresh cream and cheese? But this is a real historical recipe, which was invented by the founders of the dish - free coal miners in Italy, who mined carbone (it.) - charcoal, and therefore were forced to spend most of their lives in the forests. They came up with food for themselves from pieces of smoked lard and brisket, pasta that was stored for a long time and did not spoil, as well as sheep’s cheese. Cubes of meat fried in a cauldron, pasta cooked in the same place and grated cheese made up this simple food that has survived to this day.

So, to prepare pasta carbonara, we need:

350 g pasta;
2 tbsp. l. cream;
4 eggs;
2 tbsp. l. oils;
a pinch of fresh black pepper and ground nutmeg;
salt;
a couple of cloves of garlic;
100 g bacon, cut into strips;
Parmesan cheese - optional.

Important! This is a recipe for real Italian pasta, so to maintain its authenticity, only olive oil and durum wheat pasta are used. Don't forget the nutmeg. We are used to using Parmesan, which is listed below, but the Italians prepare carbonara with Pecorino cheese.

Let's get started:

Pour water into the pan, add salt and cook the pasta according to all the rules.
While they are cooking, fry the garlic in a non-stick frying pan with a tablespoon of oil.
Add diced bacon to it.
Fry it for no more than a couple of minutes so that the pieces do not have time to harden.
Shake the spices separately in a bowl, add cream and stir. Set aside for now. Tip: For those who love spaghetti sauce, you can increase the amount of cream.
Drain the water from the pasta, place the pasta in a frying pan with the bacon and garlic and warm everything together a little.
Pour the mixture of eggs and cream on top and stir quickly. Heat a little more until the pasta and sauce are completely combined and the eggs begin to thicken a little, but do not curdle from the hot pasta.
Grate parmesan cheese over pasta, if desired.

Replace bacon with ham

Bacon can be replaced partially or completely with ham. It will also turn out very good, especially if you don’t skimp on the cream.

You will need:

half a liter of 10 percent cream;
500 g pasta;
300 g cheese (Parmesan or sheep);
300 g ham;
200 g bacon (or the same volume of ham);
salt, pepper, and other spices to taste;
3 eggs;
spoon of olive oil.

Your actions:

Boil pasta in salted water - feathers, “spirals”, spaghetti. You don't have to cook the pasta until it's fully cooked - it should be a little firm - as the Italians say, al dente.
Meanwhile, pour a little olive oil into a preheated frying pan and fry the ham and bacon cut into strips or cubes.
Beat a little salt with eggs and seasonings, but not until fluffy, but so that it is even, add cream. Grate the cheese and add half of it to the mixture. Mix.
Throw away the pasta and quickly place it in the frying pan with the meat products. Stir, pour in the mixed cream and eggs. Gently mix everything again so that the sauce completely covers the pasta.
Place into serving bowls, sprinkling the other half of the cheese on top. Arugula leaves go well together.

Spaghetti carbonara with chicken

In this recipe, chicken fillet (200 g) is salted, it replaces bacon and requires the use of garlic in cooking.

For 300 g of pasta you need:

half a glass of cream;
3 eggs;
a couple of cloves of garlic;
3 tbsp. l. olive oil;
50 g parmesan or other hard cheese;
salt, ground pepper, basil.

Let's prepare it like this:

Fry small pieces of fillet in oil until tender.
Add finely chopped garlic to the pan and fry for a couple of minutes.
Add salt and cream without turning up the heat so that the cream does not curdle.
Boil the pasta separately, adding salt and a little vegetable oil to the water.
For the sauce, salt and pepper the beaten eggs, add grated cheese and basil.
We discard the finished pasta, put it in a frying pan, heat it up and fill it with the egg-cream mixture.
After heating for several minutes on the lowest heat, serve hot, sprinkling ground pepper on top.

Supplement the recipe with mushrooms

If you have some mushrooms in the house, you can enrich the recipe for carbonara with bacon. To do this, take 200 g of spaghetti pasta, mushrooms, cream, a couple of eggs, 100 cheese and bacon, a little pepper and salt and a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Boil the pasta.
Lightly fry mushrooms and meat products in oil.
Beat the egg-cream mixture, season it with cheese and spices and heat through without allowing the eggs to coagulate.
Combine everything with pasta.
When serving, sprinkle with fine cheese shavings.

