Carbonara

Why This Carbonara Works

During cooking, the pasta gives off starch into the boiling water. A little of that cloudy water is saved, and later it blends with the eggs and parmesan. Once the hot spaghetti hits the skillet, the strands are coated in the fat from the pancetta and the olive oil, so the surface of the pasta is slick but still a bit sticky from the starch.

After the skillet comes off the heat, the egg and cheese mixture goes in. The eggs start to warm up from the hot pasta, but they do not scramble, because the pan is no longer on the burner and the eggs are mixed in quickly. Instead, the eggs slowly thicken and cling to the spaghetti. As a splash of pasta water is added, the starch in that water loosens the mixture at first, then it turns into a smooth, glossy sauce that sticks to every strand. The melted cheese, egg, and fat from the pancetta all hold together, so the sauce stays creamy instead of watery or clumpy.

Mistakes To Avoid

Pouring the egg and cheese mixture into a very hot pan lets the eggs cook too fast on contact. Instead of turning silky, the sauce turns into little scrambled egg bits that cling to the pasta and leave a greasy, broken coating in the pan.

Adding the egg mixture while the pasta is too cool causes the opposite problem. The eggs do not thicken at all, the cheese clumps, and the pasta ends up sitting in a thin, watery liquid instead of a smooth, glossy sauce.

Letting the pasta water go down the drain without saving any makes it hard to fix the sauce texture. Without that starchy water, the sauce can stay pasty and tight, so the strands stick together in heavy clumps instead of sliding apart.

Cooking the pancetta on very high heat burns the outside before the fat has time to slowly melt. The pieces turn hard and bitter, and there is not enough rendered fat in the pan to coat the spaghetti, so the whole dish feels dry.