Today on The Stay At Home Chef
I'm showing you how to make 
Authentic Pasta Carbonara.
Pasta carbonara is an Italian dish that originates in the Rome region of Italy.
Since I just went on a trip to Rome I made
sure that I ate around the town
and found the best pasta carbonara 
I could possibly find.
And I'm replicating it for you at home today.
Start by adding 1 tablespoon of salt to a large
pot of water
and bring it to a boil.
It's important that you season the water 
that we're cooking the pasta in.
Not only does the pasta absorb 
some of the water and flavor,
we're also going to use the pasta water in our sauce.
Then we're going to cook 1 pound of spaghetti noodles according to the package directions.
You could also use bucatini or tonnarelli,
any long pasta will work,
but there's a reason why they call this 
spaghetti carbonara.
While the pasta is cooking we're going to
move over to a saucepan and cook some bacon.
You want to get 1 pound of diced thick cut bacon 
into a skillet that's cold.
I always start my bacon in a cold skillet
because it just cooks better that way.
Instead of bacon you can also use pancetta.
I just like to make sure that it's a really
thick cut one
so that you have really thick pieces of 
bacon or pancetta.
Next we're going to turn up the heat and get this 
cooking until it's crispy.
Which will take about 7 to 10 minutes.
The best carbonara we had in Rome had these really thick pieces of pancetta
that were crispy on the outside and then they just 
melted in your mouth and it was so good!
So make sure you use a really high quality 
bacon or pancetta,
whatever you can find.
While the pasta and bacon are cooking 
we'll put together our sauce.
You'll need 4 egg yolks,
2 whole eggs,
and 1 cup of grated Pecorino Romano cheese.
You just want to whisk that together.
You can also use grated Parmesan if you can't find Pecorino Romano,
but I highly recommend the Pecorino.
Just a minute or so of whisking and your mixture will be ready to go.
Set that aside for a second and let's head
on back over to the stove and check on our bacon.
Looks like it still has about 5 minutes to go.
Now just before your pasta is done cooking you want to take a glass measuring cup,
dip it in and reserve about 1 1/2 cups of
that pasta water.
You don't want to forget this step because you need that starchy water for our sauce.
Once the bacon is nice and crispy 
we're going to go ahead and leave it in the pan,
but drain off the excess grease.
If you'd like, you can leave in 1 to 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease for extra flavor.
Turn the heat to low and add in your 
cooked spaghetti pasta and the egg mixture.
Just scoop that right on top of the pasta and then add in about 1/2 cup of the reserved pasta water,
and start tossing this together.
You want to work quickly on this and then gradually pour in some of the remaining pasta water
until you achieve your desired consistency for the sauce.
Then just keep tossing this and cook for about 
2 minutes over that super low heat.
Serve this up hot topped with a little bit
of freshly chopped parsley,
some black pepper,
and a little bit more of that Pecorino Romano cheese.
Thanks for watching!
You can find the full written recipe in the
video description.
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See you later!