Italians often add dry white wine instead of cream, which makes the sauce even more piquant. To preserve the creamy taste, you can add a little milk in the absence of cream.
Another version of the sauce was suggested by the famous chef Jamie Oliver. He insists on using dry-cured pork jowl, which is low in meat and high in fat, instead of bacon. This fat should be rendered by placing small pieces of lard in a cold frying pan. This way it will melt faster. Next, a large clove of crushed garlic is added to the frying at the same time (it will give off its aroma and will need to be removed later). We enrich the taste with freshly ground pepper. And now the main thing about this sauce: no cream! The fire is extinguished under the frying pan, and we add the pasta to it along with the remaining water in which it was boiled. This is important - fat and water become an emulsion! Eggs beaten with cheese and salt are added to it and mixed again with pasta. If necessary, add a little more pasta water and heat through, preventing the yolks from curdling. The result is a delicious sauce that is in no way inferior to creamy sauce!

This famous Italian dish has long been loved by many, but how to cook it at home? It's actually not difficult. The main thing is to know the basic principles of cooking pasta. Carbonara consists of three parts. The first one is noodles. It needs to be cooked until al dente. The second is the sauce. It is created on the basis of cream. Third is the filling. It's not at all necessary, but it tastes better and you can add a wide variety of foods. So, we have learned three basic principles. Let's cook!

The simplest option

You need to prepare the following products:

cream >20%;
soft raw (150–200 g);
egg yolk (2);
spices (pepper, salt, etc.).

This recipe is very quick and easy to prepare. Let the pasta cook until it’s “to the bite”. At the same time, mix the cream, cheese and yolks into a more or less homogeneous mass. Next, move the spaghetti into the frying pan, pour in the sauce and place on low heat. Add your favorite spices and stir until the mixture thickens a little. Bon appetit!

Classic carbonara pasta with cream

In this recipe, the list of ingredients is somewhat expanded:

package of spaghetti (400–500 g);
a pack of bacon;
onion or white (1);
garlic (clove);
cream >20%;
soft cheese (200 g);
egg yolk (4);
oil for frying (optional);
spices.

Let's start cooking. To make cooking more enjoyable, let’s first prepare all the ingredients. We cut the bacon into manageable pieces, cut the onion and garlic into small cubes, and grate the raw bacon. Set aside half the pork and cheese separately.

Now, attention. If your bacon is fatty enough, you can render the fat from it and fry the onions and garlic in it. If it is almost entirely made of meat, then fry all the ingredients in butter with the addition of olive or sunflower oil. Also fry the reserved part. Mix cream, half the cheese and eggs, salt and pepper. Do not boil the pasta completely. Then we drain them in a colander and pour them into the frying pan. Mix with filling and sauce, heat while stirring.

When serving, decorate the dish with products prepared in advance. It turns out delicious and beautiful.

Recipe for exotic pasta carbonara “with sea reptiles”

The composition of the food increases:

a pack of spaghetti (400–500 g);
bacon packaging;
bulb (1);
garlic (2-3 cloves);
cream >20%;
soft raw (200 g);
egg yolk (2);
“sea reptiles” (shrimp, mussels, octopus, squid, scallops, etc.);
olive and butter;
spices.

Along with the composition, the complexity of preparing the paste also increases. But we will still try to cook it. First, chop the onion, garlic and bacon. Fry this mixture until light golden and pleasantly aroma. At the very end of frying, add butter.

Let's grate the cheese. Add olive oil and eggs to it, mix until it forms a mousse. Pour the cream into a saucepan and add the cheese mixture. Stir until the cheese is completely dissolved.

Boil water. We put spaghetti in it. Cook, drain in a colander. Mix with the resulting sauce. Add the fried part of the dish. Mix everything well, add spices.

Let's take our sea creatures. I usually go straight for the seafood mix. Place the frozen mixture into boiling water. We are waiting for it to boil again. After this, cook for another one and a half to two minutes.

Now let's assemble our masterpiece! Place the pasta on a plate and decorate with shrimp, scallops, mussels or any other sea animals. If desired, you can sprinkle herbs on top. Among the three carbonara pasta recipes, this one is the most delicious and interesting.

So, now you can make carbonara at home. Perhaps someone will say that the recipes are not authentic enough, but at home it is impossible to achieve full compliance with the original recipe, and a truly correct recipe no longer exists. The main thing is that this carbonara is tasty, filling and reminiscent of Italy.

Pasta carbonara with cream is a popular Italian dish that has won worldwide love. The recipe for spaghetti in carbonara sauce has many different variations. We will look at several varieties of this dish with you and hope that you will choose the most suitable one for yourself!

Recipe for carbonara sauce with cream

Traditionally, this delicate, creamy sauce is prepared specifically for pasta, which bears the exact same name.

Ingredients:

bacon – 350 g;
egg – 4 pcs.;
garlic – 2 cloves;
cream – 1 tbsp;
Parmesan cheese – 100 g.

Preparation

Let's figure out how to cook with cream. So, first we peel the garlic, finely chop it and fry it in olive oil for 1 minute. Then add chopped bacon into small cubes into the pan and fry everything together for another 3 or 5 minutes. After this, carefully separate the egg yolks from the whites and beat them together with the cream. Pour the resulting mixture into a saucepan, add bacon there and heat slightly over low heat. At the end of cooking, add grated cheese and mix. Serve the finished carbonara sauce with cream immediately after cooking, generously pouring it over the freshly cooked spaghetti.

Classic recipe for carbonara with cream

Ingredients:

pasta – 200 g;
bacon – 150 g;
egg – 2 pcs.;
cream – 150 ml;
Parmesan cheese - 200 g;
garlic – 1 clove;
green basil;
salt, nutmeg, pepper - to taste.

Preparation

So, prepare the sauce in parallel. To prepare the sauce, fry the chopped garlic and pieces of bacon thoroughly in olive oil. In a separate bowl, mix eggs, chilled cream, grated cheese, ground black pepper, nutmeg and finely chopped basil. Lightly beat everything with a whisk or fork. Carefully place the pasta cooked in salted water into a frying pan with fried bacon, pour the resulting sauce on top and turn off the heat. Mix everything thoroughly, add a little water in which the pasta was cooked and close the lid for 15 minutes. That's all, carbonara pasta with cream is ready. Place the dish on heated plates and serve.

Homemade carbonara pasta

Ingredients:

spaghetti – 1 package;
pancetta – 250 g;
egg – 3 pcs.;
olive oil – 2 tbsp. spoons;
Pecorino cheese - 100 g;
salt, black pepper - to taste.

Preparation

We offer another way to prepare carbonara pasta with cream. Turn on the heat, place a large saucepan, pour in water and wait until it boils. During this time, chop the pancetta bacon and lightly fry it in olive oil, and then transfer it to a bowl. Add eggs, grated cheese, a little water, salt and pepper to taste, mix well. Throw the spaghetti into boiling water and cook for about 15 minutes. After this, add hot pasta to the sauce and mix thoroughly again. That's all, pasta carbonara with cream and bacon is ready. Serve on beautiful plates, sprinkled with fresh herbs if desired.

Traditional version of spaghetti carbonara

Ingredients:

Preparation

Shred the bacon into thin strips and fry it together with the garlic squeezed through a press in olive oil. After this, carefully pour in the wine and evaporate slightly so that all the alcohol comes out. Mix grated cheese with egg yolks. Place the hot pasta in a bowl with the prepared sauce, add the fried bacon, pepper and mix.

In fact, the correct name of the dish is pasta alla carbonara and it is traditionally prepared in Italy with guanciale - salted pork cheek or pancetta - a type of bacon. The sauce uses cheeses such as Parmesan and Pecorino Romano. After this, most of those who want to cook classic carbonara should be upset. Since it is not possible to find guanciale on the shelves of almost all our stores (with the rare exception of specialized ones), and in the recent few years, for well-known reasons, both pancetta and real parmesan with pecorino are also absent.

What to do? Shall we say goodbye to the desire to prepare our dish? I think no. If you, like me, are not ardent lovers of authentic cooking, then stay on the page and see what can be replaced with what, and how it is generally prepared at home. By the way, most cafes and restaurants are now in the same situation, so if you want to try your hand after tasting carbonara there, then all the more boldly grab a knife and... let's go! I really want to chat a little more about what we will cook with and other important points. If you are not interested, just click on the content and jump directly to the recipe, step-by-step photos and description of the process.

Below you will find two recipes. The first is as close as possible to the classic, the second is a simple homemade, everyday imitation “on the theme”. In the first case we will cook from bacon, in the second - from ham. In both cases our cheeses are hard varieties. There will be cream here and there. By the way, they are not an essential component of carbonara. As far as I know, Italians prepare the sauce without them. Well, in the second recipe we will take such liberties as mushrooms and add fresh champignons to the dish.

A very important point! The dish should be served immediately, preferably on warm, heated plates. And this is not a show off, this is a necessity. The sauce retains its delicate texture only when warm; once it cools down, it’s all good. As time passes, the pasta will absorb most of it, and the rest will be lost and all the charm of this dish will disappear. Moreover, it is unacceptable to warm it up.

As for pasta, everything is simple - spaghetti, well known to all of us. Our dish is often called “spaghetti carbonara”. Naturally, if you start cooking, then buy good quality pasta, made from durum wheat and cook it, strictly following the instructions on the package, and it is better to undercook it a little in order to get that “al dente” - a slight degree of undercooking, than to overcook .

You can't do without raw eggs in the dish. But in fact, the chance of getting infected with salmonella is not great now. In addition, the eggs will undergo, at least a small, but still heat treatment.

Carbonara with bacon and cream: recipe with photos

Since we have decided that our recipe is only an imitation of the classic carbonara pasta, we will also use garlic to prepare it. It will add flavor to the dish. The quantity of products is indicated for 3 servings.

Ingredients:

spaghetti – 300g;
hard cheese – 50g;
garlic – 2-3 cloves;
eggs – 2 pcs;
cream 10% - 200ml;
bacon – 100-120g;
cooking salt for spaghetti – 0.5 tsp;
vegetable oil – 2 tbsp.

How to make pasta carbonara at home

First, let's start preparing the products, since the process itself is quick and there will be no time to be distracted there. We measure out the spaghetti. Typically, one serving requires 100 grams of paste. Peel the garlic. If the cloves are large, then two are enough; if they are small, we take three.
Place a pan of water, bring it to a boil, add salt and lower the pasta. You can’t break it, we put it vertically in a bunch. Gradually it will sink to the bottom on its own. Cook over moderate heat for the time indicated on the package.
In the meantime, cut the bacon into pieces (you can use long “noodles”) and remove the skin. It's tough and we don't need it in the dish.
Cut the garlic cloves in half lengthwise. Heat oil in a frying pan, preferably olive oil, and add garlic. Fry it for 1 minute. Then we remove it, it has done its job - it flavors the oil. He is no longer needed.
Place the bacon in the pan and let it cook, stirring occasionally.
At the same time, pour the cream into a bowl and break the eggs into it.
Three cheeses on a fine grater.
Add the creamy egg mixture and beat with a whisk.
Drain the water from the pasta, leaving a little, no more than 1/3 cup. This water may be needed if the sauce turns out thick, thicker than desired.
When the bacon is fried and the pasta is cooked, remove the frying pan from the stove, put the spaghetti in it, mix it with the bacon and the most important thing begins - the carbonara sauce.
Pour the mixture of cream, cheese and eggs into the pan. Immediately begin mixing quickly and intensively. The temperature will cause the mixture to thicken and you want it to cover the entire paste. If you feel that there is not enough sauce, add a little hot water in which the pasta was cooked and stir vigorously again.

Immediately place on plates (don’t forget that they should be warm) and serve. You can sprinkle a little grated cheese on top and garnish with basil leaves. Let's run to the table!